Suffolk Closeup: Ed Romaine Is Sworn In As Suffolk County's 9th County Executive

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

If only Washington would be this way.

Ed Romaine is sworn in as Suffolk County’s 9th County ExecutiveThe inauguration last week of Ed Romaine as the ninth county executive of Suffolk County was a celebration of non-partisanship in government. 

And it was a big salute to Romaine.

“He never let partisanship get in his way,” declared U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, in a presentation effusively praising Republican Romaine.

There were loads of Republican public officials, leaders and just plain GOP rank-and-filers among the hundreds of people packed into the auditorium at the Eastport South Manor Junior-Senior High School on January 1. This included the two members of the U.S. House of Representatives who represent Suffolk, Nick LaLota and Andrew Garbarino, and many state, county and town Republican officials including District Attorney Ray Tierney, and, of course, Suffolk Republican Chairman Jesse Garcia. Romaine is the first Republican Suffolk County executive in two decades.

But there were also plenty of Democrats. Those in attendance besides Schumer included New York State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli, Suffolk Democratic Chairman and Babylon Town Supervisor Rich Schaffer, Suffolk County Legislators Steve Englebright and Ann Welker, Suffolk Sheriff Errol Toulon, and the new Southampton town supervisor, Maria Moore.

Suffolk County Conservative Party Chairman Mike Torres was there, too.

I’ve covered Suffolk County executives since 1962 and regularly wrote about the first person to hold that office, H. Lee Dennison, a Democrat who crusaded for governmental reform, and then his successor, John V. N. Klein, a Republican who championed environmental initiatives including the first-of-its-kind Suffolk County Farmland Preservation Program and was a leader in challenging oil-drilling off Suffolk’s coast.

Senator Chuck Schumer Republican Dan Panico, who now follows Romaine as Brookhaven Town supervisor, said in his presentation at the inauguration: “Ed will be one of the best county executives this county has ever seen.” 

I agree with Panico having covered Romaine since 1985 after he left being a history teacher at Hauppauge High School and began putting into practice the ideals about which he taught. I’ve regularly written about his leading in numerous environmental and good-government initiatives as a long-time member of the Suffolk Legislature, innovations as county clerk, and as supervisor of Brookhaven, Suffolk’s largest town in size and population. Through many decades, he’s among the finest officials in Suffolk I have known. 

Panico spoke of Romaine’s “impeccable character” and his having “dedicated his life to make the lives of people better.”

That view was mirrored in the remarks of Schumer. “It’s a great day for Suffolk,” said Schumer. “You are getting a great representative for your county executive.”

Romaine, said Schumer, “will always put community first.”

“Suffolk County is a bastion of the middle class,” said Schumer, who hails from Brooklyn. He spoke of Suffolk being composed of “people who don’t ask for much, who just want a decent life for them and maybe have a better life for their kids….Ed understands that instinctively.”

Schumer listed many accomplishments of Romaine in government. Among these, he noted, was a pioneering federal law they worked on together “to regulate helicopter traffic” triggered by the “racket” of helicopters delivering visitors from the city to the Hamptons.

The inauguration began with Paige Patterson of Port Jefferson Station singing the opening lines of the tune “Feeling Good”—“It’s a new dawn. It’s a new day….And I’m feeling good.” The master of ceremonies, former State Senate Majority Leader John Flanagan, a Republican, opened with: “This is a good day.”

Romaine began his “Inaugural Address” with: “It is a new day in Suffolk County.”

“I have a long list of to-do’s,” he said. 

“This administration will be rooted in the values and traditions of hard work, personal initiative and accountability, so we can build a future that is safe and more affordable, and provides hope and opportunity to our citizens,” he continued. He outlined many of the areas he will focus upon including creation of affordable housing so people “can live here,” the environment, fighting crime, solid waste, and the highway system. He singled out the ordeal of driving “on Sunrise Highway and County Road 39 in Southampton clogged by “the ‘trade parade.’” 

The county “legislature and county executive must work together,” he said. The legislature’s presiding officer, Kevin McCaffrey, a Republican, had a front-row seat. And he said he wants “to work with our [town] supervisors.” 

“I want to start the work of building a better Suffolk County,” said Romaine.

The Rev. Patrick Riegger of St. John the Evangelist Roman Catholic Church in Center Moriches—where Romaine and his wife Diane reside—gave the opening invocation. The priest spoke of building a “society founded on the principles of truth, peace and love.”  The closing benediction was offered by Rabbi Aaron Benson of the North Shore Jewish Center in Port Jefferson Station who said “today is a day of new beginnings” and of “hope and promise.” 

