Poll: more confident in LI, less in U.S.

Confidence in the Long Island economy rose slightly in 2011, according to a poll sponsored by the Hauppauge Industrial Association, but 61 percent of the respondents feel the nation is headed for a double-dip recession.

"It's absolutely a conflict," Thomas J. Murray, managing partner of the Hauppauge-based financial services firm Albrecht, Viggiano, Zureck & Co., which conducted the HIA's 18th annual Long Island Economic Survey and Opinion Poll, said of the results released Thursday.

Murray suggested a reason: The poll, mailed in early October to 5,000 HIA members -- 3 percent of whom responded -- was returned in November. The national economy was showing little sign of improvement then. Nonetheless, Murray said, the results were valid because the poll asked a number of questions related to business and the economy.

The poll showed confidence rose slightly, to 5.1 from 5 on a scale of 1 to 10. It also showed 61 percent of respondents believe the country faces another recession. The recession that began in December 2007 officially ended in June 2009, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research, the official arbiter of such dates. Long Island, however, has shed jobs for the last eight months in a row.

During a panel discussion in Melville Thursday, speakers said their confidence was higher than the HIA poll results, and added they were surprised at the number who felt another recession is coming.

"This is my fourth recession," Jack O'Connor, a principal at the Melville office of the brokerage firm Newmark Knight Frank, said of his nearly three decades in business. "This [most recent one] has been the worst I've ever been through. In these last few years we didn't even have a pulse. Now I have a few deals going through."

Said Jeremy D. Brown, president of Dowling College in Oakdale, "We are well positioned on Long Island to provide a well-educated workforce not just for the next five years but for the next 50 years."

While the panelists were willing to answer questions on the economy, there was one area that silenced them. The poll found 73 percent of respondents believe a Republican will be our next president. No one wanted to touch that one.