Hochul gives horrid hack Richard Kessel another chance to loot Long Island

Nassau University Medical Center has faced financially rocky times over the years, but Gov. Kathy Hochul’s appointment of Richard Kessel as head of its governing body is begging for fresh scandal.

The East Meadow hospital has long been accused of financial mismanagement, but its board hoped the appointment of its former general counsel, Meg Ryan, to head the facility in December 2024 would turn things around.

Yet within just six months, the state had taken over the hospital and forced Ryan out after she accused Albany of failing to provide its share of Medicaid funding, to the tune of $1 billion over 20 years.

Those events sparked a spate of accusations, lawsuits and probes — and this month the appointment of Richard Kessel as chairman of the Nassau Health Care Corp., which oversees the hospital.

Watch for rank patronage to start burning public funds.

Kessel is like that bad penny that always returns: Governors and local officials have tapped him repeatedly despite his shady background.

Back in the late ’80s, Kessel opposed the Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant and wound up in charge of shutting it down under Gov. Mario Cuomo — leaving Long Islanders on the hook for billions with nothing to show for it.

Later, at the Long Island Power Authority, he grew the staff from about two dozen to over 100, including many of his own relatives and political cronies.

The state inspector general also confirmed that he “improperly [used] ratepayer funds to ingratiate himself with some powerful friends.”

In 2011, Kessel fled the New York Power Authority as a state comptroller audit showed how the agency had shelled out hundreds of thousands on holiday parties, picnics, awards, gifts, ceremonies and to buy AARP memberships for retirees.

An IG report that year also accused him of “apparent conflicts of interest that he failed to reveal.”

Even all of that failed to keep him from winning key new appointments: In 2018, then-Nassau County Executive Laura Curran tapped him to lead the county’s Industrial Development Agency; by 2023, he was out again, amid a probe into ethical violations, including whether donations he made through that body were improper.

No matter: Hochul quickly named him chairman and director of the Nassau County Interim Finance Authority that year — a move former Port Authority boss and NIFA member George Marlin fumed was “akin to putting the fox in the hen house.”

Now he’ll helm the NHCC. Seriously?

Hochul’s made some terrible decisions, but putting this fox in another henhouse is an outright invitation to corruption.