Suffolk Closeup: Commission Declares LIPA Should Be Public Will Lobbyists Get In The Way

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

The Legislative Commission on the Future of the Long Island Power Authority, a bipartisan eight-member panel, has concluded that LIPA should be a full public utility and operate the electric system on Long Island itself, not contract out the work.

This comes as PSEG, the Newark, New Jersey-based utility which former Governor Andrew Cuomo in 2011 arranged to get a contract to run the Long Island grid, has been involved in intense lobbying of state officials to keep doing it. 

The commission’s just-out report said cutting out PSEG would provide a saving of $50 million to $80 million a year “by eliminating the fee paid to PSEG” and “allow LIPA’s board of trustees to lower rates or mitigate future rate increases, upgrade grid structure, invest in climate-friendly green initiatives” and “support struggling residents and businesses.”

State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele, Jr., the commission’s co-chair, said of PSEG’s lobbying: “If PSEG had actually been doing its job through the years, it would not need to spend millions of dollars on lobbying efforts to keep its contact.” 

“The fact is that PSEG’s operation on Long Island received the lowest rating for customer satisfaction last year in a J.D. Power survey,” said Thiele, a Sag Harbor Democrat. 

He called the PSEG lobbying a “last ditch” move.

The commission’s decision to have LIPA run the grid itself—the original vision when LIPA was established in 1986—“will save the ratepayers money,” said Thiele, and enable “more transparency, more accountability” than continuing to have a “third-party” structure, “the only one in the country” for a utility.

Also, the report calls for a “reforming of the LIPA board,” he noted, with the addition of “five members by local governments and the creation of a Community Stakeholder Board.”

Newsday on October 31 published an expose on what the headline of the two-page spread described as PSEG’s “Lobbying Blitz.” The piece, by Mark Harrington, who covers energy for the newspaper, began: “A PSEG Long Island executive and vocal critic of a state legislative plan to convert LIPA to a fully public utility had private meetings to lobby Gov. Kathy Hochul and other top state officials this summer, recently filed state records show.” 

“In addition” to this lobbying by Christopher Hahn, senior director and vice president of governmental affairs for PSEG on Long Island, the piece said records “show the company used Tonio Burgos & Associates and Mercury Public Affairs to lobby state agencies and officials.”

Senator Anthony Palumbo, a commission member and a Republican from New Suffolk, said of the commission’s report: “Long Islanders pay some of the highest electric rates in the country. We as elected officials must do all we can to protect ratepayers while at the same time ensuring that our system is storm hardened and help is accessible to customers. This investigative process has allowed us to learn more about the issues we face with the current model and the challenges that lie ahead. My focus throughout this process has been to formulate a proposal that will lower costs for Long Island families and businesses, ensure reliable service, protect workers, and provide a governing model with local control and accountability. Now, we must continue to work together to achieve these critical goals.”

For the report’s recommendations to be enacted, there will need to be support from the state legislature and Governor Hochul, a Democrat, and the Newsday expose pointed to ties between those lobbying for PSEG and some Democratic politicians. 

“Listed among the [Burgos] lobbyists working on the PSEG account is Kristen Walsh, who is president of the firm and formerly worked for U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand,” it related.
“Walsh, like Hahn had worked on the staff of U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer.” The expose also noted that “Power Long Island, a political action committee funded by PSEG entities, contributed $5,000 to Hochul’s campaign last year, the PAC’s largest single donation, records show.”

Further, it said “campaign finance records” showed Power Long Island giving $2,000 to State Senator Monica Martinez last year. A Brentwood Democrat, she was the only member of the commission to vote against approving its report saying “the numbers are not there in my opinion” for annual savings of $50 million to $80 million.

Lisa Tyson, executive director of the Long Island Progressive Coalition, a leader in seeking to have LIPA operate the electric grid itself, said: “It’s an important milestone on the path to public power that the LIPA commission voted up this report. A lot of spadework and research went into it” and “clears the way for the New York State Legislature to vote on a bill to enable the switch in the 2024 legislative session, keeping us on track to make the transition before PSEG’s contract expires in 2025….That’s the way it should be, and the way LIPA was always intended to be run. Long Island’s ratepayers are the owners of the LIPA system as well as its customers. They deserve a real voice in how their utility is run, and once public power passes the legislature, they’ll get it.”

Karl Grossman is a veteran investigative reporter and columnist, the winner of numerous awards for his work and a member of the L.I. Journalism Hall of Fame. He is a professor of journalism at SUNY/College at Old Westbury and the author of six books. 

