SUFFOLK CLOSEUP - LaValle's Defeat "Localized Issue" Or Anti Trump Sentiment

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

 Does the defeat of former Suffolk County Republican Chairman John Jay LaValle last week in a race for Port Jefferson mayor—in which Mr. LaValle’s close linkage with President Trump was a main issue—mean trouble for Mr. Trump in 2020 in running in Suffolk? Does it also mean trouble for another staunch backer of Mr. Trump, U.S. Representative Lee Zeldin, running for re-election this year?

Mr. LaValle left as Suffolk GOP leader in March. As Newsday described him recently, he has “been President Donald Trump’s prime local cheerleader for the past three years.” Mr. LaValle regularly appeared on television as a surrogate supporting Mr. Trump. A former Brookhaven Town supervisor and cousin of long-time State Senator Kenneth LaValle of Port Jefferson, he held the GOP chairmanship for a decade.

He indicated when he stepped down that he was interested in being “out there advancing the president and if I end up in a formal role, that would be O.K., too.”

But he decided to run for mayor of Port Jefferson against five-term incumbent Margot Garant, a lawyer who not only had the strength of incumbency but also the incumbency of her mother, herself a former Port Jefferson mayor.

And the LaValle-Trump tie became very important. As one Port Jefferson voter, Arnold (Arnie) Tropper was quoted on the website Greater Port Jefferson as saying: “No way can I support LaValle. My biggest issue is that he is a huge Trump supporter and it’s one of the few anti-Trump statements I can make that actually has some results. My vote is more of an anti-Trump vote, even though I think she’s done a good job.”

Ms. Garant defeated Mr. LaValle 1,454 to 992.

Mr. LaValle told Newsday after losing: “The mayor ran an effective campaign making this a referendum on Donald Trump. That was the result.”

What will this mean for Mr. Trump who in 2016 carried Suffolk with 328,403 votes to Hillary Clinton’s 276,953? That was a hefty 8 percent margin in a county which Barack Obama carried with a nearly 4 percent margin in 2012 and 6 percent in 2008.

And what will it mean for Republican Zeldin of Shirley who is running this year for his third term representing the lst Congressional District which includes all of Brookhaven Town—in which Patchogue is located—along with most of Smithtown, a slice of Islip and all five East End towns: Southampton, East Hampton, Southold, Riverhead and Shelter Island?

“I would hope it is a trend,” commented Southampton Town Democratic Chairman Gordon Herr last week. “We’ll see.”

Mr. LaValle’s successor as Suffolk GOP chairman, Jesse Garcia, told me he regarded Mr. LaValle’s defeat as a “localized issue.” As for Mr. Zeldin encountering trouble this year for his support of Mr. Trump, Mr. Garcia said “Lee Zeldin stands on his own and he has a wide breadth of support for his actions on Long Island issues.” And regarding President Trump, Mr. Garcia said “our polling has shown he’s strong in Suffolk County and in Brookhaven Town [Mr. Garcia has also remained Brookhaven GOP leader.] His detractors may go after his candor, approach and outspokenness, but middle-class Suffolk taxpayers are responding to his policies and his stand on national security issues which I think will carry him—and we want to extend that 8% margin in 2016 even further in 2020.” 

Former Suffolk County Legislator Jim Morgo, who has been Suffolk County chief deputy county executive, like fellow Democrat Herr would “like to think” that the LaValle defeat with his Trump allegiance playing a major part “portends the future.”

The question, said Mr. Morgo, is whether what happened in Port Jefferson, among Brookhaven communities including Patchogue and Stony Brook that are places of Democratic strength in the largely GOP town, the most populated in Suffolk, will carry over to much of the rest of Brookhaven and Suffolk. He believes broad opposition to Mr. Trump, his behavior and actions, will do this. Mr. Morgo of Bayport is active in the group Taking Action Suffolk County (TASC) started along with many similar organizations around the nation after Mr. Trump’s election to challenge him. 

The founder of TASC, Bryan Erwin of Mattituck, said in an email blast last week: “We did it. Margot Garant was re-elected Port Jefferson Village mayor. TASC is proud to have helped see Mayor Garant awarded another term. But aside from Margot clearly being the better candidate, TASC was drawn to action by her opponent, John Jay LaValle….LaValle represents the hateful rhetoric and disgraceful cronyism that should have no place in our political system.”

The big political change these days in Suffolk, once heavily Republican, is that enrolled Democrats now outnumber Republicans—358,296 to 329,689. And there are 281,489 voters in the “blank” category, enrolled in no party, enabling political surprises to easily happen here.

 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.   

