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. 

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP: LI's Victor Yannacone Creator Of Environmental Law

SUFFOLK CLOSE-UP

By Karl Grossman

“So now we’re stuck here in paradise,” Victor J. Yannacone, Jr., the colorful, feisty attorney from Suffolk County, was saying from the Hawaii island of Maui the other day.

Mr. Yannacone and his wife, Carol, had gone to visit their son, Victor J. Yannacone III, for Thanksgiving 2019 “and then we were going to stay to April or May.”

And then “the epidemic hit” of COVID-19 “and we were quarantined.”

“We never got home.”

And, at 85 with serious arthritis, “I don’t want to get on an airplane” with this underlying condition, and fly back. So, they remain in paradise.

Mr. Yannacone, with a long career in the law in Suffolk, remains involved in legal matters. “I’ve been doing civil rights law” from Hawaii, including working with attorney Cory H. Morris whose practice is in Melville. 

It was here, notes his website, https://yannalaw.com/, that he “coined the phrase and created the field of Environmental Law during the litigation over DDT during the 1960s.”

Pioneered by Mr. Yannacone, it is now a legal specialty globally.

Some five decades ago, Mr. Yannacone brought a lawsuit in the name of his wife, Carol, joined in by a group of prominent Suffolk environmentalists including Art Cooley, Dennis Puleston, Dr. George Woodwell, Dr. Charles Wurster, Dr. Robert Smolker and Anthony Taormina to stop the then Suffolk County Mosquito Control Commission from spraying DDT.

The result was an end to DDT use in Suffolk and later it was banned across the United States. The Suffolk group behind the lawsuit became a national organization, the Environmental Defense Fund.

“It was June 1966 in the New York State Supreme Court, Suffolk County, in Riverhead, when the first round of what later would be called the DDT wars began,” Mr. Yannacone has recounted to me. “The suit was aimed at prohibiting the county commission—and the words years later still spilled off his tongue—“from any further use of DDT, an action brought individually and on behalf of all those entitled to the full benefit and use of the unique natural resource treasures of Suffolk County, without degradation from the impact of broad spectrum persistent chemical biocides like DDT.”

The judge in the case, the late Justice D. Ormonde Ritchie of Brightwaters, “was asked by the attorney for the county, ‘What’s the basis for this lawsuit?’” Mr. Yannacone said.

Then “the judge turned to me and asked, ‘Where should your adversary look this up?’” Mr. Yannacone recalled. “I said, ‘Try environmental law.’”

In their accounts of the case, The New York Times and other newspapers described it as involving a new concept of law.

Mr. Yannacone was to go on and write the two-volume treatise Environmental Rights & Remedies, to establish the Environmental Law Section of the American Trial Association, and to give presentations through the years on environmental law around the U.S. and the world.  

Among his presentations was what became known as his “Sue The Bastards Speech” delivered in 1968 at a convention of the National Audubon Society. “I called on National Audubon to follow in the footsteps of the civil rights movement and knock on courthouses across the land and seek justice for the environment: the air we breathe and the water we drink, and diverse populations of plants and animals on which human life and society depend,” said Mr. Yannacone.

Also, in 1994. Mr. Yannacone, from Patchogue where his law practice was based, was elected Patchogue village justice. He remained on the bench through 2002 and “adjudicated more than 8,000 cases,” says his website. 

Moreover, he was an attorney in litigation involving the Long Island Lighting Company’s Shoreham nuclear power plant—a failed project he challenged—and was an attorney in the lawsuit brought by veterans who were victims of Agent Orange, the toxic defoliant used by the U.S. military during the Vietnam War.  The class action suit was settled in 1974 for $180 million, the highest settlement in the history of U.S. jurisprudence at the time. 

He established the Brookhaven Town Council on the Arts and also the Brookhaven Town Symphony Orchestra. And on top of everything else here, Mr. Yannacone was an active baritone saxophone musician performing with it and other musical groups among them The Symphonic Band of Suffolk and Big Band East. Indeed, the “only thing I miss getting old,” commented Mr. Yannacone from Hawaii, is that “my arthritis has gotten so bad I can’t play any longer.” As for his baritone saxophone, “I’ve passed it on to my grandson.” 

