Suffolk Closeup: 2020 A Difficult But Productive Year

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

Summing up the 50^th year of the Suffolk County Legislature, its presiding officer, Rob Calarco said it was “a difficult year for everyone”—and 2020 sure was (as is 2021 so far, too)— but “despite the challenges it was a productive year.”

What were some of the accomplishments of the Suffolk Legislature in 2020?

In dealing with COVID-19 limitations, the legislature figured out how to go “virtual” using that most popular internet platform, Zoom. And the public was able to “share comments over Zoom,” noted Mr. Calarco, re-elected its presiding officer at the start of 2020. The legislature used Zoom for both its general and committee meetings.

Meetings of the Suffolk Legislature have, since it was established in 1970, always involved public participation—on a remarkable level. There’s a “public portion” at every general meeting at which people can speak on any topic, and at both the general and committee meetings the public can speak on bills being considered.

Early COVID-related legislation was to allow the hard-hit cultural and historic organizations in Suffolk as well as museums and film-related entities to receive funds from the county’s hotel/motel tax for operating expenses—to help keep them alive. This measure was put forward by Legislator Bridget Fleming of Noyac. The hotel/motel tax provides for 3% of the per-diem rate to go to the county.

Meanwhile, legislative staffers joined other county employees as “contact tracers” to investigate sources of the disease. 

Challenging discrimination and promoting diversity was a focus in 2020. 

Much had to do with the important Newsday investigation of the prior year, “Divided Long Island,” which exposed widespread racial “steering” by real estate people in both Suffolk and Nassau Counties. A Fair Housing Task Force was established and held hearings to review the county’s existing human rights law and come up with recommendations to strengthen it. “We are committed to fighting for fairness, and that includes dismantling systemic racism,” said Mr. Calarco.

As to the environment, with climate change and a consequent rise in sea levels, the legislature passed a bill creating a Coastal Resiliency and Sea Level Rise Task Force put forward by Legislator Al Krupski of Cutchogue and co-sponsored by Rudy Sunderman of Shirley, Sarah Anker of Mt. Sinai and Kara Hahn of Setauket.

The measure emphasized that “sea level rise has led to accelerated coastal erosion worldwide and is of particular concern to Long Island, with threats of destruction to Suffolk County’s 980 miles of coastline … One of the county’s main draws to tourism is its many beaches and waterfront properties, which would be ruined by coastal erosion if these environmental changes are not addressed.”

“Without any policies in place on the county level, many local municipalities are struggling to combat the accelerated erosion and sea level rise,” it said. The task force would “develop regional coastal resiliency policies to assist municipalities when making decisions that could affect Suffolk’s coastline in the future.” 

“A mix” of actions will likely be urged by the task force, said Mr. Krupski, with long experience on shoreline issues. For 20 years he served on the Southold Town Board of Trustees, which has jurisdiction over the town’s waterfront, the last 14 as its president. 

It’s expected its recommendations will include elevation of structures and roads in some areas and also moving back from the shoreline. Places in Suffolk “are so different,” Mr. Krupski said. Thus “we need local persons” to consider what can be done, why each Suffolk town has a representative on the task force. Still, it’s critical that “we all work together,” he said, 

That’s actually been a hallmark of the Suffolk Legislature—indeed, for years, it was led by a bipartisan leadership team of Republican Gregory Blass of Jamesport as presiding officer and, as deputy PO, Democrat Wayne Prospect of Dix Hills (who, so sadly, passed away last month).

Upon his re-election as PO last month, Mr. Calarco, a Patchogue Democrat, said: “We work across the aisle to get things done to protect the vulnerable, protect our environment and improve people’s lives…In a time of hyper-partisanship at other levels of government, most of the measures passed by the Suffolk County Legislature in 2020 did so on bipartisan and often unanimous votes.”

Send that message to Washington, D.C.

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. 

Fill Out The Survey And Play A Role In The Formation Of The Nissequogue River State Park

By Stacey Altherr

After decades of inertia, Nissequogue River State Park is finally on the state’s agenda for revitalization, with a goal of a master plan in place by the end of the year, according to the state’s published deadline. What that revitalization will look like is still under discussion, and residents are urged to join in the conversation.

A master plan, needed for any major renovations of a public place, gives concrete long-term goals for its use. 

The sprawling 522-acre property, once the site of the enormous complex of buildings of the defunct Kings Park Psychiatric Center, is mostly used as passive parkland, with walking/biking trails. Many residents who have spoken at other public meetings fear over use bringing too much traffic, and others want more recreational uses, such as theaters. What to do with the buildings, many in state of such disrepair as to be unusable without much renovation, is a looming question.

