Suffolk Closeup: Rob Trotta The PBA And Its "Exceptional Political Clout"

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

It was quite a blast at the power of the Suffolk police unions in The New York Times last month—two full pages with the headline: “The County Where Cops Call The Shots.” The county is Suffolk, and the article was written by Farah Stockman, a member of The Times editorial board. 

It began by quoting a person who cannot be described as “anti-police”— Suffolk Legislator Rob Trotta, “a cranky Republican county legislator on Long Island who worked as a [Suffolk] cop for 25 years,” an “unlikely voice for police reform.” 

He’s “full of praise for the rank and file” of the Suffolk County Police Department, “Yet Mr. Trotta,” continued the article, “has railed for years about the political influence of police unions in Suffolk County, N.Y., 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.”  

The piece declared: “Mr. Trotta’s small, quixotic battle on Long Island is part of a much larger struggle in the United States to wrestle power away from police unions that for too long have resisted meaningful reform.”

The article focused on the Suffolk Police Benevolent Association (PBA)—which has long been a proverbial gorilla in the political room in Suffolk County.

Now, I know the Suffolk County Police Department well. My first beat at the daily Long Island Press starting in 1964 was covering cops-and-courts in Suffolk. Every morning included my going to Suffolk Police headquarters, sitting down with its commissioner, John L. Barry, and taking notes about police activities going on, then walking down that first-floor hallway and being with Bill Coleman, deputy chief of detectives, taking more notes, and dropping in and connecting with other top officers. In the field, I covered murders and other crimes and got to know, too, rank and file officers.

In 1969 I was shifted to writing a column on politics and government in Suffolk—that’s how this column began—and how I also got know, through these now 50-plus years, the ins and outs of Suffolk politics and government.

And Rob Trotta and Farah Stockman are not incorrect.

Suffolk police unions wield, indeed, “exceptional political clout” in the county.

Let me note, please, I’m a union person. As a professor of journalism for 43 years at the State University of New York, I’ve been a member of United University Professions, the union that represents SUNY faculty and much of staff, and at The Press a Newspaper Guild member.

Ms. Stockman tells of Mr. Trotta, of Fort Salonga in Smithtown, describing “politics as broken” in Suffolk “because police unions’ donations have been able to purchase deference from politicians.”

Newsday has picked up on this issue, too. “Long Island Law Enforcement Foundation spends big in Suffolk,” was the headline of a 2016 story in Newsday. The piece by David Schwartz began: “A super PAC run by Suffolk county police unions has built a multimillion-dollar campaign operation, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to help elect local candidates and boost its clout on law enforcement issues. Funded with $1-a-day mandatory fees from approximately 2,500 police department members, the Long Island Law Enforcement Foundation regularly outspent candidates it targeted for defeat in recent elections.”

A Newsday article last year by Michael Gormley began: “The Suffolk County Police Benevolent Association Inc. has become one of Long Island’s most powerful political forces, contributing millions of dollars to campaigns in direct spending or through a related group the union controls despite restrictions on campaign spending, according to records and political financing experts.”

The Suffolk Police Department came into being in 1960 following a countywide referendum in which voters were asked whether they wanted to disband their town and village departments—long the system in Suffolk—in favor of a county department.

A majority of voters in the five East End towns of Suffolk voted no, along with voters in several western Suffolk villages including the large villages of Northport and Amityville and some small villages among them Nissequogue. So, the Suffolk County Police Department is only the uniformed force in the five towns of western Suffolk (outside of these villages). However, it provides specialized services—deployment of its Homicide Squad and Arson Squad, as examples—in all of Suffolk. Through the years county police department unions have sought to enlarge the department. In 2015 the Suffolk PBA helped finance a move to have the Suffolk Police Department take over the Riverhead Town Police Department. Earlier, the police unions, working with the then presiding officer of the Suffolk County Legislature, Anthony Noto of Babylon, campaigned to have the county department expand and take in all the East End. 

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 County's History Includes Migrant Labor Camps

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

It was “a dark chapter in Long Island’s labor history,” as notes a just-published and important book, Long Island Migrant Labor Camps: Dust for Blood.

The book relates the building and operation between the early 1940s and the 1960s of more than 100 migrant farm labor camps in Suffolk County. “Thousands of migrant workers lured by promises of good wages and decent housing flocked to Eastern Long Island where they were often cheated out of pay and housed in deadly slum-like conditions. Preyed on by corrupt camp operators and entrapped in a feudal system that left them mired in debt, laborers struggled and, in some cases, perished in the shadow of New York’s affluence,” it recounts.

