$12M for bad rap
MAYOR DE BLASIO said Tuesday there’s “no excuse” for the state’s “dangerous” decision not to hand over millions in federal funds for New York City’s cashstrapped public hospitals — a move Gov. Cuomo said is necessary due to federal cuts.
“It’s a dangerous action by the state,” de Blasio said during an unrelated Manhattan press conference. “We can maintain stability for a period of time, but if the state deprives the city of federal funds on an ongoing basis, it will undermine health care in this city and we’ll have to take substantial measures to address it.”
The funding is a federal reimbursement for services rendered by the hospital network in the last year, but it must be passed through the state — which has clamped down on the cash in anticipation of future budget cuts from President Trump to the Disproportionate Share Hospital program. The state has argued the $380 million at issue, half of which is actually a city match, needs to be more carefully parceled out to account for potentially lower federal payments in the future. “You can’t make a distribution if you don’t know how much money you have to distribute,” Cuomo (inset) said Tuesday at his own press conference — where he focused mainly on ripping Washington for what he called “federal assaults on the State of New York.” He said the cuts, which became law Sunday, are “so drastic that it will not allow us to fund any public hospital at 100%.” “These are federal cuts to local governments and their hospitals. They’re not state cuts,” Cuomo said. A CITY COUNCIL hopeful who came within a couple hundred votes of scoring an upset against Chinatown Councilwoman Margaret Chin is gunning for a rematch after unexpectedly winning the Independence Party line.
Christopher Marte, who lost to Chin by 222 votes in the Democratic primary, is now running against the incumbent pol in November’s general election.
Marte (inset) managed to score a spot on the ballot because five voters wrote in his name for the Independence line - out of a total of 21 votes cast in the all write in contest. Four people wrote in Chin’s name. NEW YORK CITY will pay more than $12 million to a man who spent 25 years behind bars because of a wrongful murder conviction.
Andre Hatchett, 51, sued the city, detectives and officers in March, saying police misconduct led to his conviction for the 1991 murder of a 37-year-old woman found strangled and bludgeoned in a Bedford-Stuyvesant park. On Tuesday, the city decided to settle his case.
Brooklyn prosecutors undid Hatchett's murder conviction in March 2016 - saying there was no way he was physically capable of committing the crime. He was recovering from gunshot wounds to his throat and leg at the time.