Rapid redistricting rehash

January 26, 2022

Daily Point

Redrawing on deadline, the old-fashioned way

Now that the state’s first-ever Independent Redistricting Commission goes out of business without having sent a unified 10-year map plan to lawmakers, the old imprecise acronym LATFOR — long familiar to Albany insiders — gets bandied about in a rush to finish redrawing in time for early-March nominating petitions.

The formal title is the Legislative Task Force on Demographic Research and Reapportionment, established in 1978. It has been drafting congressional, Assembly and State Senate district maps ever since. Controlled by the majorities of both houses — this cycle both Democratic for the first time — the task force is abuzz with what has always turned into an insider process of deep concern to incumbents.

Even as the IRC was drawing up maps and at least attempting bipartisanship earlier in the process, the old LATFOR apparatus was fired up. Legislative sources told The Point that discussions of the ultra-high-stakes congressional districts were discreetly begun among state lawmakers who must approve them.

Expect the decision-making on state lines to be divided between the two legislative chambers, with "a lot of deference" to the Assembly and Senate shaping their own lines, as one official put it. In 2012, the Senate was Republican-controlled and the Assembly Democrat-controlled.

LATFOR cannot keep a lid on the maps it crafts for long. To make election deadlines, the Assembly under Speaker Carl Heastie and the Senate under Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins are planning to vote on maps next week.

But first the bills enacting them must be introduced, indexed, sent to the proper committees, and set aside to "age." For that reason, details of the plans are expected to be revealed by Saturday. As a former Bronx party chairman, Heastie is expected to play a key role in the map, as is Sen. Michael Gianaris, who is Stewart-Cousins’ deputy Senate majority leader and key player on the standing LATFOR.

IRC officials, meanwhile, said materials the new commission collected, including its own conflicting partisan map plans and hearing transcripts, have been sent to key lawmakers. David Imamura of Westchester, who served as the IRC’s Democratic chairman, said Wednesday he is "confident" the final maps will reflect the needs of the people and reflect testimony that his commission gathered over several months.

Republicans on the panel, led by Vice Chairman Jack Martins from Nassau County, said Democrats on the panel had abruptly ended negotiations toward a single plan.

"It appears that Chairman Imamura and our other colleagues are handing over the keys to the Commission to the Democrat controlled legislature as they were apparently instructed to do when they were appointed," the GOP members said in a joint statement this week.

Any irregularities in the process that ended in lawmakers drawing their own maps, as well as details of that coming product, appear likely to become fodder for litigation.

"Does it go to court? That’s always what happens" with redistricting, said a veteran elected official.

Meet the new system, now just about the same as the old system.

— Dan Janison @Danjanison

Talking Point

Ins and outs of the MTA board

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority board already looked a bit different at Wednesday’s monthly meeting — but more changes likely are still to come.

Wednesday marked the first board meeting without Larry Schwartz, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s controversial appointee who resigned last month, and the first board meeting for Gov. Kathy Hochul’s first appointee, Elizabeth Velez, who heads a construction firm.

But Wednesday also signified a "last" — the last board meeting for Suffolk County representative Kevin Law, the former head of the Long Island Association who has served on the MTA board for three years.

Hochul has nominated Law as the next chairman of Empire State Development and his confirmation hearing is expected to take place next week. Law has said for months that once confirmed, he would step down from the MTA.

In a short farewell Wednesday, Law applauded the board, the MTA’s professional staff and the workers on the subways, buses and commuter rails. And he made two specific requests. One, he said, was "parochial" — to get the Long Island Rail Road’s new Yaphank station and the electrification of the Port Jefferson line done. The other, he said, was a "systemwide" concern — the need to continue addressing and investing in accessibility.

And Law didn’t leave without a small joke about how his outgoing and incoming jobs converge.

"And finally, I want to be invited to the ribbon cutting ceremony for the third track and East Side Access later this year," Law said with a smile. "Because remember, at ESD we play a big role at Penn Station and you guys don’t want to have any issues there, right?"

