Did Prop 2 really pass?

Daily Point

The election battle that didn’t end today

The fate of Proposition 2 in Suffolk County still is not clear. After Election Day, "yes" votes easily outnumbered "no" votes on the proposal to divert funds from a sewer fund to help the county budget, and the margin expanded after mail-in votes were counted, with the proposal seeming to pass, 348,357 to 301,407.

So what’s the problem?

Paul Sabatino says Prop 2 failed. The former deputy county executive and municipal law maven, who represented the Pine Barrens Society in successful legal actions against the county that set the table for Prop 2, cites New York Municipal Home Rule Law, particularly a passage that reads that such a proposition passes only when it is "approved by the affirmative vote of a majority of the qualified electors …"

Sabatino says the total number of qualified electors who voted in the 2020 election was 774,811, and that the 348,357 votes fell short of the 387,407 needed for approval. The culprit: About 125,000 people who did not vote on Prop 2.

Pine Barrens Society executive director Richard Amper emailed Sabatino’s argument to county legislators Monday afternoon, ahead of a vote Tuesday on a series of resolutions allowing the county comptroller to make budget transfers included in the budget, one of which is Prop 2.

Late Monday afternoon, Presiding Officer Robert Calarco told The Point the legislature would still take the vote despite Sabatino’s opinion.

"He’s not always right," Calarco said, chuckling. "I’m sure they could file their papers and we’ll be in court and we’ll see what the courts decide. But at the end of the day, on certain issues, you have to let the voters have a say."

As a point of comparison, Calarco said two similar votes of approval on propositions related to the water quality act that created the sewer fund in 2004 and 2007 would have failed under Sabatino's argument.

Sabatino represented the Pine Barrens Society in legal actions that resulted in a court judgment that the county repay $29.4 million taken from the sewer fund in 2011 to balance the budget and a settlement in 2014 that let Suffolk borrow $171 million from the sewer fund to be repaid through 2029. Proposition 2 basically asked that the county not have to repay what’s left on those sums and instead use it for the budget.

Sabatino calls the people who did not vote on Prop 2 "abstentions," while conceding that some of them – a "small portion," he said – might simply have not turned the ballot over to side 2 where the propositions were placed.

"An abstention is a vote," Sabatino said. "When the person skips over, it’s an abstention."

And Sabatino and the Pine Barrens Society are still making their original arguments that the proposition was deceptive and an illegal attempt to overturn a court decision and a settlement agreement.

All of which means that in Suffolk, sometimes it’s not over even when it really, truly, absolutely, positively seems to be over.

—Michael Dobie @mwdobie

Talking Point

Even the NYC mayor’s race has LI implications

The NYC mayor's race is already heating up months ahead of the crucial June 2021 primary, with dozens of hopefuls having filed paperwork with the city Campaign Finance Board and some top contenders raising hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Obviously, Long Islanders don't get a vote, but the big contest to the west will have myriad implications for the Nassau and Suffolk County residents who live or work or often travel to the city. Here are some highlights of the race’s Long Island connections so far:

• Policy positions are still being fleshed out, but some emerging threads touch on LI. Kathryn Garcia, a former top official and fixer for Mayor Bill de Blasio, is proposing a city residency requirement for new recruits to the police department (but not FDNY). Many current officers live on Long Island.
• Policing in general is likely to be a major issue on the campaign trail, where candidates include former NYPD captain and current Brooklyn Borough president Eric Adams, as well as former nonprofit executive Dianne Morales whose website says she would "divest from policing and reinvest in communities" in part by creating a new department of first responders for non-criminal public safety issues like homelessness, mental health, and substance abuse.
• In the world of transit, current city comptroller Scott Stringer has floated the suggestion that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority could expand its capacity by charging the $2.75 subway fare for all intra-city trips on Metro-North and the Long Island Rail Road, a change he claims would make use of empty seats on commuter trains.
• There are hopefuls with ties to Long Island, such as Wall Streeter Ray McGuire who owns a house in Sag Harbor, according to property records. And when Shaun Donovan was U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, he visited Long Island (including a Wantagh cleanup) after superstorm Sandy to work on rebuilding efforts. He was the keynote speaker at the Long Island Housing Partnership’s 2014 gala.
• Some of the potential candidates are famous beyond NYC’s borders, such as feisty Staten Island Rep. Max Rose who lost his bid for reelection this November, and former presidential candidate Andrew Yang, who had supporters on Long Island and beyond.
• Then there’s the fundraising. Earlier this month, the New York Times reported that former de Blasio aide-turned MSNBC analyst Maya Wiley would be the beneficiary of a virtual fundraiser from Mary Trump, whose blockbuster book about her uncle mentioned the moment a reporter showed up at her home in Rockville Centre to ask about her uncle’s tax records.

Other donors are already looking for ways to influence the race. Real estate developer Stephen Ross, who has contributed large sums to Democratic and Republican causes in New York, has a house in Southampton and donated $1 million to a new independent expenditure committee that is reportedly poised to make its money talk in NYC.

—Mark Chiusano @mjchiusano

Pencil Point

On the naughty list

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Quick Points

• Sign of the times: News reports on the number of ultracold freezers in hospital systems.
• After months of analysis, epidemiologists believe that a single traveler to a Boston conference in February introduced a strain of the coronavirus that spread to at least 245,000 Americans by the end of October. When people talk about the awful math, that’s about as awful as it gets.
• When President Donald Trump took to Twitter last weekend to savage William Barr, the attorney general who resigned Monday evening learned anew what virtually every close ally of Trump eventually discovers – being an ally of Trump gives you no exception to the rule that you must do what Trump wants 100% of the time.
• After losses at the Supreme Court Friday, in a Wisconsin federal court on Saturday and Wisconsin state court Monday, give President Donald Trump’s legal team credit for remarkable consistency. Doesn’t matter who argues the case or at what level of the judiciary in which state, they lose.
• Cleveland’s baseball team finally has decided to drop the word "Indians" from its name. Thank you.
• An analysis of GovTrack data has determined that the 116th Congress (2019-2020) is on track to be the least productive Congress since those records began in 1973. OK, so that’s not exactly a news flash.
• Former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang and recently defeated Staten Island Congressman Max Rose are considering runs for New York City mayor. Given the number of prominent Democrats in the race, it might have been bigger news if they were not running.
• David Cornwell was a British intelligence agent-turned-pseudonymous novelist whose master spy George Smiley navigated a world of deception and betrayal in which Cold War foes were equally treacherous and morally compromised – and kept readers compulsively turning the pages. RIP, John le Carré.

—Michael Dobie @mwdobie