Hidden inside the Hofstra-Nassau legal battle

Daily Point

The real target of the Hofstra subpoenas

Hofstra University on Thursday filed a motion in state Supreme Court requesting a temporary restraining order to stop the subpoenas issued by the Nassau County Legislature regarding a possible Hofstra communication with one of Las Vegas Sands’ chief competitors in the casino gaming license process.

But those subpoenas are about far more than Hofstra.

There’s one key sentence in the 70-page Request for Applications for downstate casino gaming licenses that might explain the decision by Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman and the legislature to subpoena Hofstra and Hofstra President Susan Poser.

“An Applicant, by submitting an Application, warrants, under penalty of perjury, that its Application was arrived at independently and without collusion aimed at restricting competition,” the request says.

On top of that, every applicant is required to submit and sign a “non-collusive bidding certification.”

“No attempt has been made or will be made by the Applicant to induce any other person or entity to submit or not to submit an Application or Supplement to an Application for the purpose of restricting competition,” the certification says, adding that the proposed tax rates in the application must be “arrived at independently, without collusion, consultation, communication, or agreement, for the purpose of restricting competition …”

None of that impacts Hofstra directly, as Hofstra isn’t an applicant for a casino license.

But it could impact New York Mets owner Steve Cohen and Seminole Hard Rock Entertainment, who are partnering on a proposal to build a casino on the Citi Field parking lot, a plan that’s considered one of the prime competitors to Las Vegas Sands’ proposal for the Nassau Hub.

As The Point reported previously, lobbyist and consultant Michael McKeon, who is listed in public records as a lobbyist for Seminole Hard Rock Entertainment Inc., sent an email to two executives associated with Hard Rock and Cohen’s asset management firm, Point 72, in which he forwarded a previous Point item regarding Las Vegas Sands’ site control of the Nassau Hub.

“I may not have forward [sic] this too [sic] you on Wednesday, but it speaks to Sands’ efforts to control the site,” McKeon wrote. “I am checking with Hofstra to see if they will oppose the move.”

At a news conference on Wednesday, Blakeman cited The Point’s piece about McKeon’s email, calling the email “a very, very troubling piece of evidence that we found that Hofstra University and one of the competitors to Las Vegas Sands were working in coordination and some might even say collusion to frustrate Las Vegas Sands’ ability to get an application and frustrate Nassau County’s ability to enter into an agreement with Las Vegas Sands.”

“You have an applicant for a license that’s not supposed to be colluding or coordinating with any other entity against anybody else’s application … so we find this very troubling,” Blakeman said.

Could McKeon’s email — and any other material Blakeman might find — fall within the state application’s broad anti-collusion framework?

The subpoenas issued by the Nassau County Legislature seek documents and correspondence between Hofstra or Poser and Cohen, Hard Rock, Point 72, Cohen’s lobbying arm New Green Willets, McKeon and his firm, Actum. Also on the list: McBride Consulting and Business Development Group, a firm Hofstra has employed on casino-related issues. Poser is subpoenaed to testify before the legislature on Monday morning.

A Hofstra spokeswoman previously told The Point the university had no knowledge of any communication between Hofstra and any casino developer, other than a single meeting with Sands a year ago. Hard Rock, meanwhile, said in a statement the company hasn’t communicated with Hofstra, and is “committed to integrity, honesty and transparency” in the licensing process.

“We made this clear to all of our vendors and partners, and we will not tolerate any behavior that would counter that position,” Hard Rock said, in a statement that seemed to try to separate the casino company from McKeon, its lobbyist.

Beyond any impact on one of Sands’ competitors, some observers wondered whether the email and anything else the county discovers could boost Nassau County’s appeal on the legal ruling that voided the new Sands lease at the Hub.

The timing, too, is significant. Blakeman’s subpoenas came just a day before Thursday’s Hempstead Town hearings that kick off the environmental review on the Sands’ proposal. The first of those hearings Thursday morning lasted about three hours and included comments from Hofstra’s attorney and from Colliers Engineering & Design, a firm that assessed the town’s scoping on Hofstra’s behalf.

