The final push for Albany

Daily Point

LI senators help weed out pot bill

Legalizing the sale of marijuana for recreational use was iffy to begin with in this year’s legislative session in Albany, and it’s now certainly dead after the passage of a law to make driver’s licenses available to those in the country illegally.

The six Long Island Democratic senators who banded together to vote against the highly controversial driver’s license bill, also refuse as a block to approve another item on the progressive agenda. “Pot is dead. All of Long Island is against it. There are too many things hitting the region,” one senator told The Point.

Unlike the State Senate’s two-vote margin for driver’s licenses, two city senators, Queens’ Toby Ann Stavisky and Brooklyn’s Roxanne Persaud, are joining with their Long Island counterparts to stop the pot bill.

With the Senate short votes and the Assembly resistant to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s demand that all communities have the power to opt in to the sale of pot in their jurisdictions, there is no muscle to get the provision over the finish line this session. And depending on the mood next spring amid the 2020 presidential campaign and a Republican effort to retake the State Senate, those who think the bill can gain approval next year might really be smoking something.

- Rita Ciolli @RitaCiolli

Talking Point

Picking up the pieces

The era of state legislators steering clear of the troubled Hempstead school district is over.

Assemb. Taylor Raynor and Sen. Kevin Thomas were elected in November to replace veteran lawmakers (Earlene Hooper and Kemp Hannon, respectively) who did little to help the school district. On Sunday, the newcomers filed legislation to create a three-person state-appointed board to monitor the district’s affairs.

The school district has characterized this as coming out of the blue but the lawmakers did not act unilaterally. Raynor said she and Thomas held several meetings in Albany that included Board of Regents Chancellor Betty Rosa, State Education Commissioner MaryEllen Elia and her staff, representatives from the state teachers union, and State Senate education committee chair Shelley Mayer.

“The support of most of the people in the room was amazing because everyone understands it’s been a long time coming,” Raynor told The Point Tuesday.

The jumping-off point, she said, was the most recent report from Jack Bierwirth, a former schools superintendent who has been functioning as a state-appointed “distinguished educator” to monitor and advise the school district. Prominent in the report, as in his earlier versions, was a concern about Hempstead’s poor governance.

“It was an SOS situation,” Raynor said. “There’s no governance here. They’re never going to make it for the children.”

The bill calls for the education commissioner to appoint two monitors and the state comptroller to pick one, and the monitors would provide academic and financial oversight, including approving and disapproving expenses and appointments of district superintendents.

Told that the plan is reminiscent of the state’s attempt to run the Roosevelt school district, which was generally considered a failure, especially in its early stages, Raynor said their Hempstead proposal is different.

“The community was not part of the process. They were governing from 175 miles away in Albany, that’s why it didn’t work,” Raynor said about Roosevelt, which is also in her legislative district. “We need to be open to other things.”

But Raynor also is aware that not everyone in Hempstead has embraced the idea.

“Some do, others don’t. The ones that do welcome it, they know that now we have change in Sen. Thomas and myself,” she said. “But not everyone is there. A lot of people have benefited from the divisiveness. A lot of people have a hand in the $215 million cookie jar. And a lot of people are connected to those people.”

With the legislative session scheduled to end Wednesday, Raynor knows its chances of passage this year are slim. But she’s still pushing the bill; the urgency, she says, demands it.

“We don’t have another six months to wait for. We didn’t have the last 20 years to wait for,” she said. “We are failing our kids.”

- Michael Dobie @mwdobie

Pencil Point

Go home!

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Final Point

Gambling on Jake's 58

With an average win of $643 per day on each of its 1,000 machines, or $235 million a year before expenses, Jake’s 58 in Islandia has the most profitable slots in New York.

Located about 45 miles from the nearest competition, the Resorts World Casino at Aqueduct Race Track in Queens, the operation run by the Suffolk Off-Track Betting Corp. has a virtual monopoly on local gamblers and 180,000 awards program members.

And in the headlong Albany scramble of a legislative session drawing to a close, there is a chaotic effort to get more machines approved for Jake’s 58, mostly to get more money to always-broke Suffolk County.

Over the weekend, Sen. Jim Gaughran and Assemb. Steve Stern -- whose districts are nowhere near Islandia -- proposed legislation that would allow another 2,000 machines at Jake’s 58. It’s a number the location could not host without a massive reconstruction, particularly because the always-overflowing parking lot would have to be replaced by a multi-story parking garage to accommodate the extra vehicles.

When Suffolk OTB pays off its debts in about a year, it will give Suffolk at least $23 million annually, up from about $3 million a year now. And according to Suffolk OTB spokesman Jon Schneider, a recent market study shows demand in the area could sustain another 2,000 machines, and County Executive Steve Bellone could use the additional money they would generate.

In truth, it’s highly unlikely that a move like this, which does not allow more machines for Nassau OTB and would rile Genting, which runs Nassau’s 1,000 machines and 4,500 others at Resorts World, could succeed so late in the session. Right now, in New York, every change in the lay of the legalized gambling table involves complex calculations.

Beyond that, Islandia Mayor Allen Dorman, who has faced a lot of community opposition to Jake’s 58 and a lawsuit trying to shutter it, said before the casino opened that he would not support more machines later.

But, as Schneider points out, if the OTB gets approval for more machines, they will come with a new offer to the village. And like the last one, which cut village taxes by 50 percent since 2016, a new community benefits package could be as tough to resist as a casino in a community is to sell.

- Lane Filler @lanefiller