A friendlier LI county exec goes to Albany

Daily Point

Romaine to Hochul: You're welcome in Suffolk

One top Long Island elected official was in Albany Tuesday for Gov. Kathy Hochul’s State of the State address. Suffolk County Executive Ed Romaine was seated in the VIP section behind New York City Mayor Eric Adams. After the governor’s speech, Romaine stopped by her office to shake her hand and deliver a message: “Governor, you will always be welcome in Suffolk. You and your office will always be respected and any discussions in public we have will be about things we agree upon,” said Romaine, according to his spokesman Mike Martino. Hochul smiled and said, “Thank you.”

Romaine’s fostering of a positive relationship is another contrast with fellow Republican Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman whose rude treatment of Hochul at the Long Island Association breakfast Friday was a topic of discussion at some of the Albany pre-speech receptions Monday evening. Romaine's first executive order upon taking office was to remove all the names of elected officials from county signage, unlike Blakeman who has only made his name bigger and more visible across Nassau County since taking office in 2022.

Also in town for the annual ritual were two Democrats, former Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone, who doesn’t currently have a job, and his former deputy Jon Kaiman who in November lost his bid to regain the town supervisor’s post in North Hempstead. “Bellone and I drove up for old times sake,” Kaiman texted The Point, adding that they stopped on the way in White Plains to have coffee with “our friend” Westchester County Executive George Latimer, who has announced a bid for Congress. Kaiman said he and Bellone “said hello from Long Island to our governor” while enjoying the reunion with “folks from around the state.”

Kaiman, who drove, said the two were enjoying “a brief respite of having no responsibilities for storms and other such things.”

— Rita Ciolli rita.ciolli@newsday.com

Pencil Point

An 'upscale' party

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Final Point

Could NY look at Southampton College, other state-owned land, for housing?

In her State of the State speech Tuesday, Kathy Hochul mentioned the critical need for more housing in New York while acknowledging the brutal political pushback she received, especially on Long Island. Her new strategy is to take a look at state-owned land, noting that such a portfolio could include SUNY properties.

There was little detail, but a likely candidate could be the underutilized former Southampton College which closed in 2005. The more than 80-acre campus is now part of Stony Brook University, and is home to a graduate arts program and the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences.

But if the fight to build affordable housing on the East End of Long Island is anything like the saga surrounding Liberty Gardens, new housing on the available parts of the state-owned land might be a long time in coming.

Here’s the latest on the Liberty Gardens proposal.

In the final week of 2023 and the last days of Jay Schneiderman’s four-term tenure as Southampton Town supervisor, Liberty Gardens was his singular focus.

Schneiderman’s goal: to approve the completion of the final environmental impact statement for the 50-unit Liberty Gardens proposal, half of which would be affordable workforce housing and half of which would be set aside for veterans in need of supportive housing.

Residents have objected, raising common concerns of traffic and crowding and more specific and unusual concerns over the veterans’ housing, which is geared toward homeless veterans with disabilities, including those with post-traumatic stress and other mental health challenges. The residents have suggested the developer was out to make a profit, even though Concern Housing (formerly Concern for Independent Living) is a not-for-profit entity.

After nearly two hours of mostly negative public comment on Dec. 28, the board voted 3-2 in favor of deeming the environmental impact statement complete. That vote kicked off a 90-day period before the new town board will have to determine the fate of the development.

Schneiderman said he took the project as far as he could in the process, telling The Point he had hoped to get the vote onto the agenda of the board’s regular meeting earlier in the month but did not have enough support to add it as a “walk on” item — hence the need for the special meeting.

“It’s really easy to pander to the opposition,” Schneiderman said. “It’s much more difficult to stand tall in the face of that headwind knowing you’re addressing a critical need for your community that may not be popular.”

The resulting vote, he said, was primarily procedural — a recognition that the environmental review process was complete and that all questions raised during it were addressed.

“It would have been nice if I could vote for the actual project, but I can’t,” Schneiderman said. “All we can say is the final EIS has fully answered the questions.”

Two town board members — Cyndi McNamara and Tommy John Schiavoni — will continue to serve on the board in 2024. Schiavoni voted in favor of the environmental impact statement; McNamara voted against. They’ll be joined by new supervisor Maria Moore and new board members Bill Pell and Michael Iasilli. It’s unclear where the new members stand on the Liberty Gardens project or when they’ll vote on it, although Pell spoke against the environmental review completion vote last month.

Ralph Fasano, who heads Concern Housing, told The Point Tuesday that he is hoping to get Moore, Pell and Iasilli to visit some of his other, similar developments in an effort to gain their support. He said he expects there could be a vote on the proposal as soon as next month.

“Now is a really critical time,” Fasano said.

But Fasano faces an uphill battle, particularly when it comes to McNamara, who has been a vocal opponent of the development and drew particular ire from Schneiderman last month.

“They must house veterans with a discharge that is other than honorable, so take that into consideration when we’re deciding this,” McNamara said during the end-of-the-year meeting. “I know the heartstrings have been pulled that this is for veterans, [but] this has to be supported for veterans who are other than honorably discharged.”

Schneiderman pushed back during the meeting, saying she was implying potential veteran residents were dishonorably discharged, when they simply had a disability.

Schneiderman told The Point that he worried about the future of Liberty Gardens — and other efforts to build affordable housing, especially considering the vitriol.

“Who is going to try to build affordable housing when it’s like swimming against Niagara Falls, when the systemic blocks are so insurmountable?” Schneiderman said. “We moved it one step closer to the goalposts, but I really have no idea what the fate is.”

— Randi F. Marshall randi.marshall@newsday.com

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