At a panel hosted by City & State on New York’s healthcare delivery system on Thursday, Continuum Health Partners CEO Stanley Brezenoff defended his company’s past management of Brooklyn’s Long Island College Hospital, which ended with the hospital incurring debt that was reportedly as high as $300 million. Brezenoff acknowledged the difficulty of running a state hospital, and said that Continuum put forth a number of ideas to try and stem the bleeding, including merging with other hospitals, eliminating costly services and… [More]

Gov. Andrew Cuomo hosted a state tourism summit in Albany on Wednesday that brought together business leaders, tourism marketers and museum directors from across the state. Transit executives attended too, but there was little discussion about how to transport tens of millions of New York City tourists to other parts of the state beyond making the city’s airports more welcoming. Cuomo sidestepped a question about transportation and said that the reason more international travelers don’t visit other parts of the… [More]

Assembly Democrats on Tuesday passed the Fair Elections Act, which includes partial public financing of election campaigns, but the bill is not expected to get much traction in the Senate, where Republicans oppose the measure. It does not help matters that the previous lead sponsor of a public financing bill was state Sen. John Sampson, who was indicted on Monday for allegedly embezzling $440,000 from an escrow account to fund his failed 2005 campaign for Brooklyn district attorney. State Sen. Malcolm Smith,… [More]

In advance of a Senate Elections Committee hearing today on public financing of elections, both in New York City and the proposed legislation to create a similar system for the state, Working Families Party Executive Director Dan Cantor penned a letter to state Sen. Thomas O’Mara, the committee chairman, offering to testify at the hearing. Cantor also disputed the claim of Senate Republican spokesman Scott Reif that the party wanted to get their “dirty hands” on public campaign money. In… [More]

We repeatedly see policies and proposals put forth with no rational basis aside from personal gain. U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara may have exposed some of the more egregious examples of political corruption in the recent round of arrests, but in reality there are other pervasive and subtle forms of self-dealing which are doing long-term damage to the public interest.… [More]

New Roosevelt, a good-government group led by progressive entrepreneur Bill Samuels, is launching another reform into the mix: a dedicated Legislature.… [More]

Legislators returned to Albany on Monday  and booted state Sen. Malcolm Smith from the Independent Democratic Conference two weeks after federal agents arrested him on bribery charges. “If [the Democrats] are willing to take him on, if they want to make him a part of their conference, they’re free to do so,” IDC spokesman Eric Soufer said. But the Democrats didn’t seem to want him either. “I don’t foresee that happening,” Senate Democratic Conference Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins said at a… [More]

In the wake of the CityTime scandal, New York City officials have taken steps in recent years to increase oversight of outside contractors, including a joint transparency project with the city comptroller, a new city technology development corporation, and the passage of a law requiring a cost-benefit analysis before any outsourcing that could replace city workers. But for critics, still more changes are needed to prevent another debacle like CityTime, a computerized payroll system that went hundreds of millions of… [More]

After largely steering clear of the media on Tuesday, Manhattan Republican Party Chairman Dan Isaacs turned up at the party’s 3rd annual “Spring Fling” fundraising event and addressed the  legal trouble that has ensnared state Sen. Malcolm Smith, City Councilman Daniel Halloran, Queens Republican Party Vice Chairman Vincent Tabone and Bronx Republican Party Chairman Jay Savino. Isaacs read a statement he had already emailed to his supporters earlier in the day yesterday, saying that the alleged crimes demonstrate that “corruption… [More]

At a press conference announcing federal corruption charges against Democratic state Senator Malcom Smith and New York City Councilman Daniel Halloran, U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara indicated that while the investigation is still ongoing, there is no evidence that state Sen. David Carlucci is in any way involved, as an earlier report had discussed. The criminal complaint says that Smith had been speaking to an undercover FBI agent posing as a wealthy real estate developer. Spring Valley Mayor Noramie Jasmin and… [More]