SUFFOLK CLOSEUP - Redistricting To Benefit Political Parties A Sorry U.S. Tradition

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

Back 15 years ago Suffolk County became the first county in New York State to enact a law to have reapportionment—the word redistricting is now favored—done in a non-partisan manner. “A Local Law to Ensure a Non-Partisan, Fair and Objective Process by Which Legislative Districts are Reapportioned,” was the title of the 2007 measure.

It was authored by then Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy who in his prior positions as county legislator and State Assembly member was familiar with—and long-bothered by—redistricting being a highly partisan undertaking. 

Congressional districts and state and county legislative districts are redrawn every 10 years following the decennial national census which produces new population figures.

Redistricting done to favor a political party is a sorry U.S. tradition first given the name gerrymandering in 1812. The word was coined by the Boston-Gazette to describe reapportionment under a Massachusetts governor named Elbridge Gerry. The “mandering” part came from a State Senate district that looked like a salamander.

In gerrymandering, a district gets packed with voters of one party—even if geographic contortions make it look like a salamander. 

Under the Suffolk law, following the national census a Reapportionment Commission is to be established. The majority and minority leaders of the Suffolk Legislature are to evenly divide filling it with four retired judges, two representatives from groups “committed to the principles of voters’ rights” and two from “publicly recognized minority organizations.” (A component historically of gerrymandering has been racial and ethnic minorities being spread among districts to preclude election of a minority person.)

Levy tried while a county legislator a decade earlier to get a similar measure passed but it got nowhere. With clout as Suffolk County executive, he was able to resurrect it and seek a bipartisan coalition on the legislature to pass it.

He held a press conference in 2011, the year the Suffolk law took effect, along with then New York City Mayor Ed Koch who had been crusading for non-partisan redistricting statewide. Both emphasized a need for redistricting reform statewide. Levy commented that the 150 districts of the State Assembly had been “so gerrymandered over the years to be so Republican or so Democrat [that] only 11 percent are considered competitive.” With “wink-with-nods,” he said, politicians had “rigged” the system to make it extremely difficult for newcomers to challenge incumbents. That’s another component of gerrymandering—continuing throughout the U.S. 

Indeed, a lead story on Page 1 of The New York Times last week was headlined: “New Voting Maps Erase Competitive House Seats.” The February 7^th article began: “The number of competitive congressional districts is on track to dive near—and possibly below—the lowest level in at least three decades, as Republicans and Democrats draw new political maps designed to ensure that the vast majority of House races are over before the general election starts.” It said “mapmakers are on pace to draw fewer than 40 seats—out of 435—that are considered competitive.” This is a reason cited in the push for term limits. 

In 2014, voters in New York passed a constitutional amendment creating a 10-member New York State Independent Redistricting Commission. But the commission failed to achieve a consensus in 2021 on new districts. So, the Democratic majorities in the State Assembly and Senate moved ahead with their own plan.  

In Suffolk last year, the deadline for the appointment of a full complement of members of its Reapportionment Commission was missed, said the legislature’s presiding officer, Democrat Rob Calarco. So, its Democratic majority passed its own redistricting plan.

Thus, in Suffolk and the state, both redistricting commission initiatives failed last year. 

This year, following a Republican majority taking control of the Suffolk Legislature, a deal was struck between Democratic County Executive Steve Bellone and the legislature’s new presiding officer, GOPer Kevin McCaffrey, to revive Suffolk’s Reapportionment Commission and have it come up with a plan for the 18 county legislative districts in coming months.

Meanwhile, the new state redistricting map is moving forward although there’s a Republican lawsuit challenging it. 

And for Suffolk County, it’s salamander time for House seats. 

Details on that next week.

Karl Grossman is a veteran investigative reporter and columnist, the winner of numerous awards for his work and a member of the L.I. Journalism Hall of Fame. He is a professor of journalism at SUNY/College at Old Westbury and the author of six books. 

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP- Will Governor Hochul "Engage" On Public Power

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

“We are not giving up on public power,” declared State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele, Jr. last week in a presentation before Long Island Metro Business Action titled “Should LIPA be a Municipal Power Company?”

