Who lives in the 15th Assembly District?

Daily Point

New living arrangements

In the only open race in this year’s Assembly matchups across Long Island, Democrat Amanda Field, of Old Bethpage, is taking on Republican Jake Blumencranz in the 15th Assembly District.

But during an editorial board endorsement session this week, Field raised an issue over where Blumencranz lives and is registered to vote.

Field, a Plainview water district commissioner, said that she was a longtime resident of the district, but that Blumencranz, who works in insurance, was not.

“I actually do live in this district and I have for many years,” Field said. “As far as I know, I don’t believe he lives in the district or can vote for himself.”

Blumencranz told the editorial board during the meeting he lives in the hamlet of Oyster Bay, was registered to vote in the district, and “will be voting in the fire station in the town of Oyster Bay this coming November 8.”

The Point reached out to the Nassau County Board of Elections, where records show that Blumencranz is registered to vote at an address in Jericho — in the 13th Assembly District.

A check of the state’s Assembly redistricting maps shows that Blumencranz’s address was in the 13th AD before the new lines were drawn, too.

But whether or not a candidate’s district has changed, state election law has a provision that during a redistricting year, candidates can run for office in one district and live in another, as long as they live in the correct county. If they win, they don’t even have to move into the district until 12 months before they have to run for office again, according to state election officials.

When The Point told Blumencranz what it found, Blumencranz explained his situation. The Jericho address, he said, is his parents’ house where he had been living until earlier this month, when he signed a lease and moved to his own place in Oyster Bay — AD 15. He said he filed change of address paperwork on Sept. 20, including a change of registration. But as of Friday, county Board of Elections officials said they had no record of the change.

Win or lose, Blumencranz told The Point of Oyster Bay, “It’s my home now.”

— Randi F. Marshall @RandiMarshall

Talking Point

Paying, and borrowing, for pensions

When the state in 2010 changed the laws surrounding pension contributions from local governments to allow counties, towns and villages to amortize the payments over 10 years, fiscal conservatives sounded the alarm: The ability to essentially borrow the money for a decade (the maximum length of the term was increased to 12 years in 2013) would certainly help as pension rates skyrocketed in response to the Great Recession then crushing the value of New York’s pension funds.

But if pension rates spiked again later, municipalities would be in double trouble, saddled with old pension debt and challenged to pay current high rates.

That hasn’t happened much yet, but it’s starting to, and if stock and bond values don’t recover by March 31, 2023, the problems the budget curmudgeons predicted may arrive.

On Sept. 1, State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli announced that the rate for 2023-2024 would increase from 11.6% to 13.1% of payroll for the Employees Retirement System and from 27% to 27.8% for the Police and Fire Retirement System.

That’s not so bad, but it was predicated on the March 31 value of the state fund, $272 billion.

On March 31, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 34,678. Friday, it closed at 29,590, a decline of 14.67%. Every other index has similarly plunged. Bonds, too, have plummeted in value as rates increased.

DiNapoli said the fund is about 50% stocks, mostly domestic.

So the next announcement of pension rates could be brutal. And for Nassau County and several Long Island towns still paying on pension costs from as far back as 2013, the double-whammy could be rough.

As of March 31, the most recent date for which DiNapoli’s office could provide figures:

• Nassau County owes $34,003,987 for years 2013-2021.
• Glen Cove owes $551,572 for the years 2013-2015.
• Long Beach owes $1,639,714 for the years 2013-2015.
• Hempstead Town owes $7,817,425 for the years 2013-2016.
• Oyster Bay Town owes $9,174,813 for the years 2013-2017.
• North Hempstead Town owes $1,597, 357 for the years 2013-2016.
• Huntington Town owes $368,249 for 2013.
• Islip Town owes $1,225,654 for the years 2013-2015.
• Babylon Town owes $197,202 from 2013.

Of course, if the rates do really ratchet up, the municipalities have a simple solution.

They can just borrow the money.

Again.

— Lane Filler @lanefiller

Pencil Point

No nose

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

Final Point

Dude, where’s my car?

The editorial board is closing out its second week of endorsement interview season, when we talk with Long Island and statewide candidates running for office in November.

One issue we’ve heard a lot about so far: crime.

That’s no surprise, given the suite of changes to the criminal justice system passed in recent years by state Democrats, and criticisms from state Republicans who blame those changes for incidences of crime. It’s an Albany debate that seems sure to continue as certain crime categories spike, and both sides are already parsing new rearrest rate data.

But for Vibhuti Jha, a GOP candidate taking on Democratic incumbent Gina Sillitti in Assembly District 16, crime recently hit a little closer to home. Just hours before his interview with the Newsday board, he said, his family’s white BMW X5 was stolen from where it was parked in front of his Port Washington home.

Jha, a business turnaround specialist and former banker, says that “fortunately” the car had a GPS system in it, and the family was able to track the vehicle to the Newark, New Jersey port.

Jha says he filed a police report and police “immediately got the car back.” But it was damaged internally due to the thief or thieves trying to disable the locator system. The leased car is being worked on at a dealership, he said.

A call to Port Washington police about the police report was not returned.

Jha said he did not know anything about the robbers or how the car was accessed, though he somewhat predictably tied the incident to bail reform due to a sense that people may feel less threatened by pretrial detention and thus more likely to trend toward “general lawlessness.”

But he did learn some specific local lessons. He said police informed him that other cars had been stolen on the same street, and also that car thieves have targeted high-end BMWs and Mercedes vehicles but haven’t tended to succeed in disabling the GPS systems.

“If the GPS system was disabled,” he said, “we wouldn’t have found the car.”

— Mark Chiusano @mjchiusano

Programming Point

The Point will be back on Wednesday, Sept. 28. Happy Jewish New Year!