What's in a name? A politician's role in community projects

From today's pork barrel comes tomorrow's amenities.

Look at the sports complex in Nassau County named for state Sen. Dean Skelos (R-Rockville Centre). Or the stadium named for state Sen. Kenneth P. LaValle (R-Port Jefferson) at Stony Brook University. Or the aquatic center named for Assemb. Harvey Weisenberg (D-Long Beach).

All three legislators seek re-election this year. All were, very relevantly, in the party majority of their legislative houses and supported funding for the projects. The three facilities cost taxpayers millions to build and renovate - and all the expenses were widely accepted as legitimate community improvements.

Pressure on taxes from expenses gets a lot of airtime. But "delivering for the district" will forever remain the creed for legislators of both major parties even as they bow their heads in reverence to the goal of "fiscal reform."

To most local lawmakers, the contradictions won't matter. Suburbs and cities, upstate and downstate, compete for funds. Players want to win.

The question of the moment, however, is whether the lean years have once and for all eaten the fat years.

"The problem is not that the rent is too high," said Mitchell Moss, urban policy professor at New York University's Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service, tweaking maverick candidate Jimmy McMillan's pitch for governor. "The problem is that the money isn't there."

Senate Democratic operatives do their best to dispute the GOP pitch that Republicans will be better for Long Island. Said one: "We walked into a buzz saw. Why are they having these service cuts on the MTA? Because of bad financing that went on right under their [the Republicans'] noses. That's why the taxes were raised. Every late October, seniors were sent STAR rebate checks. It was just an election-cycle giveaway that didn't solve the property tax problem. . . . And I remember the school-funding problems in the 1990s."

By all accounts, the Assembly will remain in Democratic hands after the election Tuesday. By most accounts, so will the governor's office. But judging by recent polls- and in an echo of the congressional races - State Senate Republicans, led by Skelos, may well be on the verge of recovering the majority, just in time to influence the decade's redistricting.

Long Island has seven Republican and two Democratic senators. In recent weeks the latter, Craig Johnson (D-Port Washington) and Brian X. Foley (D-Blue Point), tactically sought to paste their foes in the public's mind to the off-color antics of the GOP standard-bearer for governor, Carl Paladino.

Since then, Republicans sought strategically to link their opponents to the dubious - and ultimately aborted - selection of a vendor for a casino at Aqueduct, created in large part by the Senate's Democratic majority.

In Queens Thursday, they held a groundbreaking ceremony for the delayed Aqueduct project, with private investors different from those whose bid was targeted in a stinging inspector general's report. The state stands to get hundreds of millions of dollars in revenues; the Genting company gets to put in the slot machines. Many construction jobs and permanent jobs are promised.

Political? Sure. State elected officials chose to put the project there and eventually got it this far. If the place proves successful, watch for some senator, assemblyman or city council member try to find a way to have his or her name attached to it.

A Republican operative was asked if his conference was drawing up plans for how to organize a new regime. He said: "What are you, trying to jinx us? . . . There'll be time for that."