A zoom meeting with residents and interested groups was held Feb. 3. An online survey for information gathering, https://bit.ly/2YABFpq, is open until Feb. 17. The survey asks questions about the use and concerns about the use of the property. For instance, it asks 18 questions on what should be included on the site, ranging from playgrounds and skateboarding to community gardens and birdwatching.

 As part of the master plan process, the state’s Office of Parks and Recreation is also opening up the public comment period, now in effect until March 5, https://parks.ny.gov/inside-our-agency/master-plans.aspx The Feb. 3^rd Zoom meeting can be found there as well.

The path to finally getting movement on the state park renovation was an unusual one. 

Kings Park Hospital was closed in 1996, with no real use in sight. Mostly a nuisance to local police authorities because of safety concerns of trespassers, a group of citizens and advocacy groups, as well as legislators, petitioned the state to designate it official as parkland, which passed in 2001. 

Last year, the State Department of Environmental Conservation began construction of a marine resources headquarters in the parkland area. John McQuaid, president to the not-for-profit Nissequogue River State Park Foundation, said the organization filed a lawsuit to fight the construction, saying that it was an illegal use of parkland. The dispute was taken to court last March, where a Suffolk County Supreme Court Justice Sanford Berland ordered the two sides to reach a compromise. 

“We agreed to let them put it there, and for their part we asked them to create a master plan,” McQuaid said. And so far, he is impressed with what has happened.

“We are really impressed with the team. They hired outside consultants and are making sure all the constituents are heard.”

McQuaid said the foundation’s mission is not to create a plan, but to make sure the guidelines of parkland legislation is kept, and to be a part of the process. 

“Our agenda is not to dictate what the park should be, but it should be a park,” he said.

NRSP Survey

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP: Suffolk County Legislature 50 Years Of History

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

Before we forget—as most of us sure would like to—about what happened in 2020, notably the start and then spread of the COVID-19 plague—some attention is due in Suffolk County to 2020 having been the 50^th anniversary year of the Suffolk Legislature. 

It was established in 1970 as a result of the judicial affirmation that there should be one-person-one-vote. The prior county governing body was the Suffolk Board of Supervisors made up of the supervisors of each of the 10 towns in the county. Each supervisor had the same vote on the county board whether representing a lightly populated town or one with significant population. 

The Suffolk Legislature is made up of 18 legislators from districts of about equal population, so the vote of each legislator reflects the one-person-one-vote principle.

I’m the only journalist around who covered both the Suffolk Board of Supervisors and the Suffolk Legislature. They were quite different governmental bodies. 

A strength of the board was that each of the supervisors was the executive of his town and thus came to dealing with county business with experience in how governments run. I say “his” town because there was never a woman on the Suffolk Board of Supervisors. 

Until Judith Hope was elected the supervisor of the Town of East Hampton in 1973—after the board dissolved—only men had served as town supervisors in Suffolk. Thus, the Suffolk Board of Supervisors for all its 287 years consisted of only men, only white men at that. 

The Suffolk Legislature, on the other hand, has been diverse. There have been plenty of women legislators. And there have been Blacks and Latinos. 

The thinking in Suffolk politics when the legislature came into being was that the job of legislator would be part-time. This didn’t last very long and it soon became a full-time position.

The chairmen of the Suffolk County Board of Supervisors whom I covered and got to know included some who were, in my judgement, excellent, and I’m speaking especially of Evans K. Griffing of Shelter Island and John V.N. Klein of Smithtown. 

Mr. Klein, who was chairman in the board’s last four years, stepped down from being Smithtown supervisor as the board was getting set to be disbanded and ran for the new legislature. He was then elected the legislature’s first presiding officer. In the intelligent way he conducted himself and in the policies he initiated—for example, the Suffolk County Farmland Preservation Program, the first sale-of-development-rights program in the nation—he was as fine a public official as I’ve ever known.

Most, but not all, of those who followed him as presiding officer were excellent. A few were poor. Outstandingly good have been Gregory Blass, William Lindsay, Sondra Bachety (the first female PO), Maxine Postal and DuWayne Gregory (the first African-American). 

The current presiding officer of the legislature is Rob Colarco, elected to the position by fellow legislators in 2020. For Suffolk County government, this was a good thing about 2020.

Mr. Colarco was first elected as a legislator in 2011, voted in as deputy presiding officer in 2016, and last year arrived at the top post, considered the Number 2 position in Suffolk government after county executive. He is self-effacing, dedicated to government service and works well with others. He’s very smart, energetic and focused on solutions. 

