NUMC's seat squabbling

To our subscribers: Technical difficulties Tuesday prevented distribution of The Point. Our apologies.

Daily Point

A meeting called to disorder

The controversy over who has the legal right to a seat on the NUMC board of trustees came to a head Sunday evening in a specially called meeting that featured County Executive Bruce Blakeman’s choice for the new chair promising to “mow down” anyone who stood in his way.

That could only happen if Matthew Bruderman, who berated the board for much of 45 minutes Sunday, actually has a seat himself.

And as of Wednesday afternoon, a decision by state Supreme Court Judge Randy Sue Marber, said he doesn’t. 

Former County Executive Laura Curran appointed attorney Ann Kayman to the board in December, on Curran’s way out the door. Blakeman, once in office, used the same seat to appoint Bruderman, claiming it wasn’t open until Jan. 1, the day he took office, rendering the Kayman appointment  invalid.

Arguments on whether Kayman had a seat made their way to court Tuesday afternoon, and now that the court saysKayman can be seated, the Democrats keep the board majority. If Blakeman wants  Bruderman on the board, he will have to swap him out with another Republican already serving. 

The order also means Curran appointee Edward Farbenblum is once again the chairman.

But even with the argument settled, at least for now, what happened at Sunday’s meeting will likely reverberate for some time.

Even before the meeting began, the scene itself was extraordinary. Bruderman, board member Bobby Kumar Kalotee, NUMC counsel Meg Ryan, Nassau Chief Deputy County Executive Arthur Walsh, County Attorney Thomas Adams, and other allies of Republicans Blakeman and Bruderman were physically in attendance.

But other members, and particularly the Democrats, were not invited or told physical attendance was an option, and were instead told to Zoom in.

In the meeting itself, Curran’s other two December appointees, Lisa Daniels and Jason Abelove, argued that since it was unclear who had the seat, neither Bruderman nor Kayman should be allowed to participate in the executive session or vote on a board position on who deserves the seat.

Bruderman’s first official words to the board, in response to Abelove, were: “I think this whole thing, first of all, is ridiculous and disgraceful. I think it’s representative of everything I’ve heard about this board, this hospital, and how people have behaved.”

Much of the meeting was conducted by Kalotee, the board’s longest-serving member and often its most controversial one. And Bruderman’s point, which he made again and again, may be accurate: Though he did not  get this seat, Blakeman will give him one occupied by a Republican he asks to resign, and immediately make him chairman.

Bruderman spoke at length at the end of the open session, aggressively, and on many topics. They included the history of his family’s military service back to the American Revolution, the statement “operating agreements, bylaws, LLCs, that’s what made this nation great!”, and the repeated promises to “mow down” anyone who got in his way.

Bruderman also promised, “If we can move on, we’ll all be happy. We should just put this to bed. We’ll all get along, and we’ll fix this hospital.”

The board then went into executive session for about an hour. Once back in session, the members voted on a resolution from Daniels that NUMC counsel take no position in the proceedings over whose seat it is. The motion failed.

And with that, the NUMC board concluded a meeting overseen by a chairman who, it turns out, wasn’t even on it.

The meeting can be viewed here. 

— Lane Filler @lanefiller

Talking Point

Paging Don Clavin

Representatives from the Baldwin Civic Association are concerned about the hamlet’s progress on its $10 million Downtown Revitalization Initiative grant.

The Town of Hempstead, which applied for, won and is in charge of the DRI effort, hasn’t created a design review board, a three-member panel that must be set up to handle potential development projects in Baldwin’s downtown overlay zone.

Hempstead won the DRI grant for Baldwin in 2019, when Laura Gillen was supervisor. After Don Clavin took office, in January 2020, the town established the overlay zone, which creates a district that would allow transit-oriented development and other projects. The resolution establishing the zone also required the establishment of a design review board to assess potential projects before a developer could build.

Civic association leaders said they’ve been trying to figure out what was holding up the DRI. They were told the board had never been established, so they began inquiring — at all levels of the town. After not getting a response, they issued a letter to Clavin and the town board last week.