Thiele spoke how “the goal of replacing LILCO with a real municipal power company” envisioned by the act passed in 1986 by the State Legislature creating the Long Island Power Authority was never achieved. Instead, a “third-party management model” was adopted in which LIPA has “contracted with a private entity” to operate Long Island’s electrical system.

The set-up is “the only one of its kind in the United States of America,” said Thiele.

The original vision for LIPA was further “hijacked” in 2013 when then Governor Andrew Cuomo pushed “the so-called LIPA Reform Act.”

“I voted no,” he said of the measure, “and it was one of the best ‘no’ votes I ever cast.”

Under the scheme promoted by Cuomo, LIPA was “stripped down” and PSEG, the private company which in recent years has run the Long Island electric grid for LIPA, received more clout and became the “least-regulated, with the least oversight, of any utility across the nation.”

Thiele detailed failures in performance by PSEG during Tropical Storm Isaias in 2020 and the failure of its predecessor private firm running LIPA’s grid, National Grid, in Super-Storm Sandy in 2012.  The third-party management model “has proven time and again it has not worked,” he said. 

The National Grid Sandy debacle was the ostensible reason for Cuomo to engineer “behind closed doors” bringing in Newark, New Jersey-based PSEG and for putting together the LIPA Reform Act which not only continued but expanded the LIPA structure of depending on a private company.

It’s high time, said Thiele of Sag Harbor, for a return to the original vision of LIPA being a public power entity. He detailed how he and State Senator James Gaughran of Northport, joined by other state lawmakers, are seeking to have LIPA operate the electric grid itself.

Reinforcing Thiele’s critical comments about the big problems of LIPA contracting out to a private company running the electric grid was Dr. Peter Gollon, a former member of the LIPA board of trustees. Gollon, at the teleconference Friday, said “I agree” with the assemblyman’s points. He said the private contractors “not only have a difference in interest, they don’t have competence.” He said “LIPA staff has the competence to run the utility.” Dr. Gollon, who lives in Huntington Station and is also former energy chair of the Long Island Sierra Club, said he wanted to “give a perspective from the inside.”

Thiele and Gaughran are sponsoring a measure creating a Legislative Commission on the Future of the Long Island Power Authority to lead to a “restructuring” of LIPA.

It would be composed of members of the Assembly and the Senate, and there would be an advisory board with wide-ranging representation to assist the commission. It would hold numerous public hearings. “Our goal is to try to get this all done by April 2023,” he said.

He said the move to bring LIPA back to its initial concept would be “modeled on the process we used to put together” the Long Island Pine Barrens Protection Act in 1993, which has succeeded in preserving more than 100,000 acres of pine barrens. This process brought together environmentalists, business people and governmental representatives. Likewise, on electricity on Long Island we must “have a solution that comes from the bottom up rather than the top down.”

Last year, LIPA conducted its own study on “options” that concluded that there would be “potential savings” of “$65 to $75 million a year” and higher “reliability” if it operated the grid itself. But Cuomo, he said, “short-circuited” further consideration, and LIPA, with the majority of its board appointed by the governor, voted for an extension of its contract with PSEG. Thiele said the contract has “an opt-out clause.”

Asked by several attendees at his presentation about the position of Cuomo’s successor as New York governor, Kathy Hochul. Thiele, a member of the State Assembly for 13 terms, said Hochul becoming governor has “been a breath of fresh air.” She has shown to be “cooperative and collaborative.” He said: “We certainly want to engage with the governor’s office.”

After years of Cuomo’s heavy-handed manipulations of LIPA, long needed is a governor sensitive to the peoples’ will and the intentions of the legislation that created LIPA.

Karl Grossman is a veteran investigative reporter and columnist, the winner of numerous awards for his work and a member of the L.I. Journalism Hall of Fame. He is a professor of journalism at SUNY/College at Old Westbury and the author of six books. 

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP - Zeldin And Suozzi Want To Be NYS's Next Governor

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

Two of the three members of the House of Representatives who represent Suffolk County are intending to leave their House seats for runs to be the governor of New York State.

