LI movers and shakers in Albany for Hochul's State of the State

Daily Point

Monday night's LI party was a draw 

In the lead-up to Gov. Kathy Hochul’s State of the State speech Tuesday, hundreds of Long Islanders headed to Albany.

But for some, the real event came Monday night, when a cross-section of more than 250 local public officials, advocates, business leaders and others gathered at the Hilton Albany for a Long Island-specific reception, where even Hochul made an appearance.

The annual pre-speech gathering has come a long way since it was started about a decade ago by then-Long Island Association chief executive Kevin Law, when about 50 people met at Jack’s Oyster House, an establishment that has since closed.

This year, the reception — cosponsored by key Long Island advocates like the Long Island Association, Long Island Builders Institute, Long Island Contractors’ Association and Association for a Better Long Island — bore a striking resemblance to a smaller version of the State of the Region luncheon that was held Friday at the Crest Hollow Country Club, where Hochul also spoke.

"Everybody you saw on Friday, you drove hundreds of miles to see them again on Monday," one source told The Point.

Everybody ... except Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman. While state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli and members of the state Assembly and Senate representing parts of Nassau County were there, none of the county leadership — including Blakeman — attended.

That left an eastern tilt to the gathering — especially in terms of the elected officials in attendance. Suffolk County Executive Ed Romaine, Suffolk County Clerk Vincent Puleo, Suffolk District Attorney Ray Tierney, Islip Town Supervisor Angie Carpenter and Suffolk County Legislature Presiding Officer Kevin McCaffrey — all Republicans — attended. Suffolk Legis. Jason Richberg, the Democrat leader, was there, too.

During Hochul’s brief appearance at the Monday event, she specifically mentioned Romaine by name, attendees said, continuing a trend that began last year, when Romaine stopped by Hochul’s office after her State of the State speech to welcome her to Suffolk County.

At Hochul’s speech on Tuesday, Romaine got a second-row seat, right behind the governor’s husband, he told The Point.

"It was a speech that talked about all the wishes and dreams that people think about when they think about the state," Romaine said. "Thank you for putting together an agenda. Now we have to figure out two things: One, how do we get it done. And two, how do we pay for it."

Romaine said he still is seeking the key items on Suffolk’s wish list: funds for sewer upgrades, road improvements and electrification for the Long Island Rail Road.

"You don’t win many friends by beating up people. You win by working with people and trying to find common ground," Romaine told The Point. "I’m here to create a relationship, I’m here to build a partnership, I’m here to work with the governor on things that will benefit Suffolk County and the state overall."

Long Island got only a couple of vague mentions from the governor during Tuesday’s speech, including a reference to offshore wind and a shoutout to the Long Island Rail Road. There was no talk of some of the Island’s biggest issues, including the future of Nassau University Medical Center and the fight for the three expected downstate casino licenses, a decision expected later this year.

Nonetheless, even without a reference from Hochul, the casino issue was alive and well in Albany this week. Among the sponsors of Monday’s Long Island gathering: Sands New York, which is expected to bid for a casino resort at the Nassau Hub.

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

Pencil Point

Unbelievable

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Final Point

LI local officials warned about defect complaints

For Long Island’s many municipalities, the multimillion-dollar question of what constitutes a government’s prior knowledge of a defect in its infrastructure has the potential to grow into a potentially difficult legal project.

That’s the fallout from a recent ruling by the state’s top court that describing a problem such as a major pothole on SeeClickFix — a web-based civilian-complaint system — can help support a future lawsuit for vehicle damage if the flaw goes unfixed. The high court ruled 7-0 last month that "written notice" can come electronically on the app.

The New York State Conference of Mayors, or NYCOM, representing 576 of the state’s cities and villages (some towns use SeeClickFix, too) now prominently posts a warning to its government members on its website.

The warning urges officials to review the Court of Appeals decision and their prior written-notice-of-defect laws with an eye toward amending them. The idea, NYCOM suggests, is to "limit their local government's exposure from electronically submitted written reports of defects."

Local laws should be "clear as to how such written notices of defect must be filed with the local government (e.g., by hand, first class or certified mail)."

"NYCOM is working with attorneys who specialize in municipal tort defense to develop a sample local law," the organization’s latest posting says.

The organization filed a friend-of-the-court brief to help what turned out to be the losing side of the Court of Appeals case, Calabrese v. City of Albany.

In that filing, NYCOM general counsel Wade Beltramo argued that websites and apps such as SeeClickFix "are extremely imprecise methods for cataloguing defects in municipal infrastructure."

Also, the group said, the ruling would open up applications and websites such as Facebook, X, Instagram, Threads and YouTube as means of written notice. That would eviscerate limited protections the state gives these municipalities and their taxpayers, the brief said.

While SeeClickFix and other apps are "valuable tools" for communicating with the public, NYCOM said that making them the basis of liability claims would unfortunately give local officials an incentive to make it more difficult to report defects.

Now that the case has been decided, the public will get to see whether these warnings were valid.

— Dan Janison dan.janison@newsday.com

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