Speaker Heastie's ethics man from LI

Daily Point

Eyes on pick for new ethics panel

With the state’s new Commission on Ethics and Lobbying in Government still in preparation, Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie announced that he intends to nominate Leonard B. Austin, a retired state Supreme Court justice from Long Island, for a seat on the panel.

Heastie’s selection of Austin, currently a special professor of law at Hofstra University School of Law, draws a bit of extra interest for those who follow local legal and political circles.

Austin was briefly in the news six years ago when Newsday’s investigation team delved into how and when court files are sealed from the bench at the request of parties in various cases. The only seal order found from Austin was at the request of prominent, politically connected lawyer Howard Fensterman, who coordinated fundraising on Long Island for Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and Sen. Chuck Schumer.

The order from 2008 covered four lawsuits. They involved Fensterman and his longtime client and business associate Ben Landa, who oversaw the rise of the major for-profit nursing home network SentosaCare LLC. In his sealing order, as reported then, Austin provided no basis for favoring the privacy interests of the parties over public interest in the cases, the presumed basis of the decision.

In 2009, Gov. David A. Paterson tapped Austin, a Democrat, for the Appellate Division. When Austin was up for reelection in 2012, Fensterman’s firm donated $3,000 to his successful campaign, it was reported at the time.

When the ethics panel was created under law to succeed the widely maligned Joint Commission on Public Ethics, its makeup was modified to reduce the influence of the legislative leaders and the governor, which had caused credibility problems at JCOPE.

The new commission consists of 11 board members nominated by state elected officials and approved by a selection committee comprising the 15 state-accredited law school deans or their designees, who are assigned to carry out a rigorous vetting process. The board members will initially serve staggered terms of differing lengths.

Heastie also announced plans to nominate for the commission Robert E. Torres, also a retired state Supreme Court justice who had served in the Bronx, the speaker’s home borough.

— Dan Janison @Danjanison

Correction: In the Thursday newsletter, this item misstated the overall structure of the state’s new ethics panel. 

Reference Point

It’s always about local representation

The frustration bubbles up periodically: Long Island doesn’t get its share of federal dollars. Advocates for the region’s roads made such a claim just this spring.

The echo goes back at least to 1977, when Newsday’s editorial board examined the issue in a July 14 editorial called “Providing a Focus For All Long Island.”

The bottom line: Being overlooked was a result of Long Island’s lack of representation, which the board noted was a contrast to the many people interested in running for town and county offices that year.

“Yet Long Island as a whole, a region more populous than 23 states, remains essentially leaderless,” the board wrote. “And that accounts in large measure for the short shrift the Nassau-Suffolk area receives on transportation, federal spending and industrial relocation.”

The board’s point was that Long Island lacked a political structure that represented all Long Islanders — a deficit that remains today. That complaint is a theme that runs throughout American history. No taxation without representation. Fights over gerrymandered voting districts.

On Long Island, representation frustration has led to calls for the region to become the 51st state in the union, and for the five towns on the East End to become Peconic County. Bills have been introduced at times in the State Legislature to study both issues. In 1996, 71% of East End residents voted to create Peconic County in a nonbinding referendum.

Needless to say, Long Island to this day is only a region and Peconic County still a dream.

In 1977, Newsday’s board wrote that the first step toward gaining federal recognition of Long Island as a separate economic entity had taken place four years earlier when Nassau and Suffolk were split apart from New York City for “statistical record-keeping purposes.”

The board was hopeful that the Carter administration would recognize a bicounty planning commission headed by former banker Harold Gleason as the gateway for federal funding rather than the Tristate Regional Planning Commission. Interesting side note: Gleason later was convicted, in 1979, for his role in concealing millions of dollars of losses for Franklin National Bank before it was declared insolvent in 1974.

The Tristate commission had been created in 1965 by the legislatures of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut in response to federal calls to coordinate transportation spending. Housing and environmental programs were added in 1971. The commission’s jurisdiction extended 75 miles in every direction from Times Square.

In 1982, the commission fell apart and was replaced by the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council, which jettisoned the other two states but lumped Long Island in with New York City and the lower Hudson Valley. In other words, when it came to federal funding for transportation, Long Island was still just part of a whole.

One of the Newsday board’s complaints in 1977 still has resonance. How, it wondered, could the Tristate commission “deal effectively with the Island’s special needs when its mandate spreads over the entire New York-New Jersey-Connecticut metropolitan region, which contains 18 million persons and 581 local governments?”

Savvy local observers might perk up at that last total, wondering whether it might have been an undercount. It is a 45-year-old tally, of course, but Long Island alone now has 507 local government entities, according to the state comptroller’s office.

And therein lies the rub: Long Island does indeed like local control and autonomy, but the more local the better.

— Michael Dobie @mwdobie and Amanda Fiscina @adfiscina

Pencil Point

Who's where in the pecking order

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

Data Point

NY ranks in property tax revenue

According to Porch.com’s analysis of Census Bureau data, property taxes are the second-largest source of U.S. state and local tax revenue, ranging from a high of 36.5% for New Hampshire to a low of 6.9% for Alabama. New York comes in at #11 with property taxes making up 18.9% of its general tax revenue.

At the county level, however, property tax revenue for Nassau County accounts for 25% of its total revenue — higher than the state average. For New York City and Westchester County, the proportion is even higher at 30%, while Suffolk County is slightly lower at 18.2%.

Another way to look at the data is to rank the states by property tax revenue per capita. In that frame, New York ranks fourth at $3,180 per capita. New Jersey leads the list at $3,513 per capita, while Alabama still comes in lowest at $620 per capita.

The state average on per capita property tax revenue is, again, wildly different at the county level. In New York City, the per capita property tax revenue is a whopping $3,580, but for Nassau and Suffolk counties it’s only $609 and $479, respectively. Westchester, in comparison, hovers between our two counties at $587 per capita.

— Kai Teoh @jkteoh