Trustees of the State University of New York violated the state's Open Meetings Law in voting to close Long Island College Hospital, a State Supreme Court justice ruled on Thursday. The ruling vacates their decision and requires public deliberations before they vote again on closing the financially ailing hospital, which is in the Cobble Hill section of Brooklyn.
The 10-page ruling by Justice Johnny L. Baynes, in Brooklyn, came in response to a petition by two health care workers' unions and a group of doctors at the hospital who are fighting to keep it open.
The trustees' use of a vague notice, a "skeletal statement of purpose in the written agenda," and the timing of a two-hour closed executive session on Feb. 7, the day before the public vote, "seems intentionally designed to shield the purpose of the meetings from the general public and obstruct the transparency required by the Open Meetings Law," the decision said, noting that the trustees "are not unsophisticated."
SUNY Downstate Medical Center, which runs the hospital, known as LICH, is also struggling financially.
"This ruling validates what nurses have been saying all along: SUNY acted unlawfully and irresponsibly when they voted to close our community hospital," Jill Furillo, executive director of the New York State Nurses Association, said in a statement. "We're going to keep working together to build a powerful coalition to protect Brooklyn patients and keep LICH open for care."
David Doyle, a spokesman for SUNY, strongly disagreed with the ruling, but said the board would move swiftly to fix the problem. "The ruling hinges on a procedural technicality," he said in a statement. "Since time is of the essence, next week the board will reconsider the recommendation to submit a closure plan to the Department of Health."
Discussing the sale of property was cited by SUNY trustees as a legal reason to go into executive session, but a spokesman later denied that it was a substantial part of the closed meeting. The coalition battling the hospital's closing has contended that SUNY is cannibalizing LICH to sell off its prime real estate, some with harbor views.
The decision on Thursday was the second ruling in recent weeks to interrupt SUNY's attempt to close LICH. Last month, in a complaint considered by Justice Betsy Barros of State Supreme Court in Brooklyn, the coalition argued that the trustees' vote was not only illegal, but also "triggered a series of irreparable harms, including the diversion of patients from LICH's emergency room and an apparent decrease in hospital admissions — that are causing the de facto closing of LICH."
Justice Barros issued a temporary restraining order that stopped Downstate from sending out 90-day warning notices to about 2,000 workers who could have been laid off.
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