SUFFOLK CLOSEUP: The Year 2023

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

The year 2023 had a stormy ending in Suffolk County, a year of great storminess in which general violence in the world—war—colored life here and widely.

An “extreme weather event”—as they have begun to be called—happened in December in the form of a winter storm that behaved more like a hurricane. 

Brookhaven Town officials reported that Fire Island lost double the amount of sand in the storm then it lost during the whole previous year. 

Newsday, which through the decades has championed trying to fortifying Fire Island beaches by dumping sand on them, felt compelled to publish an editorial headed “Hard questions on beach erosion.” What happened to Fire Island “has inflamed the long debate over who should pay—and how often—for renovations doomed to eventually wash away,” it declared.

 “Hard questions must be asked and answered,” it said. “Government policymakers have to look open-eyed at the huge costs of battling Mother Nature while trying to maintain our shorelines. Should taxpayers living miles from the waterfront be asked to repeatedly fund expensive projects that rehab beaches and, not incidentally, protect private homes? Should beachfront property owners be required to pay for their own protection or move away from endangered areas? Now is the time to finally recognize the changing reality for Long Island’s shoreline and begin adapting to it. The answers won’t be easy, but they will define our region for generations.”

The fierce winter storm also caused the beach in Montauk to be stripped of the sand used to cover 14,000 giant sandbags placed on its coast in a multi-million project to try to protect a line of mostly motels. The “geotextile” bags, now naked, are an ugly site. 

Wiser paths for highly vulnerable coastal stretches are public acquisition—as has been happening in low-lying sections of Mastic Beach in a partnership between The Nature Conservancy and Brookhaven Town—and restoring wetlands. They provide a natural buffer from storms. Most important, however, is dealing with the cause not just effect of “extreme weather events”—climate change.

And the UN’s 2023 annual conference on climate change was not a sterling event in that regard. It was held in the United Arab Emirates, among the world’s leading producers of fossil fuels—oil and gas—the prime cause of climate warming. The conference president, Sultan al Jaber, is chief executive officer of the government-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Company. He asserted that ending the use of fossil fuels would “take the world back into caves.” There were 2,500 fossil fuel lobbyists reported in attendance. The final report issued at the conference  weakly recommended “transitioning away from fossil fuels”—far short of a phaseout that environmentalists sought.

Still, as the Associated Press reported last week: “Led by new solar power, the world added renewable energy at breakneck speed in 2023, a trend that if amplified will help Earth turn away from fossil fuels and prevent severe warming and its effects. Clean energy is often now the least expensive, explaining some of the growth.”

Back in Suffolk, the election of 2023 resulted in the election of a new head of county government, Ed Romaine, the Brookhaven Town supervisor and previously a county legislator and county clerk. There was the quite the mess in 2023 in the administration of the term-limited incumbent county executive with the county government’s hit in a massive hacking attack. 

In the election, voters continued the Republican majority on the Suffolk Legislature. With Romaine, the first Republican to be elected county executive of Suffolk in 20 years, the GOP is is in control of both the legislative and executive branches of county government. 

Women made substantial gains in the election, quite a contrast to before 1973 when Judith Hope became the first woman elected a town supervisor in Suffolk winning the supervisor’s post in East Hampton. This year, women elected to town supervisor spots in Suffolk’s 10 towns were: in Southampton, Maria Moore; in East Hampton, Kathee Burke-Gonzalez; in Islip, Angie Carpenter; in Shelter Island, Republican Amber Brach-Williams. As to the Suffolk Legislature, six of its 18 members will be female.

The lack of affordable housing remained a burning issue in 2023.

A bright technological event here was local action on cellphone use in class by students. On Shelter Island, its Board of Education prohibited it following teacher Peter Miedema instituting a cellphone ban in his humanities classes the prior year. He observed: “You cannot learn at the same time you are looking at other information.” Joining Shelter Island in banning cellphone use by students in 2023 were the Sag Harbor and Brentwood school systems. 

The wars in Ukraine and the Middle East affected life in Suffolk greatly in 2023. Russia’s continuing invasion of Ukraine and the attack by Hamas on Israel and the ensuing conflict dominated the news. Tie-ins here included the arrest in Montauk of a man who police said admitted to spray-painting swastikas on businesses he believed were owned by Jews. 

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: Gov. Hochul To Decide LIPA's Fate

 SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

 By Karl Grossman

With the New York State Legislature and Governor Kathy Hochul to decide in coming months whether to accept the recommendations of the state’s Legislative Commission on the Future of the Long Island Power Authority, it would be instructive to consider how LIPA began—and the work of two people instrumental in the creation of LIPA in 1986.