No word yet from Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone on whom he plans to recommend to replace Law. The county executive usually provides three potential candidates, leaving the governor to choose to nominate one, who then must be confirmed by the State Senate.

And Hochul herself hasn’t yet nominated anyone to fill Schwartz’s seat, either.

But those two spots aren’t the only ones that might sit empty — or be filled by holdovers — in the coming months. MTA board members’ terms now end with the term of the elected official who chose them. That leaves Nassau representative David Mack’s term up, as well — though new Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman has said he hopes to keep Mack on the board.

And then there are the four members recommended by the New York City mayor, whose terms expired at the end of 2021. That leaves the future tenure of board members Victor Calise, Lorraine Cortez-Vazquez, David Jones and Robert Linn up in the air.

Mayor Eric Adams said earlier this month that he has "several names" he’s considering, adding that he hopes his picks will be regular subway and bus riders.

But so far, Adams, like Bellone and Blakeman, hasn’t indicated when he might officially make such recommendations.

— Randi F. Marshall @RandiMarshall

Pencil Point

Reading the scrawl

For more cartoons, visit www.newsday.com/nationalcartoons

Final Point

Moving away, again?

The notion that people are leaving Long Island — or New York as a whole — isn’t new. But the pandemic highlighted concerns over just how many residents the state is losing. Recent data, however, tells a more nuanced story.

New York holds the distinction of being the state with the third-largest exodus, as 63% of New Yorkers making moves were flocking out of the state, according to a study by United Van Lines released this month, which looked at its own customers’ moving habits. More than half of the customers cited either job or retirement reasons as factors in their decisions to leave the Empire State.

But in this data set, Long Island held the distinction of having an even greater spread between those who left the region and those who moved into it. The study showed that 79% of those moving were heading out of the region — the highest percentage of any of the state’s 10 metropolitan statistical areas.

Interestingly, despite the pandemic and all of the talk of people flocking to the Island, that data hasn’t shifted much over the years, according to an examination of six years of United Van Lines statistics.

However, an examination of United States Postal Service change of address data tells a bit of a different story. When looking at all change of address requests — whether business or residential, temporary or permanent, there was a clear shift in 2020, when more people changed their addresses to Nassau or Suffolk County locations than away from Long Island addresses. USPS showed a total of 213,491 changes of addresses from Nassau or Suffolk counties, and 221,837 changes to Nassau or Suffolk counties in 2020.

But by 2021, the data showed, there was a return to the pre-pandemic norms and there was a marked decline in the number of shifts to the Island, with 214,988 changes of address from Long Island, and 201,896 changes of address to the region.

In a report released late last year analyzing similar data, New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer showed that the city had regained about three-quarters of the population it had lost during the early months of the pandemic.

The Long Island data set analyzed by The Point includes business moves, along with individual moves and full family moves. So, it accounts for a single person — like a college student — leaving home and changing his or her address, in addition to full household moves or business comings and goings.

The Postal Service data drills down by ZIP code. Some areas, like Bay Shore, Brentwood, Hempstead, Uniondale and Westbury, showed hundreds more changes of address from the community than to the community in each of the last three years, including during the height of the pandemic. Others, particularly on the East End, showed significant jumps in the number of changes of address to the neighborhood in 2020, while in both 2019 and 2021, departures outweighed entrances, but often not at nearly the same rate.

Take Sag Harbor. In 2020, there were 1,032 more address changes to the East End community than away from it. In 2019, the "from’s" outpaced the "to’s" — by just two address changes, while in 2021, there were 31 more address changes away from the neighborhood.

Then there are the steady success stories. In Garden City, for instance, changes of address to the area outpaced those from the area by 71 in 2019, by 201 in 2020, and by 235 in 2021. Jericho, Manhasset and Plainview showed similar steady trends.

— Randi F. Marshall @RandiMarshall and Kai Teoh @jkteoh