Hochul gives horrid hack Richard Kessel another – Latest News
Nassau University Medical Center has confronted financially rocky occasions over time, however Gov. Kathy Hochul’s appointment of Richard Kessel as head of its governing physique is begging for recent scandal.
The East Meadow hospital has long been accused of financial mismanagement, however its board hoped the appointment of its former basic counsel, Meg Ryan, to go the ability in December 2024 would flip issues round.
Yet within simply six months, the state had taken over the hospital and compelled Ryan out after she accused Albany of failing to supply its share of Medicaid funding, to the tune of $1 billion over 20 years.
Those occasions sparked a spate of accusations, lawsuits and probes — and this month the appointment of Richard Kessel as chairman of the Nassau Health Care Corp., which oversees the hospital.
Watch for rank patronage to start out burning public funds.
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Kessel is like that unhealthy penny that at all times returns: Governors and native officers have tapped him repeatedly regardless of his shady background.
Back within the late ’80s, Kessel opposed the Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant and wound up in charge of shutting it down below Gov. Mario Cuomo — leaving Long Islanders on the hook for billions with nothing to show for it.
Later, on the Long Island Power Authority, he grew the workers from about two dozen to over 100, together with many of his own relations and political cronies.
The state inspector basic additionally confirmed that he “improperly [used] ratepayer funds to ingratiate himself with some powerful friends.”
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In 2011, Kessel fled the New York Power Authority as a state comptroller audit confirmed how the company had shelled out a whole lot of 1000’s on vacation events, picnics, awards, items, ceremonies and to buy AARP memberships for retirees.
An IG report that 12 months additionally accused him of “apparent conflicts of interest that he failed to reveal.”
Even all of that did not keep him from successful key new appointments: In 2018, then-Nassau County Executive Laura Curran tapped him to guide the county’s Industrial Development Agency; by 2023, he was out again, amid a probe into moral violations, together with whether or not donations he made by that physique have been improper.
No matter: Hochul rapidly named him chairman and director of the Nassau County Interim Finance Authority that 12 months — a transfer former Port Authority boss and NIFA member George Marlin fumed was “akin to putting the fox in the hen house.”
Now he’ll helm the NHCC. Seriously?
Hochul’s made some horrible selections, however placing this fox in another henhouse is an outright invitation to corruption.