The Nissequogue River State Park In Kings Park To Get A Master Plan

On Wednesday, June 19th, Senator John J. Flanagan (2^nd Senate District) announced that state legislation he sponsored (s2854b.pdf ) requiring NYS Office of Parks to prepare a master plan for the Nissequogue River State Park has passed both the Senate and the Assembly.  Senator Flanagan ensured the master plan under the legislation would include 365-acres of property formerly known as Kings Park Psychiatric Center, which was subsequently transferred to NYS Parks in 2006. 

According to Senator Flanagan’s statement State Parks would develop, adopt and implement a master plan for the full 520-acres in cooperation with Nissequogue River State Park Foundation, other interested parties and critical input from the general public.  The plan would present a series of preferred alternatives for the future development and use of the Nissequogue River State Park, but only after conducting public meetings to gather useful information and input, and also considering important factors, such as the historic, natural and recreational resources of the park.

The Nissequogue River State Park Foundation(NRSPF) was established in March 2008. Its mission is to help enhance and beautify the park. For over a decade the NRSPF board has advocated for a master plan. 

“We are very excited about the legislation that was sponsored by Senator Flanagan and passed the Senate yesterday.   This legislation accomplishes two major goals;  First, it clarifies that both segments of the property that was designated as parkland (the original 155 acres and the subsequent addition of 365 acres) to be part of Nisseqougue River State Park.   Historically there have been concerns in some quarters that the designation of the 365 acres was at risk of being developed.  Although the Foundation has always supported the law indicating that parcel was designated as part of the original park, it is now codified by this legislation.

Secondly, the bill requires the Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation to establish a “master plan” for the entire park that takes into consideration the historic natural and recreational resources of the park as well as the protection of the resources of the park facilities and principles of sustainability.  It will include short and long-term agendas to guide future development of park facilities.  This plan will be done with community input as part of the OPRHP master planning process.  A related and welcome feature of the bill names both the Town of Smithtown and the NRSP Foundation as “interested parties” and states that the plan will be developed in cooperation with these parties.  

These are important and welcome developments and we look forward to working closely with the OPRHP in developing a comprehensive plan that meets the needs of the entire community. ” John McQuaid, President NRSP Foundation

This is not the first time Senator Flanagan has intervened on behalf of the park; in 2006 Senator John J. Flanagan (2nd Senate District) announced that he had secured $25 million in state funding for the environmental cleanup of the Kings Park Psychiatric Center site. Most of that money was spent removing buildings from the site. 

The foundation hosts numerous fundraisers benefiting the park including an annual Turkey Trot and most recently a Sunset Run held in May. The NRSP Foundation Youth Board is hosting its annual Regatta on July 13th.

The legislation is  awaiting Governor Cuomo’s signature.

The Nissequogue River State Park is located at 799 Saint Johnland Road, Kings Park, NY, 11754. To learn more about the NRSP Foundation and the work it does to support the park click here.

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP - After A Decade Dr. Stanley And Dr.McKay Are Leaving

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

The two top figures in higher education in Suffolk County—Samuel L. Stanley, Jr., president of Stony Brook University and Dr. Shaun McKay, president of Suffolk County Community College—are leaving.

Dr. Stanley was for a decade at the helm at Stony Brook, one of SUNY’s four university centers (the others are at Albany, Buffalo and Binghamton) with 25,000 undergraduate and graduate students. Dr. Stanley will on August 1 be taking a post as president of Michigan State University in Lansing. It has 50,000 students and its president resigned last year after a sex-abuse scandal involving the campus doctor Larry Nassar’s molestation of female university athletes for which he was convicted and sentenced to from 40 to (a whopping) 175 years in prison.

Dr. McKay, at the top of Suffolk County Community College also for a decade, tendered his resignation in May. Suffolk Community has three campuses (in Selden, Riverhead and Brentwood) and 26,000 full and part-time students. On its website, it describes itself as the “largest community college in the State University of New York system. SCCC is a comprehensive publicly-supported, two-year, open enrollment institution.” Dr. McKay and the college are not revealing his reasons for leaving but, it was learned, they involve personal issues.

Dr. Stanley in his tenure picked up on the early focus of Stony Brook presidents having the school stress science and research, although the state’s original plan under then Governor Nelson Rockefeller—a pivotal figure in developing the SUNY system—was for Stony Brook to be “the Berkeley of the East.” It was to become a counterpart of the University of California, Berkeley, a well-rounded university center. 

But under its early presidents, Dr. John S. Toll, a nuclear physicist; his successor, acting president T. Alexander Pond, also a nuclear physicist; and then Dr. John H. Marburger, III, a theoretical physicist, the overwhelming emphasis was on science and research. 