Will either Lee Zeldin or Tom Suozzi make it to Albany? 

Republican Zeldin will certainly get the GOP designation. 

Having announced back in April of last year that he was running for governor, he’s been actively criss-crossing the state ever since. And as early as June, the New York Post reported: “New York State Republican Party leaders anointed Long Island Congressman Lee Zeldin as their ‘presumptive nominee’ for governor following a straw poll” in which “an overwhelming 85 percent of county leaders said they backed Zeldin while only five percent preferred former Westchester County Executive and 2014 [Republican] gubernatorial candidate Rob Astorino.”

In reaction, Zeldin said: “Since announcing our candidacy for governor, together we’ve built a groundswell of support inside and outside of politics from every corner of our state.”

But what about the general election in a state in which Democratic voters outnumber Republican voters two-to-one and Zeldin being a big cheerleader for Donald Trump? 

The heading of an editorial in the Oneonta Star: “GOP can offer more than just Trump acolytes.” It described Zeldin as a “hardcore Trump loyalist” and declared: “As one of those who voted to steal the 2020 election from President Joe Biden based on Trump’s Big Lie, Zeldin would be a non-starter for most New York voters and would face a withering barrage of attacks from Democrats for his role in the deadly insurrection—as well he should.”

Downstate, Katie Glueck in The New York Times wrote that “any Republican, especially one closely tied to Mr. Trump, would face an extraordinarily uphill battle running statewide n New York. And there is no doubt about how deeply Mr. Zeldin has embraced Mr. Trump and his politics, including by voting to overturn the results of the November election, a stance that would instantly disqualify him in the eyes of many voters should he make it to a general election.”

“As a radical right-wing member of the Republican Party, he just has no broad-based appeal in a state like New York,” state Democratic chairman Jay Jacobs has said.

Zeldin, an attorney from Shirley, was a New York state senator between 2011 and 2014 when he was elected to the House of Representatives. He represents the lst Congressional District which includes all of the Town of Brookhaven, most of Smithtown, a slice of Islip and all five East End towns. Elections to all House seats and the one for New York governor happen this year, so Zeldin needs to forget about a House re-election bid if he is the candidate for governor.

So would Democrat Tom Suozzi. 

Mr. Suozzi is a two-term House member who was Nassau County executive from 2002 to 2009. An attorney and CPA from Glen Cove, he has a reputation as a reformer—he created in 2004, for example, FixAlbany.com. He represents the 3^rd C.D. which includes northwestern Suffolk including Huntington, Northport and Commack, and to their west a broad swath of northern Nassau and Queens counties.

In November he announced he’s running for governor as a “common-sense Democrat,” but, as Chris Sommerfeldt noted in the New York Daily News, Governor Kathy Hochul has a “similarly centrist campaign platform.” 

She replaced Andrew Cuomo after his resignation becoming the first woman governor in  New York State history. Also, she is the first Upstater who has been the state’s governor, according to the Democrat & Chronicle of Rochester, since Nathan Miller of Cortland County, governor between 1921 and 1922—100 years ago! Hochul, an attorney, is from Hamburg, 14 miles south of Buffalo. She was on the Hamburg Town Board, was Erie County clerk, served in the House of Representatives from 2011 to 2013 and was lieutenant governor from 2015 until becoming governor in 2021.

She has been highly active as governor—getting around and speaking out and receiving major press coverage. She’s done well in Democratic polls and fundraising. Democrats Letitia James, the New York attorney general, and former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, have dropped out of running for governor. Jay Jacobs has endorsed Hochul and is concerned about primaries drawing from “precious resources” and “making us weaker in a year where we need to be strongest.”

Also, there is concern among Democrats that without incumbent Suozzi, the 3^rd C.D. will be vulnerable to the GOP and a loss might lead to Democrats losing their House majority in elections this year. Still, Suozzi has stayed in the gubernatorial contest and just released his first TV ad.

Karl Grossman is a veteran investigative reporter and columnist, the winner of numerous awards for his work and a member of the L.I. Journalism Hall of Fame. He is a professor of journalism at SUNY/College at Old Westbury and the author of six books. 

