Column: Smiling while stabbing LICH in the back, by George Fiala

There was big news this week as it was reported by all three daily newspapers that US Attorney Preet Bharara has turned his attention to the closing of the Long Island College Hospital.

The Star-Revue covered LICH’s agonizing end from the beginning, as co-publisher Kimberly Price recognized right away that LICH was Red Hook’s go-to hospital. She was at the Kane Street Synagogue on Valentine’s Day, 2013, as the community, led by the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA)  and the Cobble Hill Association, listened to fiery speeches by Tomas Soora, of the Concerned Physicians of LICH, and Assembly Member Joan Millman, blasted Downstate Medical Center’s decision to shutter the 150 year-old hospital.

What followed was an elongated court battle fought by the neighborhood and NYSNA, lots of anti-hospital propaganda printed in the tabloid press, much posturing by all the local politicians, ending in the inevitable victory of Real Estate against a vulnerable and ultimately powerless community.

The whiff of corruption permeated the whole proceeding. At first, Kimberly and I believed it all stemmed from the governor’s mansion – which operated through its minions at the NYS Department of Health, and the SUNY Downstate Board of Directors, led by Cuomo’s former enemy Carl McCall.

Then one day, the Public Advocate, who we mistakenly took as a savior, appeared on the scene. We were covering one of the lightly attended rallies on Hicks, across from the hospital, when out of the corner of my eye I spotted a tall, suited gentleman walking with another suited man carrying a briefcase, walking across Atlantic Avenue toward us. I recognized Bill de Blasio, who at that moment was running last in a crowded race to succeed Michael Bloomberg. My first thought was what the hell is he doing here? An also-ran former city councilman in a dead-end political job.

It turned out that a well orchestrated act of supposed civil disobedience rocketed him to the top of the heap. It was just around the time that Anthony Weiner self destructed and Christine Quinn’s persona doomed her prospects.

As de Blasio staked his prospects on being the Cobble Hill savior, we felt his election would save the hospital, giving him the power to negate the governor’s will.

But there were funny things we observed on the way, things that at the time were unexplainable.

One day we joined a crowd of politicians, led by de Blasio and his wife, as well as State Senator Daniel Squadron and de Blasio’s successor in the City Council, Brad Lander, through the Amity Street building that housed LICH’s executive officers. While the politicians stood outside a locked office door unsuccessfully demanding an audience with the LICH president, I stood in the back and overheard an impromptu meeting of the other hospital union, 1199. The 1199 members were told not to get involved in any protests, that the 1199 lawyers had the situation in hand and their jobs were safe.

Another incongruity was that the defense lawyer for SUNY Downstate turned out to be Frank Carone, well connected in NYS politics stemming back to his relationship with the late Vito Lopez, and a past contributor to both de Blasio and Eric Adam’s political war chests.

We were shocked when de Blasio, by this time the mayor, attempted to take credit for achieving a just solution for Red Hook and Cobble Hill by negotiating a small health facility as part of the deal that shuttered LICH. A letter sent to voters in Cobble Hill and Carroll Garden’s, ostensibly written by small time politician Gary Reilly (since relocated to Westchester) was paid for by a 501 C-4 corporation (the ones allowed by the Supreme Court’s Citizen’s United decision), the Campaign for One New York. We hadn’t yet heard of that particular group so I checked and found it to be de Blasio’s organization.

At first I was stunned at the depths that de Blasio would go to make sure he was liked by the people he stabbed in the back. Better he never say one word about LICH, and hope that most would forget. But he couldn’t keep his mouth shut, and it turns out that may spell his doom, as it is this fund that is being investigated by Bharara.

One other tidbit comes to mind. It was obvious that no matter what the courts demanded, the SUNY lawyers would make sure that the LICH campus would be sold to the FORTIS group. The machinations of the final court decision allowed the community to have some say in the disposition of the property. A scoring system was put into place to favor a group that would include a full service hospital in it’s development plans.

FORTIS came in third place in the final scoring – a process that itself is under investigation for possible fraud. SUNY kept the power to easily disqualify winners, which they used to quickly disqualify the first two applicants, and gave LICH to their preferred choice, FORTIS. Nobody seemed to question this process, hopefully it will be something that the US Attorney looks into.

Millman, in a recent conversation, intimated to us that she was told long before the final outcome that FORTIS was a done deal.

Finally, there is one huge fact that we neglected to include in our reporting. To be honest, we never actually thought that LICH, a major downtown institution, would ever close. We were hoping it would be made better to serve all parts of the diverse South Brooklyn community. It had always ranked high in the US News and World Report analysis of area hospitals – better management could have put it on top.

Cobble Hill was one of New York City’s original historic districts. In 1969 it received that designation, a designation that ensured that no buildings would rise higher than 50 feet. It would retain the small -town element that made it one of the city’s first suburbs. What we neglected to report was the the LICH campus, a tiny corner of the district, was deliberately allowed to build higher, as the community that cherished the hospital did not want to constrain it’s future growth.

FORTIS is grandfathered into that 1969 decision, and is planning to erect multiple 30 and 40 story towers, changing Cobble Hill forever.

There is another local example of one part of a community sacrificed to preserve a wealthier part of it.

That is the 2003 rezoning of Park Slope, which protected the wealthy areas around Seventh Avenue while enabling high rise construction along Fourth Avenue.

Who was front and center around that rezoning? Park Slope’s councilman Bill de Blasio and the head of the Fifth Avenue Committee, Brad Lander.