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Tough living-room politics

Candidates Spitzer and Sen. Clinton press for more affordable LI lifestyle, in session at one Central Islip home

BY RICK BRAND | Newsday Staff Writer

October 11, 2006

Gubernatorial contender Eliot Spitzer and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, in a rare joint appearance, got an earful of Long Island's middle-class woes yesterday from homeowners upset about high property taxes to adult children who can't afford to move out of their parents' basements.

The top of New York's Democratic ticket listened for more than an hour in the Central Islip living room of Republicans Diane and Chuck Doyle and a dozen friends, not counting the Secret Service, aides, reporters and TV camera teams who listened from the kitchen.

Doyle, a KeySpan lineman and until recently a local fire chief, worried about high property taxes, which cost the family $7,000 a year. He said taxes cut into his ability to save for college for his three daughters.

"The problem most people in this room have is ... [how] are we going to solve the rising costs?" he asked.

Spitzer said his plans would give $6 billion in property tax relief, about $1,000 for the average homeowner, by cutting waste from the state Medicaid program.

"We will be as demanding as anyone has ever been," Spitzer said.

John Faso, his GOP foe, called Spitzer's tax plan "an election-year gimmick" because it only gives a single year of tax relief to most areas and higher taxes later.

"For Mr. Spitzer to appear on Long Island, where his property tax scheme will do the most damage, is a blatant deception," he said in a statement.

Clinton said it is Republicans in Congress who have added to the problems by shifting the $200-billion cost of federal mandates to local schools.

"We're worried about these tremendous shifting of costs onto the backs of the middle-class taxpayers," said Clinton, noting that Central Islip alone has been shortchanged $42 million in special-education aid in the last six years.

"It's funny Hillary Clinton has had six years to cut taxes and she waits until election years to start talking about it," Rob Ryan, spokesman for GOP Senate contender John Spencer, said later.

Other issues raised in the Doyles' living room included the lack of college aid, and housing for the young and old.

"It looks like the next 10 years I'll be living in my parents' basement," said Michael Friedberg, who works in an accounting firm. He said his mother jokes that he's "more than welcome to have grandchildren in the basement, but I don't really enjoy the idea."

Spitzer said "housing is a crisis" and vowed to begin seeking 100,000 affordable units Long Island needs.

Karen Murphy, mother of a college student, also complained college loan rates have risen and aid limits are not adjusted for cost of living.