The reruns
Views of the Long Island Sound from Morgan Park in Glen Cove. Credit: Newsday / Audrey C. Tiernan
Happy Friday from The Point! Remember, you can tell us what you think about the Mangano-Venditto trial here and funding schools on LI here.
Daily Point
To the barricades, yet again
Among the many local residents and advocates who took the microphone at Thursday evening’s Empire State Development hearing on the effort to redevelop Belmont Park, one man stood out from the crowd.
When Norman Siegel, the famed civil liberties attorney who previously headed the New York Civil Liberties Union, began to speak, it wasn’t as a local resident, or even as an advocate.
It was as a lawyer, hired by the Belmont Park Community Coalition to represent it in its efforts to protest the state’s plans for the land around Belmont’s racetrack.
“If we come together, we can stop this project,” Siegel told the crowd, to loud cheers and applause.
After he spoke, Siegel told The Point that as of now, he hoped to work “through the process,” referring to Empire State Development’s environmental review and approval effort that’s just getting underway.
“But we never dismiss the possibility of litigation,” Siegel added.
The Belmont Park coalition, an umbrella group of local civic organizations and community advocates, plans to raise money from local residents to pay Siegel.
“We had to hire the best,” said community organizer Tammie Williams.
This isn’t Siegel’s first time representing local communities against large developers — or even those planning to build arenas. More than a decade ago, he represented a group called Develop, Don’t Destroy Brooklyn, in its initial efforts to protest Forest City Ratner’s efforts to build the Barclays Center and surrounding development in Brooklyn.
The Barclays Center, of course, opened in 2012, and the property now known as Pacific Park is under development.
Randi F. Marshall
Pointing Out
A sound omnibus
Buried in the omnibus budget bill just passed by Congress is $12 million for the Environmental Protection Agency’s Long Island Sound program. That’s the highest allocation for that program since it began in 1992. The previous high: $8 million last year.
Both totals came after President Donald Trump zeroed out the funding in his proposed budgets, after a contingent of environmental groups and other advocates traveled to Washington to press their case, and after New York elected officials like Sens. Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand and Reps. Lee Zeldin and Thomas Suozzi fought for the funding.
Which means that the Long Island Sound program — which works to reduce nitrogen, restore habitats and protect wetlands — has gotten more money during the administration of Trump, not known for being a strong environmental advocate, than it did during the administration of noted environmentalist Barack Obama.
Michael Dobie
Talking Point
'Sex and the City' reruns don’t count
Perennial political pot-stirrer E. O’Brian Murray was back in the kitchen Friday, but he was cooking a surprising dish, and his recipe was a bit off.
Murray, a Republican operative who managed the campaigns of former state Sen. Jack Martins in his losing runs for Congress and Nassau County executive, tweeted this Thursday night: “When do the @CynthiaNixon re-runs stop since she is running for Governor? It happened to Fred Thompson on Law & Order as well as @Schwarzenegger”.
But Murray’s contention doesn’t hold much water and by Friday he was backpedaling and calling it a “gray area.”
While it’s true that NBC pulled Thompson’s “Law and Order” reruns in 2007 during Thompson’s presidential run to comply with FCC “equal time” regulations, cable network TNT did not. That’s because those regulations apply to broadcast, not cable transmissions. And while FX chose not to run Schwarzenegger movies during his California gubernatorial run in 2003, likely because of its relationship to broadcast network Fox, HBO and other cable stations continued to do so.
The screenshot Murray included showed Nixon in “Sex in the City” on cable station Bravo.
Cable shows might be forced to comply, too, but so far the courts have not ruled on the matter.
But what’s (far) more surprising than Murray being wrong is Murray going after Nixon. In theory, every good thing that happens to her is bad for Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who Murray consistently heckles. Murray is not currently pulling a paycheck in this gubernatorial campaign, but his Twitter feed shows a lot of affection for GOP contender Dutchess County Executive Mark Molinaro, and very little for his rival John DeFrancisco, the veteran upstate senator.
So why stir this pot? Just because. Murray said Friday: “I contend when Nixon is on the ballot it will drive Cuomo crazy and he will have to decide if he wants to test the law or just accept it.”
Lane Filler
