The hearing promises to be complicated and threatens to pit several of the government's political appointees against one another.
The payouts pitted Mr. Vilsack and other political appointees against career lawyers and agency officials, who argued that the legal risks did not justify the costs.
In the end, the motion was defeated, with each of the mayor's eight appointees against it -- apparently prepared to vote on the closings, even if it meant waiting until the wee hours of the morning -- and the five members appointed by the borough presidents in favor.
Judicial rulings in a handful of the 20 states where challenges to the law have been filed have hewed to partisan lines, with two Democratic appointees ruling in favor of the health care legislation and one Republican appointee ruling against it.
It lost a pay dispute with the Teamsters union when a three-member panel, including two of Mr Obama's recess appointees, ruled against it.
The court is currently divided with eight generally conservative Republican appointees arrayed against six generally liberal Democratic appointees with two vacant seats.
As an example, he said, aides to the mayor had said earlier this year that the Grand Central group would be denied a new contract if it tried to increase its budget of $10 million, even though the money for the budget is raised entirely from property owners and an increase had been supported by a 96-to-4 vote of its board, with only City Hall appointees voting against it.
Dr. Kappner was the only mayoral appointee to vote against the plan.
Hornblower, the head of a New York City law firm, was thought to be a qualified appointee, but his campaign against a New York machine politician had made Senator David B. Hill his enemy.
Former chair Gregory Jazcko, backed by senator Harry Reid, was the first presidential appointee to come up against serious opposition from the industry and became a lone gadfly in a biased regulator.
