Catching up to Hamptons gas prices

BY MITCHELL FREEDMAN | Newsday Staff Writer

April 18, 2006

For years, people living in the Hamptons have grumbled about paying more for gas than anyone else on Long Island.

Paying an additional 20 cents a gallon or more, local residents have fallen into the habit of looking at their gas gauge whenever they leave the South Fork, and filling up where it is cheaper. Elected officials have called for investigations - some of them making campaign pledges to take action.

But not any more.

Now, with gasoline just more than $3 a gallon for regular in Huntington, Hauppauge and Hampton Bays, there is no longer a reason to complain. Equality has been reached.

"It doesn't bring joy to me," East Hampton Supervisor William McGintee said. "But there is an element of fairness. We shouldn't pay more for gas out here than they pay in Riverhead or Commack. ... There's no reason why gas should be different anywhere on Long Island."

McGintee said he usually fills up locally. "It's part of the cost of doing business," the supervisor says. But, he tries not to do it in Montauk, where one station was charging $3.229 for self-serve regular during the weekend.

Even gasoline retailers are hard-pressed to explain why the cost in the Hamptons has held steady, allowing everyone else to catch up. Some think it's just a psychological $3-a-gallon barrier. And now that barrier is cracking.

"As to why it is as low as it is, I have no idea why," said Kathryn Odessa, executive director of the Long Island Gasoline Retailers Association. "The oil companies have zone pricing ... but they don't tell us what the zones are or what the criteria is. ... It's very mysterious."

She said some dealers on the East End may have been keeping the cost at about the $3-a-gallon mark because no one wanted to be the first to break out above that price. "They're busier ... maybe they're making it up [profits] in volume."

State Assemb. Fred W. Thiele Jr. (R-Sag Harbor) has complained about high East End gas prices for more than a decade, as a former Southampton Town supervisor and a former member of the Suffolk County Legislature.

"It's one of my pet peeves," Thiele said. "When the prices were down around $2.20 a gallon they were over $2.70 on the South Fork. ... I always felt they were artificially set."

Thiele said that with gas prices so high he hoped the State Assembly would pass a bill he is proposing - which appears to be stalled in committee - to cap the collection of state sales tax on just the first $2 a gallon for gasoline. That bill would save motorists across the state $400 million a year. But, it would also cost New York State that much in revenue.

Rob Chase, the manager of a Valero gas station in Westhampton Beach, said things had gotten busier now that the weather is getting nicer, and predicted that sales would go up 30 or 40 percent during the summer.

Bob Perry of Manorville, who was filling up at $3.05 a gallon, had his own way of dealing with the high prices. He was on a motorcycle. "It will go up again," he predicted as he drove off.