SUFFFOLK CLOSEUP: NYS Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

 Allow me to add my voice to the chorus in high praise of State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele, Jr. upon his decision not to run for re-election to the Assembly after nearly 30 years. Thiele, as a village, town, county, and state official over a 45-year span, has been, in a word, superlative. 

In covering thousands of government officials in Suffolk County as a journalist here for more than 60 years, Thiele has been at the top.

He began as a Republican, then as Southampton Town supervisor ran at the head of the environmental Southampton Party ticket, then joined the Independence Party and finally was a Democrat.

As another highly independent figure, to our west, New York City Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, would often say, “I could run on a laundry ticket”—and win. 

So could Fred Thiele.

“It’s been a great honor and I’ve loved every day of it,” commented Thiele. But the commute to and from Albany and “living out of a suitcase six months a year doesn’t have the same appeal when you’re 70 years old.”

As he related in his poignant statement announcing his leaving the State Assembly: “Government service was my dream from my days as a student in elementary school in Sag Harbor when I heard the call of President John F. Kennedy to ‘ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.’ Being chosen by my neighbors to be their representative has truly been the greatest honor in my professional life,”

“I have successfully run for public office 19 times and have served the East End in the State Assembly longer than any other person in the history of New York State. I now look forward to other opportunities to serve the community that has been home to my family for almost 200 years.”

“I will always be indebted to my predecessor, the late John Behan who gave me the chance to come home and begin my professional life,” continued Thiele, who first entered government as an aide to the Assemblyman Behan. “A true American hero, John’s life was an example to all on what it means to be a leader.”

“I had a chance to serve with former State Senator Ken LaValle in Albany for 25 years. He is the definition of a ‘statesman.’ I cherish the special bond we developed through the years that transcended government and politics.”

“There are many victories and achievements that come from a lengthy career in public office, most notably the Community Preservation Fund,” said Thiele. “There have been many successes that have kept eastern Long Island a special place. It has been a privilege to have the opportunity to shape the future of our community and to work with others to achieve goals that are larger than ourselves. That has been one of the rewards of public service.”

“At the end of this year, I will close this chapter of my life,” he said. “I look forward to new beginnings. There will be new challenges and new ways of serving. Endings and beginnings are bittersweet. I am guided by the advice of Dr. Seuss: ‘Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.’”

The Community Preservation Fund, begun in 1999, was an especially outstanding achievement of Thiele. Through a 2% transfer tax paid by purchasers on higher priced real estate transactions, it has generated about $2 billion so far, for open space acquisitions, historic preservation and water quality initiatives in the five eastern Suffolk towns.

It has been a key in keeping much of Suffolk County green.

There’s been so, so much more done by the enormously active Thiele.

Most recently, as co-chair of the Legislative Commission on the Future of the Long Island Power Authority, he has been central in the effort to have LIPA itself operate the electric grid on Long Island, not having it done by a third-party. As the commission’s final report concluded, having LIPA run the grid rather than contracting it out “to a private, for-profit utility will save ratepayers at least a half billion dollars over ten years, improve efficiency and accountability, and increase local control and community output.” 

It would be another big victory of Thiele’s—and of great benefit to ratepayers here—if the State Legislature and Governor Kathy Hochul this year support the change.

Said Bob DeLuca, president of the Group for the East End, of Thiele: “Without question, he was a once-in-a-generation leader. He has been a consistent, rational and strategic voice for change. He was able to bring people together when it was not always easy. I don’t know anyone who works harder.”

Suffolk Democratic Chairman Rich Schaffer, with whom Thiele worked closely with as members of the Suffolk Legislature, and is a good friend, describes his departure from the State Assembly as “a big loss to us all.” Schaffer, now Babylon Town supervisor, speaks of how Thiele “will be remembered as one of the most significant public officials on his environmental record that will help generations to come.”

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.  

SUFFFOLK CLOSEUP: "Priced Out...Unable To Buy Homes"

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

Suffolk County isn’t alone in facing an affordable housing crisis.