A native of upstate Auburn, he came to Suffolk to attend Dowling College in Oakdale, which is now defunct. And that’s a shame. It’s sad that Southampton College and Dowling College, both of which drew lots of talented, bright people to Suffolk, many of whom stayed and enriched this county, closed. 

Mr. Colarco’s official biography provides this picture: “Rob watched his family struggle to make ends meet and contributed to the household with whatever small jobs he could obtain. He learned early the values of hard work and respect for all people. Inspired by his father, who served 34 years in the Auburn Fire Department and led the effort to unionize the department… Rob comes to public service naturally.”

He received a Bachelor’s in political science at Dowling and went on to get a Master’s in public administration at Stony Brook University “at night while working full time,” says the biography. It notes: “Rob lives in Patchogue Village with his wife, Laura and his daughter, Alma Rosa and his two sons, Patrick and Bodhi. They share their home with their dog, Buck. They enjoy walking to the parks and caring for their vegetable garden.”

Next week: accomplishments of the Suffolk Legislature in 2020.

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: LIPA Should Provide Electric Service "Terminate" PSEG

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman 

 The Sacramento Municipal Utility District was a model for the Long Island Power Authority when LIPA was created more than three decades ago. 

SMUD has an elected board of trustees and provides electric service to the Sacramento area of California. It’s a service area with a population comparable to that of LIPA’s. SMUD’s establishment was bitterly opposed by an inept private utility, Pacific Gas and Electric Company, PG&E, just like LIPA’s formation was bitterly opposed by the inept Long Island Lighting Company. 

For example, faulty PG&E transmission lines were found to be the cause of the 2020 Camp Fire in California. The deadliest and most destructive wildfire in California history, it burned more than 150,000 acres and killed 85 people. PG&E has now settled with victims’ groups for a total of $25.5 billion, and PG&E has declared bankruptcy.

LIPA since its establishment, instead of itself providing electric service—like SMUD—has contracted with private utilities to do this. Currently, its contract is with Public Service Enterprise Group, PSEG, a Newark, New Jersey-based company.

LIPA is to decide next month whether to continue this arrangement with PSEG or fire it, as it did the private utility it previously had a service arrangement with, the London, England-based National Grid. 

LIPA recently initiated a $70 million lawsuit against PSEG for its terrible performance this past July during Tropical Storm Isaias accusing PSEG of “corporate mismanagement, misfeasance, incompetence and indifference, rising well beyond the level of simple negligence.” PSEG failures were termed “willful” and “in bad faith.” 

“I agree,” says State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele, Jr. of Sag Harbor. PSEG’s “failure resulted in great hardship and great expense to its customers because of its inferior performance,” he says. “The breach of trust exhibited by PSEG cannot be repaired. The model for contracting out LIPA’s responsibilities to a private company is a two-time loser. There is no reason to think it would be different a third time.”

“When LIPA was created,” says Mr. Thiele, “the vision of its sponsors was the creation of a public power company to replace Long Island’s unaccountable, profit-driven private utility, LILCO. We should return to that vision.”

Indeed, the model of SMUD should be returned to.

In 1923, the citizens in the Sacramento area voted to create SMUD as a community-owned public utility. But PG&E fought that for decades. PG&E’s obstruction was finally stopped in 1946 when the California Supreme Court denied its final petition and SMUD was able to begin operations.

“SMUD is owned by its customers who elect a seven-member board of directors,” its website notes. “SMUD was born of this community, and is an integral part of it. More than just a barebones supplier of electricity, SMUD gives back to the community in ways that make life better for all who live and work in the Sacramento area.”

SMUD had an awful experience with nuclear power as we had with the Shoreham nuclear power plant—another parallel. In 1966, the same year that LILCO announced building its Shoreham nuclear power plant, SMUD purchased land for what became the site of its Rancho Seco nuclear power plant. It was a problem-plagued disaster, ran for 14 years, and was shut down. Among other damage it caused: cancer. A study in the journal Biomedicine International by Joseph Mangano and Dr. Janette Sherman of the Radiation and Public Health Project found cancer rates in Sacramento County declined after the shutdown of Rancho Seco with the end of radioactive emissions from the plant cited as a cause. Fortunately, Shoreham never got beyond problem-plagued low-power testing and was closed before inflicting us with nuclear poisons. 

SMUD now focuses on safe, clean, green. renewable energy, with a big emphasis on solar power. 

At long last, LIPA should return to the vision of being like SMUD—serving Long Island itself, not jobbing out service to private utilities that it then has to fire. “We hired PSEG to do a job and they failed to do it,” said LIPA CEO Tom Falcone as it filed the $70 million lawsuit against PSEG. New York State’s Department of Public Service agrees and has recommended LIPA “terminate” PSEG “as LIPA’s service provider.” 

