Local activist, tea party attend NIFA meet

Community activist Derek Donnelly seems to pop up everywhere. The Democrat campaigned for Freeport Mayor Andrew Hardwick's and his successful slate in 2009. Last summer, he organized protests against the Hempstead animal shelter. On Friday, he joined tea party activists outside the Nassau Interim Finance Authority meeting in Mineola.

He then went inside to greet new NIFA board member Dermond Thomas, whose unsuccessful campaign for State Assembly Donnelly, a Valley Stream village trustee, ran last fall. Thomas was nominated for a vacant NIFA board post by Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan).

Said Donnelly: "Just getting involved, one way or another, preserves your right to complain." -- Celeste Hadrick