The bipartisan eight-member legislative commission has just concluded that LIPA should be a full public utility and operate the electric system on Long Island itself, not contract out the work to PSEG, a New Jersey-based utility. Its just-issued report says that cutting out PSEG—which former Governor Andrew Cuomo in 2011 arranged to get a contract to run the Long Island grid—would provide a saving of $50 million to $80 million year, “the fee paid to PSEG.” And, the report projects, it would result in an improvement in service.

Instrumental in the establishment of LIPA were the late Murray Barbash of Brightwaters, and Irving Like, his brother-in-law and a Bay Shore resident.

What they did was flip the strategy they had used decades before to block the four-lane highway Robert Moses sought to build the length of Fire Island and, instead, create a Fire Island National Seashore. Barbash, who died in 2013, and Like, an attorney who passed away in 2018, were both strong environmentalists.

I got a phone call from Barbash in 1962, the morning after my first article was published in the Babylon Town Leader on the plan of Moses, who lived in Babylon, for a highway on Fire Island. My piece quoted numerous people on Fire Island telling how it would have a devastating impact on communities and nature of Fire Island.  

Barbash knew there was no way to stop Moses on the state level. Moses, who lost a race for New York governor in 1934 by a then record margin, amassed huge power by heading commissions and authorities—becoming as Robert Caro would relate in his Pulitzer Prize-winning book “The Power Broker,” a power broker in the state. Needed to stop Moses and his highway was federal clout.

So, Barbash and Like created the Citizens Committee for a Fire Island National Seashore. And they and others involved in it, including famed Suffolk naturalist Robert Cushman Murphy, campaigned for the Seashore. They received the support of U.S. Interior Secretary Stewart Udall.

With federal power, Moses was overridden governmentally and President Lyndon Johnson in 1964 signed the legislation creating a Fire Island National Seashore.

Two years later, in 1966, LILCO announced its plan to build the Shoreham nuclear power plant. In the language of the nuclear promoters of the time, Long Island would be turned into a “nuclear park” with LILCO seeking seven to eleven nuclear plants all in Suffolk County.

The impetus for this nuclear development on Long Island was the fight Con Edison lost when it sought to build a nuclear power plant in Ravenswood, Queens, in the geographic center of New York City. Key to blocking that project: opponents getting a bill introduced in the City Council banning the placement of a nuclear power plant within the boundaries of the city. Thus, Long Island was seen as an alternative location for siting nuclear power plants in the New York Metropolitan Area.

Barbash and Like jumped in to battle against nuclear power on Long Island. But how could this fight be won considering the federal agency that approved nuclear plant construction and operation, the then Atomic Energy Commission, consistently approved construction and operating licenses for nuclear plants? The AEC was abolished by Congress in 1974 and replaced by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, but it also continued to consistently approve nuclear power plant licenses.

When nuclear power development began in the U.S., nuclear promoters got the federal government to pre-empt most local and state controls. But Like knew that a local or state government’s power of eminent domain still existed.          

There were other ways in which nuclear power plants sought by LILCO were opposed including a demonstration in 1979 of 15,000 people at the site in Shoreham in which the first of the proposed LILCO nuclear plants had begun construction. It was the biggest demonstration ever on Long Island to date.

But grassroots and Suffolk County government opposition were, in the end, not what stopped Shoreham and LILCO’s plans for other nuclear power plants. It was the flipping of the Fire Island highway strategy and using state power—its power of eminent domain (used to condemn land that an owner will not sell, for example) – to stop Shoreham and the other nuclear plants LILCO sought.

 A model for Citizens to Replace LILCO was the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD), in an area of California that also had a nuclear power plant that was shut down and SMUD has gone on to emphasize green energy.

Will the New York State Legislature and Governor Hochul in the coming year support the legislative commission’s report and have LIPA be, like SMUD, a full public utility—a full public utility.

As State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele, Jr. of Suffolk, co-chair of the legislative commission, said last week in his winter bulletin to constituents: “The third-party management model that the Long Island Power Authority has used for decades…has failed time and again. Making LIPA the transparent and accountable public utility that the ratepayers have long deserved has been one of my top legislative priorities…After extensive public hearings and independent professional investigations, the commission’s final report returns to the original vision of public power when LIPA was created by the legislature in 1986.”

