Governor Hochul: If We Lose Beth Israel It’s Your Fault!

By Arthur Schwartz

Governors are supposed to care about the people they serve. I say that cynically because it’s been a while since we had one who did. I would challenge anyone who said that Andrew Cuomo did. Or David Paterson, who let St. Vincent’s go down the drain. Or Elliot Spitzer, who cared more about Ashley Dupree. The last Governor who cared about something was a Republican, George Pataki, who brought us Hudson River Park and saved millions of acres of natural land around the State.

Kathy Hochul is skating along with a 34% approval rating in September, not quite as low as Eric Adams, who sat at 28% before he was indicted. And Hochul does seem to get why. She won her last election by 6%. Could she win now? I doubt it.

Our community is faced with a gigantic crisis. Mount Sinai Hospital, whose executives manage the only health system in NYC which runs at a loss, wants to close Beth Israel Hospital so they can sell the $1 billion worth of land it sits on. It would leave those on the Lower West Side (Hell’s Kitchen, Chelsea, Village, Soho and Tribeca) with the nearest West-Side hospital being Roosevelt (now Mt. Sinai West) at 59th Street. On the East Side below 23rd Street, there is one small hospital, Presbyterian Downtown, south of the Brooklyn Bridge. If Beth Israel closes, the furthest south hospital will be Bellevue, at 29th Street and First Avenue, with an already overloaded Emergency Room. Hochul doesn’t seem to care.

Hochul’s Health Department, clearly with her blessing, has approved the closure of Beth Israel. Mount Sinai wants to close Beth Israel because after 10 years of stripping it of its profit centers (like the Maternity, Heart Surgery and Neo-Natal Care), Beth Israel runs at a $150 million per year loss (out of gross revenue of $4 billion). The judge in the lawsuit to prevent the closing (see article on this page), kept asking Beth Israel at the October 31 hearing, “Have you asked the State for the $150,000 million?” (He knew that the 2024-2025 NYDOH budget is $120 billion). Mount Sinai’s lawyers responded, “Yes, and they said no.”

Somehow Hochul came up with $1.4 billion in 2022 to build a new football stadium in Buffalo. Her husband was Senior Vice President and General Counsel for Delaware North until this past August. That’s the company that operates the concessions at the Buffalo Bills’ Highmark Stadium. Bill Hochul was paid over $1.5 million by Delaware North in 2023. More recently, out of nowhere, Governor Hochul came up with $1 billion to fund the controversial City of Yes rezoning plan, which will subsidize development, and “may” result in some “affordable” housing, while enriching real estate developers. (Maybe it will finance some 50-story towers where Beth Israel now sits.)

Hochul doesn’t really care about public health. This spring she tried to close SUNY Downstate. The Assembly and Senate wouldn’t let her. She has also grossly underfunded the NYC Transit Authority, and took another swipe at in June when she “paused” Congestion pricing. (Note, overtaxed subway and bus riders spend $6 a day to commute to and from work on public transit. Car drivers pay nothing, and the congestion exhaust has major health effects.)

But Hochul cares about one thing: she is trying hard to please her donors. Hospital and nursing home executives donated almost $1 million to her 2022 campaign. Many of them prefer overcrowded hospitals, pushing people out to far more profitable urgent care centers and nursing homes. If we lose in court, thanks to Hochul, they will get their way. The public be damned!

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ARTHUR SCHWARTZ is a labor and civil rights lawyer for 45 years and the Democratic District Leader for Greenwich Village since 1995. Schwartz was a member of CB 2 for 24 years. He is a Village resident since 1981 and a father of four. He hosts the radio show Advocating for Justice on WBAI-FM every Wed. at 5 p.m.