Last month, The New York Times ran an article that included in its headline: “Ireland’s Housing Crisis.” It began by relating how a teacher in Dublin needs to live with family an hour-and-a-half from work because, she says, “There’s very little housing available, and what is available is way out of my reach. I’m never going to afford a house or an apartment on my own up in Dublin.”

The article reported how so many are “priced out…unable to buy homes.”

Sound familiar?

“While a major issue across Ireland, the housing shortage is felt most acutely in the Dublin region, home to around a quarter of the country’s population of just over five million,” The Times piece said. “Two-thirds of Irish people 18 to 34 still live with their parents…” 

It said “recent…riots in Dublin capitalized on the grievances of people struggling to cover their housing costs and exposed to the world the deep fractures that the crisis has created. But the issue is decades in the making, experts say, and has become the driving force in Irish politics.” 

There have been no riots in Suffolk County involving housing costs. But here—and elsewhere in the U.S.—the affordable housing crisis is terribly severe. 

That’s why New York Governor Kathy Hochul has put a focus on expanding affordable housing. In 2023, in her “State of the State” address, she announced a “New York Housing Compact” requiring cities, towns and villages in the state to add housing every three years by 3% downstate and 1% upstate with the state able to override local zoning decisions if localities didn’t meet targets. However, the program, supported by housing advocates, faced strong opposition from some local government officials and state representatives—including from Suffolk—as an infringement on “home rule” and was shelved by the governor.

At the start of 2024 in her “State of the State” address, Hochul was focusing on incentives and a variety of other strategies to increase affordable housing in the state.

A key Hochul strategy involves “Accessory Dwelling Units” or ADUs. She is earmarking $85 million for the initiative. In her “Plus One ADU Program” state grants would be offered local governments and non-profit organizations to develop community-specific programs in which single-family homeowners would be able to construct “a new ADU on their property or upgrading existing units to comply with local and state code requirements,” said the governor. ADUs could range from basement apartments and garage conversions to standalone units like cottages. Participating homeowners could receive up to $125,000 in a “forgivable” loan.  

The incoming Brookhaven Town supervisor, Dan Panico, in his inaugural address, announced he wants to streamline ADUs in the town by eliminating its Accessory Apartment Review Board in favor of the town Building Department making decisions.

New programs also proposed by Hochul would be a tax incentive on conversion of commercial buildings or offices for affordable housing and use of state-owned land for housing. And the governor also wants to set aside $650 million from “discretionary” state funds to go to “pro-housing communities” developing affordable housing programs.  

The obstacle for affordable housing in Ireland as described in The Times piece has been a lack of government action. An obstacle to government action notably here and in much of the U.S. has been the single-family house as the standard dwelling unit and zoning which enforces that. 

Michael Daly, founder of the group East End YIMBY (Yes In My Backyard) points to the Community Housing Fund, passed by referendum in Southold, Shelter Island, East Hampton and Southampton towns in 2022—adding a half-percent to the existing real estate transfer fee to go for affordable housing—and how in those towns “the advisory boards and town boards are searching for effective ways to use the funds to preserve and create more community housing. But the stubborn issue of restrictive, single-family-only zoning continues to be a blockade to many of the best solutions.”

 “Now that we have figured out how to create sustainable, environmentally sound, and attractive multi-family properties…it’s restrictive zoning and the minority of loud and vocal opponents who are the only ones standing in the way,” said Daly last week.

“The good news is that village, town, county, and state officials all throughout the nation are figuring out that the loud and vocal minority is just that—a minority in our communities,” said Daly of Sag Harbor. “Studies on Long Island and across the nation consistently show that 60-75% of community members see the need for more community housing and support zoning changes to accomplish that. The Housing Compact, put forth by New York State last year, would have done the ‘hard part’ for local officials, but they rejected it. Now they’re going to have to do that ‘hard part’ themselves.”

A motto of those crusading for affordable housing is: “Housing Is A Human Right.” 

That’s right. 

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. 

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP: Healthcare Giants

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

There’s been a revolution in healthcare in Suffolk County led by Michael Dowling, president and CEO of Northwell Health, and the late Dr. Edmund Pellegrino who as vice president of health sciences at Stony Brook University created what’s now Stony Brook Medicine.