As of Tuesday morning, neither Clavin nor a town spokesman had gotten back to The Point on it yet, either.

“The Baldwin community is reaching out to make known our dissatisfaction with the Town’s lack of progress with Baldwin’s downtown revitalization efforts,” the civic group said in its letter. “The COVID-19 Pandemic, along with the Town’s stagnation, has stifled economic growth for local businesses and continues to showcase to the residents the Town’s lack of interest in Baldwin.”

Civic Association government liaison and past president Karen Montalbano told The Point she even knows of local community members who’d want to be part of the review board — but still hasn’t been able to get anyone to speak with her about it, despite trying to reach out to multiple town departments and officials.

“I kept going around in a vicious circle,” she said. “I kept bouncing from one area to another and I turned around and I’d be back where I started.”

Current civic president Darien Ward told The Point he’s received “radio silence” in response to his queries. He’s worried that interested developers will soon give up and take their business elsewhere.

“I don’t know how long the developers are going to have the appetite,” he said. “I don’t know how long they’re going to stay engaged.”

— Randi F. Marshall @RandiMarshall

Pencil Point

Making history

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

Final Point

Could June primaries be delayed?

Nominating petitions for this year’s primaries have already begun to be circulated and signed. But even after many months of partisan push-and-pull over alleged gerrymandering, the  process could still face a big disruption.

A  challenge to New York’s 10-year redistricting plan for congressional and State Senate seats has yet to be ruled on in a Steuben County court, some 300 miles from Long Island. Now, Republican lawyers who brought their case before State Supreme Court Justice Patrick McAllister are making an additional argument: that  the court  has time to correct  “unconstitutional flaws” in the newly drawn  maps.

The plaintiffs say New York’s party primaries could be pushed back by two months from June 28 as now scheduled to August 23. Despite claims to the contrary by Democratic state officials defending the  new map plan, the GOP says that doing so would still allow military ballots to be sent out in time for the November general election. That’s  the issue that had caused the primary date to be moved up to June from the traditional mid-September date in the first place.

“Respondents are simply wrong when they contend that a two-month delay in the primary schedule would not suffice to allow New York elections officials to adequately prepare for and complete their election duties,” the GOP court petition states.

The question for weeks has been what would follow if McAllister, a Republican, decides to strike down the maps. There has been talk in the court that if he considered it too late to make rewrites, the whole process of candidates running under new district lines could be put off until next year, when off-cycle special elections could be held. Then the courts could take more time to get the lines right.

But that prospect has serious problems. As ex-GOP lawmakers John Faso and George Winner and their allies publicly argue, the U.S. Constitution doesn’t allow special elections for Congress except in the case of an individual incumbent’s death, expulsion or resignation. So the new federal lines  will need to remain in place at least into 2024. It’s different, however, for the State Senate, where such off-year specials could conceivably happen, as they did repeatedly in the 1960’s, election lawyers recall.

Faso told The Point that his side is not seeking to also delay the statewide primary contests for governor, attorney general, and comptroller -- and that the Assembly map signed by Gov. Kathy Hochul was not challenged in the lawsuit along with the Congressional and State Senate maps. So these would go forward in June under his request.

In a year when gerrymandering of congressional lines in states both blue and red has become a charged national issue with polarizing House races on the horizon, North Carolina and Maryland have already pushed back their primary dates due to delays in settling district lines. North Carolina moved it from March to May 17, and Maryland put off the primaries from June 28 to July 19, as Faso notes.

In Ohio, where Republican-drawn maps also remain up in the air after being rejected in court, GOP lawmakers are facing the growing likelihood that they will need to postpone that state’s May 3 primary.

McAllister’s decision on the maps is due by April 4. If he rejects the new lines, appeals by state Democratic lawyers would inevitably follow, potentially to be decided by the Court of Appeals in late April. Election disputes are always resolved on an expedited appeal schedule.

But under the current Board of Elections calendar, designating petitions are supposed to be signed and filed between April 4 and April 7.

That’s where the practical dilemma lies – and nobody can say for sure how the timing will work out.

— Dan Janison @Danjanison