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 - "Gorilla In The Room" Enormous Power Of Police Unions

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

“This is a red wave!” said Suffolk District Attorney Tim Sini of Babylon as he conceded Election Night in his run for re-election against Ray Tierney of Holtsville, the Republican challenger who ran a fierce race against him. Indeed, the 2021 election was marked by a Republican wave (with some exceptions) in Suffolk County. 

The campaign signs are almost all gone now but there are some important political lessons in Suffolk still to be absorbed. One involves what has become the proverbial “gorilla in the room” in Suffolk politics and elections—the enormous power of police unions.

A big and seemingly unlikely challenger to that has been Rob Trotta.

Farah Stockman, an editorial board member of The New York Times, wrote a piece in The Times earlier this year headlined: “The County Where Cops Call the Shots.” The subhead: “Fiscal conservatives and liberal activists both want to curb the power of police unions in Suffolk County. Can they do it?”

It began: “Rob Trotta, a cranky Republican county legislator on Long Island who worked as a cop for 25 years, might be the unlikeliest voice for police reform in America. He’s full of praise for the rank and file….Yet Mr. Trotta has railed for years about the political influence of police unions in Suffolk County, Long Island, a place where the cops are known to wield exceptional clout. He’s a potent messenger, since he can’t be smeared as anti-cop. He wore a badge and walked a beat.”

Since taking office as a Suffolk County legislator in 2014, Mr. Trotta has repeatedly taken aim at the clout here of the Suffolk County Police Benevolent Association.

And the Suffolk PBA has gone after him. As Newsday, in an editorial endorsing him declared, the PBA “goes to extraordinary lengths to get him out of office.” This year, it noted, a “PBA-supported candidate” sought to seize the GOP candidacy from Mr. Trotta in a primary but lost out because of invalid signatures on nominating petitions. “Then, the PBA sent [its] executive board member Michael J. Simonelli…to run on the Conservative line” against Mr. Trotta. This didn’t work either. Newsday described Mr. Trotta as “the only active candidate looking to represent the interests of taxpayers, not police unions.”

Thanking voters for re-electing him, Mr. Trotta wrote: “As a retired Suffolk County detective, I will continue my efforts to fight corruption in this county and the power and control of certain unions, as well as to support our dedicated men and women in blue. I worked my way up through the ranks of the Suffolk County Police Department, have the utmost respect for my fellow officers, and I am grateful that you did not pay attention to the outright lies made by the police unions in the recent election campaign.”

Then there was the “last hurrah” possibly of former Suffolk Legislator Kate Browning of Shirley, a Democrat. She served 12 years as a county legislator—and that should have been it based on the county’s term limit law restricting county legislators to six two-year terms.

But because she left the legislature due to the term limits law (and became director of code enforcement in the Town of Babylon), she claimed that this interruption allowed her to run again for the legislature. A state Supreme Court justice decided against Ms. Browning in a lawsuit brought by the Suffolk Republican Party and two GOP voters in the legislative district. However, she won on appeal. She ran against Republican Jim Mazzarella of Moriches, secretary/treasurer of Public Service Employees Local 342, first in a special election, which she lost. Then she faced him on November 2 and was trounced by a margin of nearly three-to-one.

There indeed was a “red wave” in Suffolk this year—but not everywhere.

Consider the Town of East Hampton which long was a Republican bastion where former New York State Assembly Speaker Perry Duryea, Jr. topped the GOP pyramid. The GOP had a more than three-to-one enrollment edge in the town back in the 1970s when Democrat Judith Hope took on its then well-oiled GOP political machine. In a huge upset in 1973, Ms. Hope was elected East Hampton town supervisor and became the first woman to be elected a town supervisor in the history of Long Island.