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP: COVID-19 And Health Commissioner Gregson H. Pigott

By Karl Grossman

“Even though Omicron has peaked” in Suffolk County—the rate of COVID-positive in people tested here was 28.1% on January 3rd lowering to 13.95% on January 19th, said Suffolk Health Commissioner Gregson H. Pigott, “we are still not out of the woods. We have to be very careful.”

He was speaking last week at a teleconference organized by Long Island Metro Business Action based in Ronkonkoma.

After two years of the COVID-19 pandemic and often confusing information, his presentation was remarkably clear. Indeed, Lisa Kerr, the moderator of the teleconference and vice president of Global Risk Management and Business Continuity for Henry Schein Risk Management, closed it by praising Dr. Pigott’s ability at communications.

Dr. Pigott of Greenlawn became Suffolk County’s top health official in February 2020. A native of Valley Stream, he received his MD from Brown University Medical School and a Masters in Public Health from the Harvard School of Public Health. Previously, Dr. Pigott, the first Black physician to serve as Suffolk health commissioner, headed the Department of Health Services’ Office of Minority Health, and also was medical director of Emergency Medical Services for Suffolk. He is a professor of preventive medicine at Stony Brook University.

In the month he became health commissioner, we “heard something about a new virus in China.” The reaction nationally was to “monitor travel coming into the U.S. from China” and this, it was believed, would “keep the virus at bay.”

The following month, on March 8, 2020—from memory he cited specific date after date—he was informed by the New York State Health Department that “you have your first COVID case” in Suffolk. The initial thought was that it involved someone from western Suffolk who might have traveled to Suffolk from New York City. But the “person lived in Greenport, deep on the North Fork, not even close to the city.” 

In the following days of March, COVID was appearing widely in Suffolk. The “first fatality” from COVID in Suffolk happened on March 16^th at St. Catherine’s Hospital in Smithtown, said Dr. Pigott.

There were serious “impacts on the health care system.” The 11 hospitals in Suffolk “were overwhelmed.” By April 10^th, he said, 1,658 were hospitalized with COVID in Suffolk.

As of last week, the death toll in Suffolk from COVID stood at 4,100.

“Contact tracing” was stressed, to have infected people “stay out of circulation” for a time “and not spread” the virus “to others.”

Then came the emergence and usage of vaccines, said Dr. Pigott. And in the months thereafter in the U.S. “we started to see a significant reduction.” of COVID. By June 2021 “we thought we had control of the situation.”

“But the virus seems to always outsmart us.” 

The Delta variant emanating in India hit. Delta “peaked in September 2021” as the predominant form of COVID, he related. And it had a “winter surge” heightened by “people getting together indoors” for Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas. 

And then Omicron, first found in South Africa, came to Suffolk in the “last week of November” 2021. Omicron, he said, is different from the earlier strains which “damaged lung tissue”—thus the need for ventilators to enable victims to breathe. Omicron, he said, is “more an upper respiratory infection,” presenting as a sore throat and/or a mild cough. It moves and usually ends quickly.

COVID deaths in Suffolk continue. In Suffolk in this month of January, there have been double-digit fatalities daily from COVID. There were “24 [deaths] on January 19th,” said Dr. Pigott. Some 60% of those hospitalized from COVID in Suffolk in recent times have been “unvaccinated,” he said.

Dr. Pigott warned that COVID-19 “continually mutates.” He predicted that ahead there will be another “twist in the plot” and this Fall “another formula” of a “tweaked vaccine.”

Getting “triple-vaccinated”—with two shots of either Pfizer and Moderna vaccines and a booster of either—is critical, he said. As to masks, he said cloth masks are “sieves” and don’t keep COVID particles out as is necessary. He recommended N-95 and KN-95 masks that prevent 95% of particles getting through, as their numbers signify, 

The nightmare of the COVID pandemic goes on…and on. And, indeed, we all, as the doctor says, must be very careful. 

Karl Grossman is a veteran investigative reporter and columnist, the winner of numerous awards for his work and a member of the L.I. Journalism Hall of Fame. He is a professor of journalism at SUNY/College at Old Westbury and the author of six books. 