Both are giant healthcare networks in Suffolk. 

Indeed, under Dowling, Northwell Health—with 21 hospitals and 85,000 employees (4,900 doctors and 18,900 nurses)—is the largest health care provider in New York State. It is also the largest private employer in the state. 

There are other health systems active in Suffolk County: NYU Langone Health, Catholic Health and in recent times Manhattan-based Hospital for Special Surgery established a facility in Suffolk.  

There is competition and choice.

It’s all a far cry from the situation when I began as a reporter here in the 1962. Indeed, among my earliest articles at the Babylon Town Leader was about a woman refused admittance to Lakeside Hospital in Copiague because she didn’t have medical insurance. She returned to her car — and died in it. Lakeside Hospital, which began as Nassau-Suffolk General Hospital in 1939 with 54 beds, is no more. 

The backgrounds of Dowling and Dr. Pellegrino are fascinating.

Dowling, who last year was named by the publication Model Healthcare as Number One on its list of the “100 Most Influential People in Healthcare” in the United States, grew up in Ireland under challenging conditions. As an extensive article in 2020 about him in the magazine Irish America related: “Born just outside the town of Knockaderry, County Limerick, Dowling was the brother of four younger siblings and son of disabled parents—their conditions set the tone for his personal relationship with the healthcare world.”

“The family home was a thatched cottage with none of the modern conveniences,” it continued. “Money was always short as his father couldn’t continue to work as a laborer because every part of his body was affected by Rheumatoid arthritis, and his mother was deaf since the age of 7. Yet, his parents, his mother especially, never for an instant allowed Michael to believe that he could do anything less than what he set his mind to.”

“America, it turned out, was indeed in the cards for Dowling’s future,” the piece went on. “While many took a narrow-minded view of his prospects (one local milk farmer went as far as to tell him to his face that he would never go to college), he defied their predictions by being the first members of his family to progress to third-level [higher] education, which began at the University College Cork in the fall of 1967,”

At 17, he went to New York City “working every job he could juggle at once to fund the entirety of his four-year undergraduate degree” at Fordham University. “He compiled experience loading cargo on the docks, working in the engine room of tour boats, plumbing, cleaning, and on construction sites, often working 120-hour weeks not only in order to pay his tuition, but to continue to support the family he missed across the sea, even paying for his siblings to attend college.”

He received a master’s degree in social policy from Fordham, where he also met the woman who would be his wife, Elizabeth, a nurse specializing in oncology. They have two children. Dowling became a professor of social policy at Fordham and assistant dean at its Graduate School of Social Services.

With Mario Cuomo’s election as New York governor, Dowling was offered a position in his administration. He served 12 years including as director of Health, Education and Human Services and commissioner of the state’s Department of Social Services. Then he became senior vice president of Empire Blue Cross/Blue Shield. 

In 1995, Dowling was offered a position of senior vice president of hospital services at Northwell Health, formerly North Shore-LIJ Health System. In 1997, he advanced to executive vice president and CEO and in 2002 became president and CEO. 

He has led the expansion of Northwell. Not only does Northwell operate hospitals but has a network of 900 outpatient facilities in the state. It provides rehabilitation, kidney dialysis, urgent care, hospice and home care programs. It runs the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research with 50 research laboratories, and is a partner with Hofstra University in the Zucker School of Medicine and Hofstra/Northwell School of Nursing and Physician Assistant Studies.

On a personal level, my family has been treated at Northwell hospitals in Suffolk—at Mather in Port Jefferson, Huntington Hospital and Peconic Bay Medical Center in Riverhead (I had two cataract operations there). Excellence in care is what I observed at them all.  

Olivia O’Mahony and Patricia Harty write about Dowling at the end of their Irish America article: “From dock-hand to teacher, from government worker to businessman, Dowling’s experience allows him to think from a multitude of positions and see the world through the eyes of those from all walks of life….” 

Next week: Dr. Edmund Pellegrino and Stony Brook Medicine. 

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.