Band-Aids for pain at the pump

Daily Point

Gas woes

New York has suspended the state gas tax, taking 16 cents per gallon out of the equation, while Nassau and Suffolk counties implemented an additional partial cap on gas tax — taxing only the first $3 per gallon. Even with these efforts in place, gas prices on Long Island hit an all-time average high of $5.014 per gallon, according to data from GasBuddy.

Five months ago, gas prices on Long Island averaged $3.365. Our current average reflects an increase of nearly 50% since then, but LI prices are still lower compared with NYC and the lower Hudson Valley area.

Despite this, Long Island ranks 155 out of 456 metro areas nationally in terms of pain at the pump, with a high of $6.427 per gallon and a low of $4.483. Gas on LI has climbed by 20 cents since May, lower than the national increase of 50 cents. 

The most recent analogous gas hike was in 2012, when prices crept close to $4 per gallon. A 2012 report by the Congressional Research Service discussed a number of short-term policy options, such as releasing petroleum from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, a gasoline excise tax holiday, and even relaxing fuel specifications, which might lower gas prices at the cost of increased air pollution. 

While there’s yet to be a federal gas tax holiday, President Biden’s administration is poised to sell another 45 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. It remains to be seen whether other efforts, such as Biden’s strongly worded letter to oil companies on Wednesday pushing for more production and capacity, will translate to any immediate relief for Long Islanders.

— Kai Teoh @jkteoh

Talking Point

Trail funds an earmark from a bygone age

From the establishment of the original path as an idyllic railroad line to the idea to make it a trail for hikers and bikers, everything about the recently opened North Shore Rail Trail has a tie to the past.

Even the federal earmark that got the $8 million project built.

Stretching from Wading River to Mount Sinai, the 10-mile-long rail route served up a scenic local journey a century ago, but the Long Island Rail Road abandoned the line in 1939. By the 1970s, local residents were talking about turning it into a trail for hikers and bikers, but it was just talk. Nothing happened until funding secured by Mike Forbes, who then represented CD1, was nearly clawed back more than a decade later.

Forbes’ grant, written in the law to “Construct Eastern Long Island Scenic Byway in Suffolk County,” included $11,250,000 in funding. By 2012, just $4 million had been spent and obligated, split about evenly between bikeways and scenic routes in Riverhead on the South Fork.

And one person whose job involved keeping up with that money, Jon Schneider, had just gone from being former Rep. Tim Bishop’s point man on Long Island to joining newly elected Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone’s staff. Bishop, a Democrat, defeated Republican Felix Grucci for the seat in 2002. Grucci had won the seat after Forbes, the incumbent Republican, refused to vote for former President Bill Clinton’s impeachment and defected to the Democratic Party. He was defeated in a Democratic primary by Regina Seltzer.

“It was a situation where everybody really had to come together,” said Schneider, now with McBride Consulting and Business Group. “LIPA had concerns about liability, the money was federal and Tim needed to push for the new use, and the project needed a lot of bipartisan support from the county. That included Dan Losquadro and Sarah Anker, who represented the area in the county legislature over the course of the project and fought for it, and community residents.”

Bishop told The Point that reprogramming funds like these is not all that common, but happens particularly with big, vague bills like this funding source, which had the grandiose title “Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century.” And both Bishop and Schneider pointed to it as an example of how potent earmarks can be when local knowledge, cooperation and common sense are engaged.

The trail, running from Crystal Brook Hollow Road in Mount Sinai to Wading River Manor Road in Wading River, opened June 10. And the congressman who originally secured the cash?

Mike Forbes and his wife moved to Texas in 2007, and in 2008 he entered into a five-year program of study in Austin to become a permanent deacon in the Roman Catholic Church, receiving ordination in 2013. He serves on the ecclesiastical court of the Diocese of Austin where he is the vice chancellor.

— Lane Filler @lanefiller

Pencil Point

Midterm tremors

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Reference Point

48 years of sprawl

Suburban sprawl has been both a fact of life and a muttered epithet on Long Island for a half-century or so — depending on whom you ask.

In 1974, the House of Representatives was considering a bill that would have done something about it. A land-use planning bill from Rep. Morris Udall, a Democrat from Arizona, proposed $800 million in grants over eight years for states that chose to participate in land-use planning.

Newsday’s editorial board called the proposal “fine” on June 16, lauding its “enlightened design” that would “help localities avoid future mistakes of the sort that have caused or aggravated so many of today’s problems with the environment, transportation, employment and housing.”

The board, writing shortly after the now-infamous 1973 oil embargo, also said the bill had appeal for Long Island in particular.

“Long Islanders know that the unplanned sprawl that now covers much of Nassau and western Suffolk is foolish, and they want no more of it,” the board wrote. “It has forced many families who can’t afford it to operate two automobiles. It has transformed parents into weekend chauffeurs. It has made the economy subject to the whim of Arab rulers.”

But the House rejected the bill, which the board ascribed to two issues with which modern Long Island voters are familiar.

The first was misinformation. A well-funded campaign by the national Chamber of Commerce and conservative interest groups said wrongly that Udall’s measure was a national zoning bill which, the board noted, “was a baldfaced lie.”

The second issue was impeachment politics. President Richard Nixon, under tremendous fire from Watergate, flip-flopped from supporting the measure to opposing it, courting a bloc of conservatives who were against the bill and whose votes Nixon needed to help stave off impeachment.

Long Island’s two Democratic representatives — Lester Wolff and Otis Pike — voted for the bill. But its four Republican lawmakers — James Grover, Norman Lent, Angelo Roncallo and John Wydler — voted no. They “parroted the presidential turnabout” instead of voting for “the interests of Long Island taxpayers,” the board wrote, which “makes no sense at all.”

With support from those four, the board noted, the legislation would have passed. 

“We are told daily that in spite of Watergate, Mr. Nixon is firmly in control, that he is governing,” Udall said after the vote. “Well, governing is not mortgaging the country’s land for conservative votes on impeachment.”

In the end, Nixon was beyond saving, resigning that August before he could be convicted. And Long Island’s sprawl was beyond stopping, its housing developments, strip malls and traffic proliferating across much of the rest of Suffolk.

— Michael Dobie @mwdobie and Amanda Fiscina @adfiscina