Key state posts go to those with LI ties
Joseph Lhota at a City Hall news conference. (May 23, 2000) Credit: AP
Three new designees to major state posts are drawing special notice in local political circles -- not only for their roots and connections on Long Island, but for their Republican and Conservative credentials in a Democratic-dominated state.
Joseph Lhota, 57, a former investment banker, was a key deputy to ex-New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and assisted in the Republican's 2008 presidential campaign.
After a search, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo nominated the Lindenhurst-raised Lhota to be Metropolitan Transportation Authority chairman. Though it didn't get much attention in initial reports, sources said a key asset on Lhota's City Hall resume involved his dealings with municipal unions. The MTA, of course, faces what officials see as a daunting set of labor and fiscal challenges.
He's expected to be confirmed easily by the State Senate, led by Majority Leader Dean Skelos (R-Rockville Centre). Lhota can expect to be pulled into legislative discussions on the MTA payroll tax enacted in 2009, believed to raise more than $1.3 billion a year for the MTA -- which Island Republicans such as Sen. Lee Zeldin (R-Shirley) are agitating to abolish. Democrat Cuomo has said he's open to replacing it.
Cuomo also recommended development wonk Patrick Foye, 54, of Port Washington, for executive director of the Port Authority. Foye has in the past been affiliated with the Conservative Party. He served as an economic adviser to GOP Nassau County Executive Edward Mangano, with whom he worked at the law firm Rivkin Radler, before they fell out over suing the county's state financial monitor.
The monitor's most vocal board member, Conservative activist George Marlin of New Hyde Park, is a longtime Foye friend who held the same PA post under GOP Gov. George Pataki. Marlin has publicly advised Foye to distrust PA bureaucrats and resist New Jersey's influence.
In perhaps the most powerful of the three picks, Jonathan Lippman, the state's chief judge, chose seasoned GOP Justice Gail Prudenti, 58 -- daughter of the late Suffolk Republican chairman Anthony Prudenti -- to replace Ann Pfau, who is retiring as chief administrative judge. Lippman is a Democrat and, as widely noted before, a longtime friend of Democratic Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver of Manhattan.
Prudenti's ascension gives Cuomo a chance to pick her successor as presiding justice in the Appellate Division 2nd department, which includes Long Island.
