Nassau tables redistricting plan

Nassau County's Republican lawmakers Monday approved amendments to a plan to realign district lines but delayed a vote on the overall proposal.

Their action came after withering criticism from a Hempstead civil rights attorney who called the proposal a "mockery of the [federal] Voting Rights Act."

Presiding Officer Peter Schmitt made it clear that his amendments regarding the Great Neck peninsula 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" district 19, while restoring Old Westbury to district 11.

The Republican majority approved the amendments 11-0 while the eight Democrats walked out before the vote because, they said, they had no notice of the proposed amendments beforehand.

Attorney Fred Brewington, a civil rights activist, said he also had not had time to study the amendments.

But before he heard them, he excoriated Schmitt's original proposal and presented lawmakers with his own counterproposal. It would keep current legislators in their same districts. Schmitt's plan would have consolidated four districts now held by Democrats into two.

Brewington said Schmitt's analysis of the latest census data incorrectly used the total population of eligible-age residents rather than citizens eligible to vote.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.