Bellone urges business-friendly government

Steve Bellone, Babylon's town supervisor and the Democratic candidate for Suffolk County executive, pressed Tuesday -- for the second time in two weeks -- for a more business-friendly county government.

"We have to recognize the single biggest impediment to economic development on Long Island is and has been government," he told business leaders at a roundtable discussion organized by his campaign in Melville. Among his goals, Bellone said, are:

Making the health department more responsive to permit requests. He said health officials do not seem to take into account the impact that permit delays and regulations can have on businesses. He said he would make economic development among the core missions of the health department.

Refocusing the county planning department to concentrate on broad countywide issues, rather than meddling in and slowing local projects.

Continuing steps the county has taken to streamline the permitting process, so the county and its towns and villages would examine projects at the same time.

Re-examining government functions and setting expectations for how long they should take. Doing this in Babylon, he said, reduced the time it takes to fix potholes from four to six weeks to 48 hours.

"There is no more important issue than figuring out how we get the economy moving again, and in the long term, to produce a tremendous economy for our county and our region," he said.

The group included the presidents of the Long Island Farm Bureau, and the Bellport and the Mastics and Shirley chambers of commerce.

Republican candidate and County Treasurer Angie Carpenter responded in an interview that she has long proposed cutting red tape. Carpenter has not released a detailed economic-development plan and declined to say when one would be released.

Republican County Executive Steve Levy, who is not seeking re-election in the wake of an inquiry into his fundraising by the district attorney, said performance measures like those discussed by Bellone can be adopted without "implementing a costly government bureaucracy."

Indicative of economic development's importance in the campaign, the event was Bellone's second in as many weeks focusing on the subject. He said last week that he wanted to make the county a high-tech hub that could rival the Research Triangle region of North Carolina.