Nassau tables redistricing plan

Following criticism by Hempstead lawyer Fred Brewington of the proposed realignment of lines for the Nassau County Legislature, Presiding Officer Peter Schmitt announced Monday morning that he would amend the proposal and table it until further notice.

He made it clear, however, that his amendments were in response to comments made a week ago at a public hearing on the proposal.

"We received testimony from several mayors of villages located in the Great Neck area," said Schmitt (R-Massapequa), "[and] the proposed amendments . . . will serve to reunite as many of those villages as the census data would allow. Specifically . . . the villages of Great Neck Estates, Great Neck Plaza and Thomaston."

The amendments also would move South Floral Park from Legislative District 3 to the new "minority" LD 19, while restoring Old Westbury to LD 11. They would also remove Hempstead's Terrace Avenue from the proposed joining with LD 8 to the minority district of LD 2.

The amendments passed 11-0. The eight Democrats walked out on the vote because, they said, they had not been notified of the proposed amendments beforehand and therefore could not study them before the vote.

Brewington, a civil rights activist, said he had not had time to study the amendments. But before he heard them, he excoriated Schmitt's original proposal "as a mockery of the [federal] Voting Rights Act." He also presented the presiding officer and the full legislature a copy of his analysis of that proposal and a counterproposal for redistricting that would keep all of the current legislators in their same districts. Schmitt's plan would have consolidated four districts now held by Democrats into two.

Brewington, who was given the opportunity to speak far beyond the normally allotted three minutes, told Schmitt that a major problem with his method of evaluating the latest census data as a basis for his realignment is that he used the total population of eligible-age residents rather than just those eligible to vote -- "citizens."

While that exchange was going on inside the legislative chambers, unions, headed by Local 830 Civil Service Employees Association, more than 200 strong, were demonstrating on the building's front steps and lawn, decrying the proposed cuts, layoffs and furloughs proposed by County Executive Edward Mangano in order to maintain a balanced budget.

"County workers are tired of being vilified by government. We are not the cause of the county problems," CSEA president Jerry Larichiutta told his audience.