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: Election Results Good News For Suffolk County

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

The election last week of Republican Ed Romaine, the Brookhaven Town supervisor, for Suffolk County executive, and of Democrat Steve Englebright back to the Suffolk County Legislature, mark some very good news for government in the county.

In a list I would put together of the ten finest public officials I’ve covered in my 60 years of writing about Suffolk government, Romaine and Englebright would be on it.

Other good news out of the 2023 election includes the win of Ann Welker to the Suffolk Legislature. A solid environmentalist, she has been the first female member of the Southampton Town Trustees, the panel that oversees the town’s marine resources, since it was established in 1686.

Regarding women and this year’s election, in 1973 Judith Hope became the first woman elected as a town supervisor in Suffolk. What a difference a half-century makes!

This year among women elected to town supervisor spots in Suffolk’s 10 towns were, in Southampton, Democrat Maria Moore, the Westhampton Beach mayor, along with Democrat Kathee Burke-Gonzalez, a member of the East Hampton Town Board, as the new supervisor of East Hampton. In Islip Town, Republican Angie Carpenter, a former county legislator and county clerk, was re-elected town supervisor, and on Shelter Island (according to initial results) Republican Amber Brach-Williams, a town board member, was elected town supervisor.

This shouldn’t go unnoticed in a county which, until the Suffolk Legislature was created in 1970, the county’s governing body, the Suffolk County Board of Supervisors, established in 1683, for all those centuries consisted only of men.

Regarding Romaine, as a member of the Suffolk Legislature for two series of years—between which he was county clerk—he was highly-independent, creative in his approach to government, sensitive to the needs of constituents and highly competent. These were years when the Long Island Lighting Company was pushing hard on a scheme to construct seven to eleven nuclear power plants in Suffolk County. Romaine stood strong. The plan was stopped and the one plant built, at Shoreham, closed after problem-riddled “low power” testing.

On a wide range of environmental issues, Romaine, as a legislator and town supervisor, has stood strong, why he has been repeatedly endorsed by environmental organizations as a candidate for the legislature and supervisor, and lately as a nominee for county executive. Before getting involved in government, he was a history teacher at Hauppauge High School. In his nearly four decades in government he has endeavored to make a reality of the ideals he taught.

As for Englebright, as a member of the Suffolk Legislature and then, for 30 years, a member of the State Assembly, he was a leading environmental figure in the county and then state. He was long chair of the Assembly’s Environmental Conservation Committee. On the county and state levels, he was the prime sponsor of numerous measures on the environment.  

He suffered a narrow loss of his Assembly seat last year. But he decided to run again for the Suffolk Legislature saying: “There’s a lot of work that still needs to be done.”

Englebright was central to the preservation of the Long Island Pine Barrens. He founded the Museum of Long Island Natural Sciences at Stony Brook University and its first exhibit was on the Pine Barrens. A geologist, he understood the purity of the water beneath them, how their sandy porous soil allows rainwater to migrate cleanly down to the aquifers on which Long Islanders depend as their sole source of potable water.

In the 1970s and early 80s, hardly anyone else in this area understood this. The Pine Barrens were considered scrub and wasteland—not important like land along the shoreline or farmland. That first exhibit focused on where the Hauppauge Industrial Park had been built—on top of Pine Barrens. Englebright decided it “was basically unethical to simply document the passing of the ecosystem.” So he decided to get into politics—running for the Suffolk Legislature—and through government getting environmental action. 

He taught me and many others about the huge significance of the Pine Barrens. He would take people, one at a time, up Danger Hill in Manorville. From the top of it, one could see the Long Island Sound to the north, bays and the Atlantic Ocean to the south, and to the west and east great stretches of green Pine Barrens. We were looking, said Englebright, at “Long Island’s reservoir.” He went on to be a critical figure in the passage of the Long Island Pine Barrens Protection Act of 1993 which saved more than 100,000 acres of Pine Barrens.

A loss for the Suffolk Legislature—but a great gain for the Town of Southold in the election—was fourth-generation Suffolk farmer Al Krupski of Cutchogue, an extraordinary county legislator, running for and in a landslide winning the supervisor’s spot in Southold.

Krupski’s chief of staff, Republican Catherine Stark, who describes environmental issues as a top priority, won the election to replace him on the legislature.  

In his victory comments election night, Democrat Krupski spoke of interchanges with residents during the campaign and their message of how eastern Long Island is “really nice, and you can see how quickly it can be ruined. People see the value in what we have here.” 

Considering Romaine, Englebright, Welker, Krupski, Moore, Burke-Gonzalez and Stark, among other winners last week, in that regard Suffolk County is in very capable hands. 

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.