This year, the Democratic incumbent town supervisor, Peter Van Scoyoc, swept to re-election victory despite a split that had Councilman Jeff Bragman, a Democrat, running on the Independence Party line against him for supervisor. Some thought this might have allowed GOP nominee Ken Walles to squeak through. Also, incumbent Democratic Councilwoman Kathee Burke-Gonzalez easily won a third term, and former East Hampton Democratic chair Cate Rogers won a town council seat.

Ms. Hope emailed me: “Amazing how much things have changed!”

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 -Suffolk Voters Said Yes To "Clean Air And Water" Initiative

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

For Suffolk County (and New York State) among the most important things that happened on Election Day last week was passage of the Green Amendment.

That was Proposal Two on the ballot. “The proposed amendment to Article 1 of the New York State Constitution would establish the right of each person to clean air and water and a healthful environment,” it said. “Shall the proposed amendment be approved?”

In Suffolk, the “yes” votes constituted 60% of votes. It received a similar percentage statewide. Thus, after as required by the State Constitution—being passed twice by the State Assembly and the State Senate and approved in a statewide vote—the Green Amendment has become law in New York.

It makes “clean air and water and a healthful environment” Constitutional rights in the state—enabling litigation on Constitutional grounds if they are negatively impacted or threatened.

Assemblyman Steven Englebright of Setauket, chair of the Assembly’s Environmental Conservation Committee and long involved in environmental issues in Suffolk, was the prime sponsor of the Green Amendment in the Assembly. He emphasized that when the state’s Constitution “was first written, the environment was not an issue. In our modern time, the environment is under siege.” 

The key nationally for a Green Amendment in all state constitutions and ultimately in the U.S. Constitution is Maya K. van Rossum, the Delaware Riverkeeper for 27 years and author of the important 2017 book, “The Green Amendment, Securing Our Right to a Healthy Environment.”

She is thrilled with the passage of the Green Amendment in New York. 

“This victory has been over five years in the making with New York being ground zero for the national Green Amendment movement,” Ms. van Rossum told us from Pennsylvania following the vote. “The people of New York have made their voices heard at the ballot and secured this crucial amendment in the name of environmental justice, protection, and longevity.”

“With the passage of the New York Green Amendment, generations to come will know that they have an irrefutable right to clean air, clean water, and a healthful environment, that they can lean on whenever these inalienable human rights are threatened,” she said. “This victory will serve as a litmus test as we look to the future and head full force towards passing Green Amendments in remaining states, 13 of which are already moving forward with formal proposals.”

“New York is on the cutting edge of the new national movement that seeks to secure highest Constitutional recognition and protection of environmental rights in every state and at the federal level. Communities and states across the nation who are part of the national Green Amendment movement have been watching New York closely,” said Ms. van Rossum.

“I am delighted that this success will provide them all the inspiration they need to seek and secure their own meaningful rights to a clean and healthy environment like New Yorkers now have,” she said.

What’s to follow in New York with passage of the Green Amendment here? Ms. van Rossum said “training” is being planned with a title “something like ‘New York Has A Green Amendment—What Next?’”

“We will talk about how New Yorkers can and should be thinking about and starting to use this most powerful Constitutional tool,” she said. “All the details will be on the calendar page of www.NYGreenAmendment.org and/or folks can sign up to join Green Amendments For The Generations and learn about this event and other upcoming opportunities. You don’t have to pay to be a member. You can sign up at: https://forthegenerations.org/join-us/”

Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele, Jr. of Sag Harbor was a leading sponsor of the Green Amendment saying that providing “a Constitutional right to clean air and clean water and a healthful environment…elevates environmental policy and initiatives.” 

In the Senate the prime sponsor was Robert Jackson of Washington Heights. He commented that the Green Amendment in New York “will finally put in place safeguards to require the government to consider the environment and our relationship to the Earth in decision making. If the government fails in that responsibility, New Yorkers will finally have the right to take legal action for a clean environment because it will be in the State Constitution.”

Opponents complained that lawsuits under the Green Amendment would affect court calendars. But what issues are more important than clean air and water and a healthful environment—and lawsuits for what now will be our Constitutional rights?

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.