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 : Lawrence R Samuel Explains LI's Growth And The American Dream

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

Lawrence R. Samuel has written a book about Long Island which, as the invitation to his presentation last month at the Hampton Bays Public Library said, “charts how the island evolved over the decades and largely detached itself from New York City to become a self-sustaining entity with its own challenges, exclusions and triumphs.”

It’s titled “Making Long Island: A History of Growth and the American Dream” and indeed provides an insightful examination of the island’s problems, prejudices and achievements.

Samuel is a Long Island native (from Lawrence in Nassau County) and has spent time in Suffolk, in East Hampton. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota, yet his book, just-published by the History Press, is breezy and includes much that is not widely known.

Says a blurb as the book begins from Jennfer J. Thompson Burns, a lecturer at SUNY’s University at Albany: “Not only does the book illuminate the island’s development and shifting population over time and space, but it also reminds us that by shining light on the underbelly of the American dream, we are better equipped to reconsider and reimagine it.”

Samuel started his talk and book, his first presentation on it, he noted, by addressing historical tidbits. These include how the Long Island Rail Road goes back to 1834 and is the “oldest continually operating railroad system in the United States” and was involved in the “very first train-car collision” in the U.S.  And, he relates, how 43-mile long Vanderbilt Motor Parkway which ran for 43 miles was “the world’s first limited-access concrete highway”—cars only. It was built privately by William Kissam Vanderbilt II and opened in 1908. Taken over by the state in 1938, parts of it still survive as sections of other roads.

He points to how, “Despite cold winters, Native Americans found the island a place to live for centuries” and notes: “The Shinnecock occupied part of the eastern end of what would be called Long Island, although by the twentieth century their land had been taken over.” 

He tells of how Long Island became the “Cradle of Aviation,” with large tracts of flat land “ideal for airfields” and available at low cost. The “original Roosevelt Field” is from where Charles Lindbergh took off for his famous flight to Paris in 1927. The airfield “stopped operating” in 1951, however, “and Roosevelt Field Mall was built on the site.”

Development on Long Island—specifically between 1920 and 1980—is a central focus of the book. And a major focus, too, is about bias. “Alongside the much-flaunted beauty and festivity of suburban bedroom communities and country clubs was the decidedly darker side of Long Island,” he writes. “As in many other parts of the country, the Ku Klux Klan had quite a presence on the island in the 1920s and were not afraid to show it.” The KKK” often greatly swayed civic and community activities….There were real fears that the KKK would go further by becoming a recognized political party…for those who hated people of color, Jews and Catholics.”

He tells the story of Levittown and its infamous “Clause 25” that, “No dwelling should be used or occupied except by members of the Caucasian race.” 

“In addition to serving as an opportunity for racism to foment, the development of Long Island…came at another significant cost. The early 1970s were a golden age of environmentalism, and the effects of the massive changes to the ecosystem of the island were, deservedly, getting increasing attention,” he writes. 

He relates the push of a New York State public works commissioner, Charles Sells, for the extension to Orient Point of the then “in progress” Long Island Expressway, and a “twenty-five mile series of causeways and bridges from Orient Point” to Rhode Island. “Sells had the structure jump across various islands in the Sound to break it into smaller segments; Plum Island, Great Gull Island and Fishers Island served as ideal ‘stepping stones,’” in Sells’ view. But “the proposed span across Long Island Sound was never built, deemed literally a bridge too far.”

Samuel says: “The year 2000 appeared to be a turning point in the history of Long Island, as it became clear that its twentieth century model of development was no longer relevant or useful. Entering a new century and new millennium seemingly encouraged Long Islanders to imagine a different kind of American dream.”

He writes about how Lee Koppelman, long-time Suffolk County planner and executive director of the Nassau-Suffolk Regional Planning Board, sought to tackle development with a Nassau-Suffolk Comprehensive Development Plan issued in 1970. “The first priority of the plan was to preserve open space” and “to use vacant land for agricultural, recreational or conservation purposes.”

“Today,” he says, “rather happily, the cultural ecosystem of Long Island and its built environment are being reexamined in light of concepts such as…smart growth, the green movement and sustainable neighborhoods. The days of Robert Moses are clearly over, as planners reimagine the possibilities of suburban life with its dependence on cars and lack of communal interaction (save for that a shopping malls.)” 

“All in all,” he writes,” much of the island’s natural beauty and original appeal remain, offering hope that a new and improved American dream can and will emerge in the years ahead.”