SUFFOLK CLOSE-UP: SCCC President Dr. Edward Bonahue

SUFF0LK CLOSE-UP

By Karl Grossman

A Suffolk County native, Dr. Edward Bonahue is the new president of Suffolk County Community College. With 25,000 students, Suffolk Community is the largest community college in the 64-college State University of New York system.

Raised in Setauket, Dr. Bonahue, is warm and affable, as was clear in a conversation I had with him recently. He is a seasoned college administrator, a scholar in English literature, and long a professor with a love for teaching.

“I would say I had a love for teaching after I got to graduate school, and I taught my first classes,” he told Compass News, the student newspaper at the college’s Ammerman Campus.  “I think that’s where my love is…working with a class of students” and with their learning seeing “the light bulb” going off. 

Both his parents were educators, teachers and guidance counselors in the Sachem School District. “I think from the standpoint of my family and the value that we have always had in education, I’m proud that just about everybody in my family has had something to do with public education over the years.”

The Ammerman Campus in Selden, the college’s main campus, is named for its first president, Dr. Albert Ammerman. He came to Suffolk from Michigan where he had been dean of instruction at Dearborn Junior College and led in the creation of Suffolk Community. Founded in 1959, it offered classes at Riverhead High School and Sachem High School in Ronkonkoma until the main campus opened in 1962.

With Suffolk County 86 miles in length, Dr. Ammerman started planning in the ‘60s for what became the Eastern campus. It opened in Northampton, south of Riverhead, in 1977. In the ‘70s, when the state made land available at the edge of Pilgrim State Psychiatric Center in Brentwood, Dr. Ammerman worked on what became the Michael J. Grant Campus (named for a presiding officer of the Suffolk Legislature) on it. It opened in in 1974. 

Dr. Bonahue, a graduate of Ward Melville High School in East Setauket, went off to Wake Forest University in North Carolina where he received a Bachelor’s Degree in English literature. Then he earned a Master’s Degree in English Language and Literature and a Ph.D. in Renaissance Literature, both from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 

He became a professor at Santa Fe College in Gainesville, Florida, then chair of its Department of Humanities and Foreign Languages, then associate vice president for academic affairs and then provost and vice president for academic affairs, before returning to Suffolk County in May to take the helm of Suffolk Community.

“SUNY Suffolk is an outstanding college that changes students’ lives every day, and I look forward to being part of the Suffolk community,” he said upon his appointment.

The Compass News article related that Dr. Bonahue, “after being a professor for so many years…misses the interaction with students.” He commented: “One of the challenges of serving as the college president is always keeping the students’ experiences in mind; how is the student experiencing the college.” He spoke of trying to “get out on campus regularly to see what’s going on in the classrooms, buildings, labs, and so forth.”

The “three missions he would like to accomplish” as president of Suffolk Community was first increasing the number of students graduating. “We have learned,” he said, “that although we are a very large college, and we graduate far more students than any other SUNY community college, we could improve the graduation rate,” encouraging students to complete “their two year degree and then transfer.” Students who graduate with degrees are 50% more likely to go on and complete Bachelor’s Degrees. The second is “to ensure that the career-focused programs that Suffolk offers are closely aligned with the workforce needs of Suffolk County and Long Island.” And a third involves how Suffolk is changing. “In 2010, the minority population of Suffolk County was 28%. By 2020, that minority percentage increased to 36%. Largely growth in our Hispanic communities, a little growth in our African American communities, some growth in our Asian American communities.” He said he wanted to see this diversity reflected in the college’s student body under “equity,” providing “the support that makes you feel at home, gives you a sense that you belong, allows you to connect with a sense of community.”

“I think I’m a good match for Suffolk County Community College,” said Dr. Bonahue,  “because a lot of what I learned about higher education came from the classroom. And so in my heart of hearts, I like to keep that mission of student learning and student success first.”

Karl Grossman is a veteran investigative reporter and columnist, the winner of numerous awards for his work and a member of the L.I. Journalism Hall of Fame. He is a professor of journalism at SUNY/College at Old Westbury and the author of six books.