Stony Brook ended up looking in many respects more like Caltech — the private California Institute of Technology — rather than a well-rounded institution like Berkeley.

A humanities-focused period came when Dr. Shirley Strum Kenny was Stony Brook’s president. Starting out as an English professor, she became chair of the English department, then provost of the University of Maryland’s College of Arts & Humanities, and then president of Queens College. During her tenure at Stony Brook from 1994 to 2009, Dr. Kenny tried to change Stony Brook’s culture and have it emphasize far more teaching and the needs of students. She had no choice. She told me that the Middle States Commission on Higher Education threatened to lift Stony Brook’s accreditation unless it paid greater attention to teaching and students rather than its activities dominated by research.

Dr. Kenny was succeeded by Dr. Stanley, who had been vice chancellor for research at Washington University in St. Louis. An M.D. long involved in research, he returned Stony Brook to focusing on science and research. 

A most destructive act by Dr. Stanley, one of his first actions when he became president of Stony Brook, was ordering the virtual closing of the Stony Brook Southampton campus, founded as a teaching institution emphasizing the environment and sustainability. 

In recent years under Dr. Stanley, Stony Brook suspended student admissions into its theatre arts, comparative literature and cinema arts departments, part of a series of cuts in liberal arts. In 2017, hundreds of students joined in a demonstration on campus — a “March for the Humanities” — that culminated with a sit-in. 

Meanwhile, there has been, slowly, some more use made of the Stony Brook Southampton campus and plans are underway for the now Stony Brook-affiliated Southampton Hospital to move to the campus with linked health sciences programs.

Stony Brook University was established in 1962.

Suffolk County Community College was established in 1959. At the start of 2019, the trustees of the college directed Dr. McKay to take a paid leave of absence from his post. This came after Dr. McKay spent 77 days on medical leave in 2018 and when he returned sought a 10-year contract extension. In announcing Dr. McKay’s “voluntary resignation” as president, Suffolk Community in a statement quoted Theresa Sanders, chair of its board of trustees, as saying “there were no findings of wrongdoing, incapacity, or misconduct on the part of Dr. McKay.”

According to Newsday, “potential successors” to Dr. McKay include former Congressman Tim Bishop of Southampton who since losing a re-election bid became a professor and is now also the head of the Center for Community Solutions at St. Joseph’s College in Patchogue, and State Senator Kenneth LaValle of Port Jefferson. Mr. LaValle, an educator who subsequently received a law degree, was first elected to the Senate in 1976 to represent a district that encompasses most of eastern Suffolk. When Republicans controlled the Senate, he was chairman of its Higher Education Committee.

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.   

Junior Anglers at Caleb Smith Tournament Win Awards

By Carole Paquette

(click on photos to enlarge)

Shelby Lloyd, 7, of Smithtown and dad Chris.Brandon Connor, 6, and Dad Jim of St. James. Brandon caught ten fish in an hour.On one of the nicest days of Spring, the sun shone on forty-two young anglers and their families at Willow Pond in Caleb Smith State Park Preserve at the recent Friends of Caleb Smith Preserve’s catch-and-release 16th annual Junior Fishing Tournament. More than  three hundred fish, including a 14-1/2 inch trout, were caught by anglers ranging in age from five to twelve.

Morning group winners [from left]: Tristen Hennen, Frankie Marcotrigiano, Dylan Haase

Winners of the morning session, for those ages five to eight, were:  Frankie Marcotrigiano, 5, of Brentwood for the most fish caught: 13; Tristen Hennon, 8, of St. James caught the largest pan fish: 9-1/2 inches;  Dylan Haase, 5-1/2, of Smithtown caught the largest “other” fish: a 14-1/2-nch trout.

Afternoon group winners [from left]: Devon Gallo, Chase Patrie, Justo ReyesWinners in the afternoon session, for anglers ages nine through twelve, were: Justo Reyes, 11, of Levittown, for the most fish caught: 38; Chase Patrie, 11, of Setauket caught the largest pan fish: 9-1/2 inches; and Devon Gallo, 10, of Manhattan caught the largest “other” fish: a 15-1/2-inch bass.

Jack DiBenedetto, winner of TomTroccoli Memorial Lottery.Another highlight of the event was the Second Annual Tom Troccoli Memorial Lottery, involving the seventeen registrants in the afternoon session. The winner received a fishing rod and tackle. The drawing was held in the name of the late Tom Troccoli of Smithtown, who enjoyed fishing and had accompanied his grandson at two junior angler tournaments. The Troccoli family donated funds for the memorial lottery, which will be continued for many years.