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: George Santos "A Dishonesty Superstar"

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

Expelled member of U.S. House Of Representative George SantosGeorge Santos, expelled from the U.S. House of Representatives last week, was a bizarre member of Congress. By his serial deceit, Santos obtained a national reputation for being a liar, a dishonesty superstar. 

No member I’ve written about representing Long Island in my 60 years of writing about them has been anything like him. What has been Santos’s district is made up of parts of Nassau and Queens and before it was reapportioned for the 2022 election, a piece of Suffolk County.

He received widespread media attention. And even beyond the U.S. 

As the British publication, The Guardian, in an article last week related: “In a way, George Santos is one of the great success stories of American politics….Santos’s  accomplishment has…been to win election by weaving a staggering, barely believable web of lies, deception and deceit that is surely unmatched in the modern age.”

The Guardian, as have all of media, listed some of his lies. “While he was running for Congress, Santos lied about almost everything,” it reported. “Santos claimed he was privately educated at an elite New York City high school. He wasn’t. He said he went to Baruch College” and “graduated in the top 1% of the class. Baruch said it had no record of him going there….He said his mother was working in the South Tower of the World Trade Center during the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York. Her immigration history shows that she wasn’t even in the country. Santos said he was Jewish and his grandparents escaped the Holocaust. That wasn’t true….He said he worked for Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, which he didn’t…”

The list in The Guardian of Santos falsehoods could have continued on and on, but there 

have been so many it would take book—and such a book was published, last week. 

            Written by former Newsday journalist Mark Chiusano it’s titled: “The Fabulist—The Lying, Hustling, Grifting, Stealing, and Very American Legend of George Santos.”

Chiusano last Sunday presented a commentary on Santos on the “CBS Sunday Morning” program. He began: “2023 was a season of chaos in the House of Representatives, a cartoon of what a legislative body is supposed to be. Through it all, we’ve had a mascot of the messiness, and his name is George Santos.”

“How,” asked Chiusano, “did this con man get a seat in Congress? And what made him lie so promiscuously?” 

“Santos was skillfully angling for more money and celebrity,” Chiusano said. 

And, “it was the weakness of America’s institutions that allowed Santos to go undetected. Most local media outlets were stretched too thin to expose this fabulist in time. Democrats were overconfident of winning. And Republicans [Santos ran on the GOP ticket] shrugged, allowing the newcomer to win—and keep—his seat for cynical political and fundraising reasons,” he said.

Chiusano added: “But the accountability is only beginning for him and for Trump.” (Santos is scheduled to go on trial in September in U.S. District Court in Central Islip on a 23- felony count indictment.) “In the meantime,” Chiusano concluded, “Santos’ wild…story is a reminder of what happens when lying becomes a way of life.”

The Washington Post in December 2022 ran a story headlined: “A tiny paper broke the George Santos scandal but no one paid attention.” It was about The North Shore Leader which in September 2022 “when few others were covering Santos,” its editor, Maureen Daly, wrote about how in his Congressional run Santos “has repeatedly claimed to own ‘a mansion in Oyster Bay Cove’…and ‘a mansion in the Hamptons on Dune Road,.’” The Nassau weekly, which usually endorses Republicans, ran an editorial saying Santos “is so bizarre, unprincipled” that it couldn’t endorse him because “he’s most likely just a fabulist—a fake.”

The New York Times published an article on Santos’s lies, but in December 2022, after the election. The Times piece prompted the broad media coverage.

On the eve of Santos’s expulsion, Congressman Nick LaLota, who represents central and eastern Suffolk, said on the House floor: “George Santos is not the person he offered to voters. He didn’t work where he said he did. He didn’t go to school where he said he did. He’s far from rich. He isn’t Jewish. And his mother was not in the South Tower during 9/11. So, the argument that New Yorkers voted George Santos in, and that we should wait…for voters to decide his fate is inherently flawed, since voters weren’t given a chance…to determine who they were actually voting for.”

After the vote Friday to expel Santos—a whopping 311 to 114—LaLota said, “Today, my colleagues and I set a strong precedent: A member who lies about everything about themselves to get elected will be expelled so voters can have a chance at a proper election.”

Expulsion requires a two/thirds House vote. In its 234-year history only five members had been expelled (three for disloyalty during the Civil War). Some members said they wanted to await the completion of an Ethics Committee investigation before voting to expel Santos. The scathing report, 56 pages about Santos’s “complex web of unlawful activity,” changed their minds. 

