The Long Island Regional Planning Council previews their new study...

The Long Island Regional Planning Council previews their new study during a meeting with the editorial board. Credit: Amanda Fiscina

Good afternoon and welcome to The Point!

Talking Point

A taxing topic

The Long Island Regional Planning Council’s study of alternatives to the property tax provides a lot more data than hope. The study was released Tuesday; The Point got a preview during a meeting Monday with some members of the council.

The study, written by the PFM Consulting Group with help from Hofstra’s National Center for Suburban Studies (yes, that’s former editorial board member Larry Levy returning for the first time), digs deep. It says not just that Long Islanders pay twice as much in property taxes as the average New York resident, and four times as much as the average American, but also how that money is collected, from whom, and who gets it and spends it.

The answer is, mostly, school districts.

As for how to lessen that $13 billion property tax burden, the report outlines ways to raise taxes. Ideas range from a 1 percent local income tax and a tiny increase in sales taxes to potential new levies on legalized marijuana, vaping and sugary beverages. The ideas could raise as much as $500 million a year, not enough to lower everyone’s property tax burden but enough to offer targeted, meaningful help to low-income owners. That assumes, of course, that the new tax dollars actually translate into a reduction on the other side of the ledger. But the fact that the study identified only $500 million in possible shifts on a $13 billion base is telling.

The problem the report does not get into is the expense side of the ledger.

Lane Filler


Daily Point

That Oyster Bay way

For years, the “Oyster Bay way” was code for the town’s notorious hostility to most development projects.

Former Supervisor John Venditto used to use that phrase freely, often when he visited the Newsday editorial board to defend the town’s unwillingness to build anything other than single-family homes — whether in Plainview, Hicksville or infamously the old Cerro Wire property in Syosset.

Venditto said people liked the “Oyster Bay way.” Sometimes he described little white picket fences to explain his goal of maintaining the character of the town.

Indeed, Newsday editorials and columns have used the phrase nearly a dozen times since 2007, asking time and again for a change to the “Oyster Bay way” that could bring economic activity, affordable housing and development opportunities to the town.

Little did we know there was another meaning for insiders. This week, the “Oyster Bay way” took on a new definition. Frederick Mei, the town’s former deputy town attorney and a cooperating witness for the prosecution, testified in federal court that the phrase referred to “the pay-to-play nature of the town.”

At the corruption trial of Venditto, former Nassau County Executive Edward Mangano, and his wife, Linda, Mei said that to get a job in Oyster Bay, someone had to be a registered Republican, attend party fundraisers and act in other ways “in furtherance of the Republican Party.”

But in Mei’s own case, and according to the prosecutors, that went beyond party allegiance. Contractors who wanted town business also had to sweeten the pot. Mei noted that he took his first bribe as a government official in 1995, when he accepted a set of car tires and $2,500 in cash from a town contractor.

Mei’s take on the “Oyster Bay way” is an interesting twist on an oft-used phrase. Did Mei’s version of the Oyster Bay way play a role when Charles Wang failed to develop his housing project in Plainview more than a decade ago, or when Taubman Centers couldn’t build at Cerro Wire, or when AvalonBay proposed apartments? Perhaps, the pay-to-play “Oyster Bay way” and the development “Oyster Bay way” are one and the same.

Randi F. Marshall


Pointing Out

Aid-in-dying forces unite

Advocacy groups Compassion & Choices New York and End of Life Choices New York had been pushing for similar bills in Albany regarding medical aid in dying. But they’ve been divided in part by legal and legislative strategy.

Monday’s weather in Albany was a sign of their legislation’s chilly chances of passage in this legislative session in an election year, despite their announcement of an alliance to back one bill, with encouragement of the advocacy group Death with Dignity National Center.

The national group sees New York and New Jersey as the next states most likely to allow terminally ill adults to have the right to end their suffering — with the assistance of doctors — and die on their own terms, according to Corinne Carey, campaign director for Compassion & Choices New York.

The New York groups have worked on bill language to appease opponents.

One opponent, a disability-rights organization calling itself Not Dead Yet, objects that insurers may deny coverage for potentially lifesaving measures but fund assisted suicide. Another concern is that life-ending prescriptions will be given to people who are not terminal — that is, they have more than six months to live.

The rewritten bill tightens the definition of terminal illness, strengthens measures to guard against coercion of the patient, fortifies a physician’s ability to request a mental health evaluation, and requires doctors to more fully discuss alternatives like hospice with patients and families.

Opposition remains from religious groups including the Catholic Church. The largest New York physicians group, the Medical Society of the State of New York, has said it is surveying its members.

Carey said her group and End of Life Choices New York will continue to have “other, separate agendas,” but are uniting behind the Medical Aid in Dying Act sponsored by Assemb. Amy Paulin (D-Scarsdale) and Sen. Diane Savino (D-Staten Island).

Assembly health committee hearings are scheduled for April 23 in Albany and May 3 in New York City.

David Leven, senior consultant with End of Life Choices, said he’s hopeful the bill will move this year out of the health committee and through the Assembly’s codes committee.

However, he added, “I don’t think the chances are very good we’ll get the bills passed through both houses this year.”

Anne Michaud


Pencil Point

Tax Day

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