“Dust for Blood” was how a farmworker “grimly described” receiving little or nothing in pay from crew leaders who recruited them. 

The book, authored by Mark A. Torres, who is also an attorney, is published by Arcadia Publishing and The History Press.

The migrant farm labor situation in Suffolk County was part of Edward R. Murrow’s landmark CBS News documentary Harvest of Shame broadcast in 1960 exposing the plight of migrant farm workers. “We present this report on Thanksgiving,” Murrow said at its start, “because were it not for the labor of the people you are going to meet, you might not starve, but your table would not be laden with the luxuries that we have all come to regard as essentials.”

There was a spotlight on the “largest and unquestionably most notorious migrant labor camp in Suffolk County,” notes the book, “the Cutchogue labor camp.” Fire tore through it a year after the Murrow broadcast, killing four migrant farmworkers, it states.  

Harvest of Shame was followed by a documentary in 1968 on National Educational Television (predecessor to PBS), What Harvest for the Reaper? It also focused on the Cutchogue camp. But it wasn’t just in Cutchogue and elsewhere in Southold and Riverhead towns where potato farming was widespread and thus there were many farmworker camps, 24 in Southold, 30 in Riverhead. By 1960, Mr. Torres relates, there were also 13 camps in Southampton town, two in East Hampton, one on Shelter Island, 14 in Brookhaven, three in Babylon, one in Islip, 17 in Huntington and eight in Smithtown. 

“Crew leaders were a foundational part of the migratory labor system in Suffolk County,” writes Mr. Torres. They were “contracted with Long Island growers” and “sanctioned by the state to serve as labor contractors.” 

The crew leaders would make promises to those they recruited, promises not kept. And the migrants commonly ended up in debt to the crew leaders and stuck in the “migrant stream.” Mr. Torres cites Betty Jean Johnson at a Congressional hearing on “allegations of abuse at migrant labor camps throughout New York and New Jersey” testifying in 1961: “They bring us up from the South and make slaves out of us.”

Mr. Torres tells of Reverend Arthur C. Bryant, a leading advocate for farmworkers, pastor of St. Peter’s Lutheran Church in Greenport and vice chair of the Suffolk County Human Relations Commission, declaring: “False promises and Shanghai methods are still used to induce men into a life of death, hardship and hopelessness.”

Mr. Torres cites others who have helped migrant farmworkers here. Among them: Mary Chase Stone, founder of Long Island Volunteers and Helen Wright Prince, a teacher of children of migrant farmworkers; and journalists who wrote on the situation, Newsday’s Harvey Aronson and Steve Wick. “Members of the press were also targeted for violence,” he says. 

I got my lumps, literally, on the issue. A New York Times article mentioning me is cited in the book. It was at the Cutchogue labor camp in 1971. State Assemblyman Andrew Stein of Manhattan, chair of the Assembly Committee on Malnutrition and Human Needs, was there with journalists. A man involved in the camp’s ownership drove up and, Mr. Torres relates, “attacked Grossman with a piece of wood.” I was working then for the daily Long Island Press.

Mr. Torres says: “Over the years, various state officials, reporters and civil rights advocates who attempted to visit labor camps allegedly received warnings of physical violence and even death threats from camp owners, operators and crew leaders.”

“By the late 1980s, most of the potato farms were gone and so were most of the labor camps,” he writes. Further, there “was a combination of increased mechanization, a shifting farming ideology and a sharp increase in real estate prices.”

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. 

Mike Siderakis Announces Run For Suffolk County Legislator 12 LD

Standing in front of Lake Ronkonkoma Monday, Nesconset resident Mike Siderakis announced his intention to run against Suffolk County Legislator Leslie Kennedy in the 12th LD. Originally from Queens, Mike and his wife Sandra moved to Nesconset and raised their three children in starter home they bought 25 years ago. 

Mike Siderakis is a retired NYS trooper who has served in many different capacities HisMike Siderakis announcing his intention to challenge Leslie Kennedy iin the 12th LD assignmets included patrol, search/recovery efforts at Ground Zero, TWA Flight 800, K9 handler and Protective Services Unit. He also served as the Troop L union delegate.