That should happen, LIPA should provide electric service itself, and also—as the law creating LIPA stipulated—have an elected board of trustees like SMUD.

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: Donald Trump, Lee Zeldin And The Mercers

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman 

Suffolk County has not only been the base of one of Donald Trump’s most loyal supporters in Congress, Lee Zeldin, but it’s also been the base of an intensely pro-Trump father and daughter combination of billionaire Robert Mercer and Rebekah Mercer.

Further, in 2019 Donald Trump, Jr. bought a house in Bridgehampton and there has been discussion in political circles about his seeking to run for public office from Suffolk.

“The Reclusive Hedge-Fund Tycoon Behind The Trump Presidency” was the heading of an extensive article about Mr. Mercer in The New Yorker magazine in 2017. Mr. Mercer “has funded an array of political projects that helped pave the way for Trump’s rise,” said the article by Jane Mayer. She is chief Washington correspondent for The New Yorker. She is the author of the 2016 best-selling book Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right.

Mr. Mercer, at the time, was co-CEO of Renaissance Technologies of East Setauket. 

He left that post later in 2017 after reporting on his major financial backing of the far right.

The New Yorker article quoted Nick Patterson, a former senior Renaissance executive who recruited Mr. Mercer to work at the company, as saying: “Bob has used his money very effectively. He’s not the first person in history to use money in politics, but in my view Trump wouldn’t be president if not for Bob.”

It cited Trevor Potter, president of the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan watchdog group and ex-chairman of the Federal Election Commission, as “seeing Mercer as emblematic of a major shift in American politics that occurred since 2010, when the Supreme Court made a controversial ruling in Citizens United” that “removed virtually all limits” on corporations spending in election campaigns. “Suddenly, a random billionaire can change politics and public policy,” said Mr. Potter, a Republican.

As to issues, the article related how Mr. Mercer “has argued that the Civil Right Act, in 1964, was a major mistake” and sought to “downplay the dangers posed by nuclear war. Mercer, speaking of the atomic bombs that the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, argued that, outside of the immediate blast zones, the radiation actually made Japanese citizens healthier.” He is “a proponent of nuclear power” and believes “nuclear accidents weren’t such a big deal.”

He has worked together with his “ardently conservative daughter, Rebekah.” She chairs the Mercer Family Foundation. Another article in 2017, in The Atlantic magazine, was headed: “What Does the Billionaire Family Backing Donald Trump Really Want? The Mercers are enjoying more influence with their candidate in the White House…”

“Robert Mercer very rarely speaks in public and never to journalists,” reported the British publication, The Guardian, also in 2017, “so to gauge his beliefs you have to look at where he channels his money.” This also includes, it noted, “a climate change denial thinktank, the Heartland Institute.”

The Mercer family’s nerve center in Suffolk is their 66-acre estate in Head of the Harbor, a village in the Town of Smithtown. It was there that Mr. Trump came after his 2016 election win to what has been described as a “lavish costume party” hosted by the Mercers.

And then there is Mr. Zeldin of Shirley. 

Mr. Zeldin spoke—a few hours after the January 6^th attack by Trump supporters and amid the residue of the mess they made in the very House of Representatives chambers in which he was talking—against Congress approving the Electoral College determination that Trump lost the 2020 election. Then, last week, again on the House floor, Mr. Zeldin fervently opposed impeachment of Mr. Trump for “incitement of insurrection” in the fiery speech he gave in front of The White House to his followers stating, “We’re going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue…and we’re going to the Capitol,” adding “You have to be strong.” They then marched on the Capitol engaging in violence to try to undo the election.

Mr. Zeldin was re-elected in November to a fourth two-year term despite being accurately described as a Trump sycophant in that campaign and years before. There are now many demands he resign. He should. And if he won’t, be expelled or voters causing him to go. “Zeldin has tethered himself to Trump from the start,” says says Progressive East End Reformers.. “Now comes the day of reckoning for his radical allegiance.” 

As for Donald Trump, Jr., for $4.5 million he purchased a residence on 3.9 acres in a gated waterfront community in Bridgehampton. Talked about in Suffolk politics has been the possibility he’d run for the House—for Mr. Zeldin’s lst Congressional District seat. The scenario spoken of involved Trump Senior getting a second term and appointing Mr. Zeldin to a position in his administration and Trump Junior running to replace Mr. Zeldin. In 2019 there was discussion of Lara Trump, wife of Mr. Trump’s son Eric, running for the House in the 2^nd C.D., which includes Suffolk and Nassau, but she opted not to. 

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.