The late Mr. Troccoli’s grandson JosephJoe Troccoli of Smithtown, with his uncle Patrick Little. Troccoli, of Smithtown drew the name of angler Jack DiBenedetto, 12, of Smithtown, as the winner of the Troccoli Memorial award.

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP - Looking Back At Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant And The Protests That Stopped It

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

“Shoreham Action Is One Of The Largest Held Worldwide,” was the headline in The New York Times about an event on June 3, 1979. The article told of how “more than 600 protesters were arrested” at the site of the then under-construction Shoreham nuclear power plant and “15,000 demonstrators gathered” on the beach fronting the plant in the protest of it.

That action was important in stopping the Shoreham plant from going into operation—and preventing LILCO from building a total of seven to 11 nuclear power plants on Long Island.

Last week, on Facebook and in email-communication, that event 40 years ago was heralded as a turning point for Long Island—and indeed it was.

On Facebook, Catherine Green of Sayville, a founder of the SHAD (Sound-Hudson Against Atomic Development) Alliance which organized the protest, wrote about being part of a “committed band of activists…protesting the nuclear power that powerful corporate forces were trying to shove down out throats…Eventually we won, but not before we had committed civil disobedience repeatedly…Not before we had systematically thrown out every pro-nuclear official in [Suffolk] county government and elected an anti-nuke legislature. Not before our dogged grassroots educating coupled with the shock of Three Mile Island had turned the tide of public opinion. It took 25 years.”

Civil disobedience and political work were big parts of the challenge to LILCO’s plan to turn Long Island—in the jargon of the atomic promoters then—into a “nuclear park.”

There was an array of complementing strategies—including lawsuits, insistence by Suffolk government that there could be no successful evacuation from Long Island in the event a major nuclear plant accident, and the use by the state of its power of condemnation. The Long Island Power Authority was created with the power to seize LILCO’s stocks and assets and eliminate it as a corporate entity if it persisted in its nuclear scheme.

That huge demonstration on June 3, part of an International Antinuclear Day, encapsulated the strong resistance on Long Island to the LILCO nuclear push. The protesters, enduring rain, heard from speakers and were sung to by folk singer Pete Seeger who described the “immoral” basis of nuclear power.

The Three Mile Island nuclear power plant accident in Pennsylvania had recently happened. To come were the Chernobyl and, most recently, the Fukushima catastrophes.

Jack Huttner, also a founder of the SHAD Alliance, commented last week on email, “What I miss the most…that feeling that I/we could do anything.”

Mitch Cohen responded: “Jack, we COULD (do anything), we DID, and we SHALL!!!” Mr. Cohen has, not too incidentally, continued as an activist as have a good number of others who were involved in the Long Island anti-nuclear fight. Mr. Cohen is editor of a powerful just-published book, “The Fight Against Monsanto’s Roundup, The Politics of Pesticides.”

LILCO announced its plan for the Shoreham nuclear plant, what was supposed to be the first of the many, with an April 13, 1966 press release. It said the cost of Shoreham would be “in the $65-$75 million range.” I reprinted the release as a facsimile in a book on the Long Island nuclear drive that I wrote titled “Power Crazy.” 

The final price—in the $6.5 billion to $7.5 billion range—was a 10,000% cost overrun.

It would have been the most expensive nuclear plant per kilowatt of electricity ever built.

Now that stands to be beaten. Nuclear power plants, besides being terribly dangerous, are terribly expensive. The only two nuclear power plants now under construction in the U.S. are plants named Vogtle 3 and 4 in Georgia—now projected to each cost $13 billion. 

The economics of nuclear power, once described by U.S. Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Lewis Strauss as “too cheap to meter,” were not only grossly underestimated—so have  been the dangers. As then LILCO Chairman Charles Pierce told the Suffolk County Legislature in 1983, the probability of a major nuclear plant accident at Shoreham was once every 500 million years.  In fact, we are seeing a major nuclear power plant accident occurring about every decade, with less than 500 nuclear plants in the world.

Still, the nuclear push continues. As Scott Denman, long executive director of the Safe Energy Communication Council, said in last week’s email traffic on the Shoreham protest, “Nearly 100 reactors still operate [in the U.S.] and billions in bailouts for uneconomic reactors to remain on-line have been given away in NY, CT, NJ, IL and now likely OH and maybe even PA and other states. Billions more are now being lavished via current federal r&d on new reactor concepts no matter how…grossly expensive, dangerous and uncompetitive they are. Nuclear power is far from ended and is rather a clear and present danger….Our work is far from done; indeed it’s just beginning.”

But because of that June 3, 1979 protest and decades of painstaking and difficult struggle, LILCO was stopped in its nuclear push and Long Island today is nuclear-free.

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.