Siderakis says he is committed to public service. He is concerned that the people in Suffolk County are being led down a path that includes overdevelopment, increased traffic, residential streets that have become pass-throughs with stop signs, traffic lights and worst of all so much traffic that making left turns is almost impossible. Standing in front of Lake Ronkonkoma, Siderakis explained his frustration with Leslie Kennedy’s inability to make things happen in the 12th LD. He pointed around the Lake at the scenic areas Brookhaven and Islip have established and then pointed to the property owned by Smithtown and bemoaned the ugliness of it. No grass, no benches, nothing that instills pride. Siderakis said it’s time to imagine the 12th LD without a Kennedy, emphasing fact that Kennedy’s spouse John Kennedy held the seat before he became county comptroller and Leslie filled the seat. “Imagine the 12th LD without a Kennedy. 16 years of Kennedy leadership it’s time for change.” 

Mike and Sandra SiderakisSiderakis did not hold punches, “Overdevelopment and proliferation of 7-Elevens happened during the time that the Kennedy’s represented the 12th LD.”

Kennedy, Siderakis said, has been ineffective and uses the excuse that she is a member of the minority party on the legislature which makes it difficult to get funding for projects. According to Siderakis, his work experience and the negotiation skills he has developed qualify him to work across party lines with town, state and county officials  which will make him a successful legislator. Election Day is Tuesday, November 2, 2021.

The 12th Suffolk County Legislative District (LD) is located in the western-central portion of Suffolk County encompassing the southern section of the Town of Smithtown, and western Brookhaven. The district includes Smithtown, Nesconset, Hauppauge, the Village of the Branch, Lake Grove and parts of St. James, Commack, Lake Ronkonkoma and Centereach. The district is bounded roughly by Route 25 to the North, Commack Road to the West, Townline Road to the South, and Oxhead Road to the East with Veteran’s Memorial Highway running through the heart of the district northwest to southeast. 

Suffolk Closeup: Long Island's Solar Roadmap

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

“Long Island Solar Roadmap” is the title of a just-released report on how solar power has “the potential to generate more electricity than Long Island uses each year.”

The report was “spearheaded” by The Nature Conservancy and Defenders of Wildlife and involved a “consortium” of “38 local stakeholders,” says a statement issued with it.  

This included people from the Sierra Club; Renewable Energy Long Island; Long Island Regional Planning Council; Suffolk Legislator Bridget Fleming; Peconic Land Trust; Clean Energy of New York; Sustainability Institute of Molloy College; Long Island and New York State power authorities; Suffolk Community College; Long Island Farm Bureau; Land Trust Alliance; and from individual Long Island towns.

The initiative was supported by a grant from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.

The report not only covers what can be done but recommends strategies for “implementing” the roadmap. It describes specific solar power potentials in areas throughout Suffolk and Nassau—including, in detail, in the Town of Smithtown.  

It is available online. Its 127 pages are literally a roadmap to a sunny energy future for Long Island. The link is: http://solarroadmap.org/

The statement starts by noting “the solar carport at the H. Lee Dennison Building in Hauppauge” and how it “twinkles in the sun. Since 2011, the solar canopies there, laid out in rows above the parking spaces, have generated shade in the hot summer months and carbon-free electricity all year round, along with a multitude of other benefits: improved air quality and improved public health jobs that pay above the national average; reductions in greenhouse gas emissions; and income for Suffolk County, which has leased the parking lot to the array’s developer.”

“The even better news about this solar project and ones like it—mid-to-large-scale arrays of at least 250 kilowatts,” it goes on, “is that they can play a pivotal role in meeting New York State’s nation-leading climate and clean energy goals.”

“In fact,” it says, “these arrays, also called commercial-and industrial scale solar, have the potential to generate more electricity than Long island uses each year—enough to power 4.8 million homes.”

“And…they can do it without negatively impacting many of the places Long Islanders hold dear—the region’s farmlands and forests, its cultural heritage sites and open spaces.”

“The Long Island Solar Roadmap,” it states, “explores how to advance solar development on the country’s most populated island while safeguarding the landscapes people value most and expanding clean energy, especially for low-to-moderate income residents and people of color.”

The “Roadmap offers a first-of-its-kind online mapping tool that identifies areas for responsible solar development and lays out clear strategies for lowering barriers to the clean energy technology.”

The initiative “got its start with the awareness of a problem. In 2016, several proposed large solar projects on Long Island were very publicly shot down because they would have required clear-cutting forests,” it relates. It quotes Jessica Price, the New York renewable strategy leader for the The Nature Conservancy saying “I was having lots of conversations with folks about where solar projects shouldn’t go. What I was really interested in talking about was where they should go.”