Blakeman on Wednesday called Hofstra “disingenuous” for opposing a casino at the Hub, but then possibly coordinating with another casino company. He used the same word again Thursday to describe Hofstra in its decision to try to stop the subpoena.

“What does Hofstra have to hide?” Blakeman asked.

But his real target may go far beyond Hofstra.

— Randi F. Marshall randi.marshall@newsday.com

Pencil Point

Along for the ride

For more cartoons, visit www.newsday.com/nationalcartoons

Reference Point

Plan or perish

The call was dire.

“Nassau County is sinking into a quicksand of unregulated ugliness,” Newsday’s editorial board wrote. “Unless something is done soon, Nassau suburbanites will be submerged by the dirt, the traffic and the overcrowded schools they thought they left behind when they moved from the city.”

That warning was delivered amid Long Island’s meteoric growth period, in a Jan. 18, 1957 piece called “Plan or Perish.”

And it served as an indictment of what the editorial board of that day — and many iterations of the board since then — considered one of Long Island’s greatest failures: the refusal to plan for the future.

The board in 1957 was alarmed by a “scathing — and shocking — indictment” of Nassau County’s lack of planning by state Housing Commissioner Joseph P. McMurray. McMurray said at a public meeting that 100,000 families in Nassau earned less than $4,000 a year, 40,000 residents lived in substandard homes, and that, as the board wrote, “the slum areas will spread rapidly unless fast action is taken.”

The board said that “the basic fault is the county’s lack of planning,” a refrain echoed often in later years.

“Among the prices Nassau — and Suffolk — are paying for this lack are: inadequate schools and libraries, poor parking facilities, inefficient bus lines, inadequate highways,” the board wrote. “For too long both Nassau and Suffolk have been doing too little too late. They must now concentrate on the future as well as the immediate problem. The steady increase in ribbon developments and carnival-like business districts threatens the joys of suburban living.”

Long Island was seen as a potential victim of suburban sprawl as residents of the city fled its many problems. Those problems, Newsday’s board wrote, could follow the escapees to Long Island.

“Like crab grass in a new lawn, the blight of unplanned growth threatens to choke out the pleasant aspects of Long Island life,” the board wrote. “To be effective, planning must stay ahead of the growth.”

A pessimist might look at Long Island’s many strip malls and conclude that in some respects the Island lost that race.

Back in 1957, the board’s concern about that fate was echoed in the editorial cartoon that accompanied its words. The drawing depicted two ducks — Long Island ducks, of course — in separate beds in a hospital room with a “Quiet! Do Not Disturb” sign on the door. The beds were labeled “Nassau Slums and Planning” and “Suffolk Corruption” and the caption underneath read: “Well — Fancy Meeting You Here.”

At the time, Suffolk was deep into what is now known as the “Suffolk Scandals,” a yearslong series of state investigations of official corruption in the county that resulted in the convictions of a number of Suffolk Republicans and a Democratic takeover of county government for the first time in more than 25 years in the 1960 election. Putting Nassau planning and Suffolk corruption — another piñata hit repeatedly by Newsday boards over the years — in the same hospital room underscored the board’s concern over the planning issue.

The cartoon was drawn by Cliff Rogerson, who also had drawn the syndicated comic strip version of “Francis, the Famous Talking Mule,” a popular 1950s movie franchise. In each film, Francis, a talented talking mule in the Army, helps a naive young soldier solve some problem and amazes other characters in the movie with his ability to talk.

The editorial board concluded its pitch for planning with an assessment that “Nassau has the creative minds to work out a blueprint for the future.”

Apparently, what it really needed, instead, was a talking mule.

— Michael Dobie michael.dobie@newsday.com, Amanda Fiscina-Wells amanda.fiscina-wells@newsday.com

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