And so Santos, who the Ethics Committee said broke federal laws, stole from his campaign and delivered a “constant series of lies” to voters and donors and “continues to propound falsehoods and misrepresentations rather than take responsibility for his actions,” was thrown out of the House.  A successor is to be chosen in a special election in February. 

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: Commission Declares LIPA Should Be Public Will Lobbyists Get In The Way

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

The Legislative Commission on the Future of the Long Island Power Authority, a bipartisan eight-member panel, has concluded that LIPA should be a full public utility and operate the electric system on Long Island itself, not contract out the work.

This comes as PSEG, the Newark, New Jersey-based utility which former Governor Andrew Cuomo in 2011 arranged to get a contract to run the Long Island grid, has been involved in intense lobbying of state officials to keep doing it. 

The commission’s just-out report said cutting out PSEG would provide a saving of $50 million to $80 million a year “by eliminating the fee paid to PSEG” and “allow LIPA’s board of trustees to lower rates or mitigate future rate increases, upgrade grid structure, invest in climate-friendly green initiatives” and “support struggling residents and businesses.”

State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele, Jr., the commission’s co-chair, said of PSEG’s lobbying: “If PSEG had actually been doing its job through the years, it would not need to spend millions of dollars on lobbying efforts to keep its contact.” 

“The fact is that PSEG’s operation on Long Island received the lowest rating for customer satisfaction last year in a J.D. Power survey,” said Thiele, a Sag Harbor Democrat. 

He called the PSEG lobbying a “last ditch” move.

The commission’s decision to have LIPA run the grid itself—the original vision when LIPA was established in 1986—“will save the ratepayers money,” said Thiele, and enable “more transparency, more accountability” than continuing to have a “third-party” structure, “the only one in the country” for a utility.

Also, the report calls for a “reforming of the LIPA board,” he noted, with the addition of “five members by local governments and the creation of a Community Stakeholder Board.”

Newsday on October 31 published an expose on what the headline of the two-page spread described as PSEG’s “Lobbying Blitz.” The piece, by Mark Harrington, who covers energy for the newspaper, began: “A PSEG Long Island executive and vocal critic of a state legislative plan to convert LIPA to a fully public utility had private meetings to lobby Gov. Kathy Hochul and other top state officials this summer, recently filed state records show.” 

“In addition” to this lobbying by Christopher Hahn, senior director and vice president of governmental affairs for PSEG on Long Island, the piece said records “show the company used Tonio Burgos & Associates and Mercury Public Affairs to lobby state agencies and officials.”

Senator Anthony Palumbo, a commission member and a Republican from New Suffolk, said of the commission’s report: “Long Islanders pay some of the highest electric rates in the country. We as elected officials must do all we can to protect ratepayers while at the same time ensuring that our system is storm hardened and help is accessible to customers. This investigative process has allowed us to learn more about the issues we face with the current model and the challenges that lie ahead. My focus throughout this process has been to formulate a proposal that will lower costs for Long Island families and businesses, ensure reliable service, protect workers, and provide a governing model with local control and accountability. Now, we must continue to work together to achieve these critical goals.”

For the report’s recommendations to be enacted, there will need to be support from the state legislature and Governor Hochul, a Democrat, and the Newsday expose pointed to ties between those lobbying for PSEG and some Democratic politicians. 

“Listed among the [Burgos] lobbyists working on the PSEG account is Kristen Walsh, who is president of the firm and formerly worked for U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand,” it related.
“Walsh, like Hahn had worked on the staff of U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer.” The expose also noted that “Power Long Island, a political action committee funded by PSEG entities, contributed $5,000 to Hochul’s campaign last year, the PAC’s largest single donation, records show.”

Further, it said “campaign finance records” showed Power Long Island giving $2,000 to State Senator Monica Martinez last year. A Brentwood Democrat, she was the only member of the commission to vote against approving its report saying “the numbers are not there in my opinion” for annual savings of $50 million to $80 million.

Lisa Tyson, executive director of the Long Island Progressive Coalition, a leader in seeking to have LIPA operate the electric grid itself, said: “It’s an important milestone on the path to public power that the LIPA commission voted up this report. A lot of spadework and research went into it” and “clears the way for the New York State Legislature to vote on a bill to enable the switch in the 2024 legislative session, keeping us on track to make the transition before PSEG’s contract expires in 2025….That’s the way it should be, and the way LIPA was always intended to be run. Long Island’s ratepayers are the owners of the LIPA system as well as its customers. They deserve a real voice in how their utility is run, and once public power passes the legislature, they’ll get it.”

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.