“To help figure that out,” the statement continues, “The Nature Conservancy and Defenders of Wildlife brought together utilities, municipalities, solar developers, commercial property owners, farmers and community groups to talk about what they valued and how those values could be used to inform decisions about solar siting.” They found: “Even though we don’t have large swaths of undeveloped land on Long Island, we have plenty of parking lots, warehouse roofs, brownfields, capped landfills and other areas already impacted by development.”

Also, “public opinion research…found that 92 percent of Long Islanders surveyed endorse the use of mid-to-large-scale solar, and the technology is especially popular when sited on parking lots and rooftops and when projects are developed and installed by local companies.” 

It quotes Ms. Price declaring: “Solar power offers incredible benefits. This report shows that in scaling up solar, we don’t have to choose between one ‘green’ good—clean energy—and another—undisturbed forests, open spaces, and farmland. Even on densely populated Long Island, with the right approach we have room for it all.”

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. 

A Damaged Cuomo Leaves Democrats Wondering Who Will Replace Him

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

 “A series of revelations…have damaged the New York governor beyond repair,” the headline in The New Republic magazine declared. The article below it started: “Andrew Cuomo is hanging by a thread. He may hold onto his job for another day or another week, or even longer. But he is well past the political point of no return.”

Will a Long Islander replace Mr. Cuomo as Democratic candidate for governor in the 2022 election if he doesn’t get the party’s nod to run again or loses in a primary contest? And will he resign before that?

With a significant number women of charging he sexually harassed them, and this following what’s been claimed as a state cover-up of nursing home COVID-19 deaths, a chorus of fellow Democratic officeholders are demanding he quit.

Politico, the prominent Washington-based journal, lists several Long Islanders in an article headed “The Democrats who could take Cuomo’s place.” The subhead: “With Cuomo wounded, next year could get very interesting.”

High on the list is New York State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli. As to “why he can win,” Politico declares: “DiNapoli, the state’s elected chief financial officer, has a longstanding reputation as the nicest man in Albany, and he’s served in statewide office since 2007 without a whiff of a scandal. Those would obviously be great selling points if voters’ biggest takeaway from the ongoing crisis in Albany is that they should elected somebody who isn’t a bully.”

Further, Politico points out that Mr. DiNapoli “led the Democratic ticket in vote-getting in the past, with his 67 percent in 2018 outpolling Cuomo by a solid 7 points.”

A wrinkle: Mr. DiNapoli would “have to end his career as comptroller for governor…

a job that he seems happy to keep, and one that most people would think is his for however long he wants it.”

Mr. DiNapoli, of Great Neck Plaza in Nassau County, would make an outstanding candidate for governor. I covered him for decades in his time as a highly-productive and extraordinarily collegial member of the State Assembly. Also, for many of those years, he chaired the Legislative Commission on Water Resource Needs of New York State and Long Island. 

The Politico list also includes Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone and Nassau County executive Laura Curran.

Meanwhile, CNBC has just reported that Representative Tom Suozzi, whose Congressional District includes part of Suffolk, is interested in running for governor. 

Mr. Suozzi, a former and able Nassau County executive, tried earlier to run for governor but lost a Democratic primary to Eliot Spitzer in 2006. Mr. Spitzer would later resign the governorship, bowing to pressure, in the wake of allegations he repeatedly used the services of a high-priced prostitution ring.

Mr. Suozzi is a resident of Glen Cove. He was elected in 2016 to the House of Representatives from the 3^rd C.D. which includes northwest Suffolk and the northern portions of Nassau and Queens Counties.

Both Messrs. DiNapoli and Suozzi “have been engaging with supporters and party leaders to discuss potentially running for governor in 2022,” reported CNBC.

The Politico list also includes figures from New York City and upstate. Among those from the city are Mayor Bill de Blasio, New York Attorney General Letitia James and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and, from upstate, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand and Lieutenant Governor Kathy Hochul. Ms. Hochul would succeed Mr. Cuomo if he resigns, and  would “suddenly have all of the advantages of incumbency” in then running for governor, notes Politico. 

Ms. Hochul would be New York’s first female governor. Her website biography relates how she was raised in Buffalo in a “blue-collar family that instilled a deep passion for public service and activism. She continued that fighting spirit as a student organizer, as a young attorney and aide to Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan…” In 2011 she “entered a special election in the most Republican Congressional district in the state, and against all odds, won as a proud Democrat.”

Andrew Cuomo has very much wanted a fourth term as governor, something which eluded his father, Mario, defeated in his bid for a fourth term by Republican George Pataki in 1994. Andrew Cuomo maintains he is innocent of all charges and, strong-willed, he is holding on.

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.