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP: Election Results Good News For Suffolk County

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

The election last week of Republican Ed Romaine, the Brookhaven Town supervisor, for Suffolk County executive, and of Democrat Steve Englebright back to the Suffolk County Legislature, mark some very good news for government in the county.

In a list I would put together of the ten finest public officials I’ve covered in my 60 years of writing about Suffolk government, Romaine and Englebright would be on it.

Other good news out of the 2023 election includes the win of Ann Welker to the Suffolk Legislature. A solid environmentalist, she has been the first female member of the Southampton Town Trustees, the panel that oversees the town’s marine resources, since it was established in 1686.

Regarding women and this year’s election, in 1973 Judith Hope became the first woman elected as a town supervisor in Suffolk. What a difference a half-century makes!

This year among women elected to town supervisor spots in Suffolk’s 10 towns were, in Southampton, Democrat Maria Moore, the Westhampton Beach mayor, along with Democrat Kathee Burke-Gonzalez, a member of the East Hampton Town Board, as the new supervisor of East Hampton. In Islip Town, Republican Angie Carpenter, a former county legislator and county clerk, was re-elected town supervisor, and on Shelter Island (according to initial results) Republican Amber Brach-Williams, a town board member, was elected town supervisor.

This shouldn’t go unnoticed in a county which, until the Suffolk Legislature was created in 1970, the county’s governing body, the Suffolk County Board of Supervisors, established in 1683, for all those centuries consisted only of men.

Regarding Romaine, as a member of the Suffolk Legislature for two series of years—between which he was county clerk—he was highly-independent, creative in his approach to government, sensitive to the needs of constituents and highly competent. These were years when the Long Island Lighting Company was pushing hard on a scheme to construct seven to eleven nuclear power plants in Suffolk County. Romaine stood strong. The plan was stopped and the one plant built, at Shoreham, closed after problem-riddled “low power” testing.

On a wide range of environmental issues, Romaine, as a legislator and town supervisor, has stood strong, why he has been repeatedly endorsed by environmental organizations as a candidate for the legislature and supervisor, and lately as a nominee for county executive. Before getting involved in government, he was a history teacher at Hauppauge High School. In his nearly four decades in government he has endeavored to make a reality of the ideals he taught.

As for Englebright, as a member of the Suffolk Legislature and then, for 30 years, a member of the State Assembly, he was a leading environmental figure in the county and then state. He was long chair of the Assembly’s Environmental Conservation Committee. On the county and state levels, he was the prime sponsor of numerous measures on the environment.  

He suffered a narrow loss of his Assembly seat last year. But he decided to run again for the Suffolk Legislature saying: “There’s a lot of work that still needs to be done.”

Englebright was central to the preservation of the Long Island Pine Barrens. He founded the Museum of Long Island Natural Sciences at Stony Brook University and its first exhibit was on the Pine Barrens. A geologist, he understood the purity of the water beneath them, how their sandy porous soil allows rainwater to migrate cleanly down to the aquifers on which Long Islanders depend as their sole source of potable water.

In the 1970s and early 80s, hardly anyone else in this area understood this. The Pine Barrens were considered scrub and wasteland—not important like land along the shoreline or farmland. That first exhibit focused on where the Hauppauge Industrial Park had been built—on top of Pine Barrens. Englebright decided it “was basically unethical to simply document the passing of the ecosystem.” So he decided to get into politics—running for the Suffolk Legislature—and through government getting environmental action. 

He taught me and many others about the huge significance of the Pine Barrens. He would take people, one at a time, up Danger Hill in Manorville. From the top of it, one could see the Long Island Sound to the north, bays and the Atlantic Ocean to the south, and to the west and east great stretches of green Pine Barrens. We were looking, said Englebright, at “Long Island’s reservoir.” He went on to be a critical figure in the passage of the Long Island Pine Barrens Protection Act of 1993 which saved more than 100,000 acres of Pine Barrens.

A loss for the Suffolk Legislature—but a great gain for the Town of Southold in the election—was fourth-generation Suffolk farmer Al Krupski of Cutchogue, an extraordinary county legislator, running for and in a landslide winning the supervisor’s spot in Southold.

Krupski’s chief of staff, Republican Catherine Stark, who describes environmental issues as a top priority, won the election to replace him on the legislature.  

In his victory comments election night, Democrat Krupski spoke of interchanges with residents during the campaign and their message of how eastern Long Island is “really nice, and you can see how quickly it can be ruined. People see the value in what we have here.” 

Considering Romaine, Englebright, Welker, Krupski, Moore, Burke-Gonzalez and Stark, among other winners last week, in that regard Suffolk County is in very capable hands. 

Karl Grossman is a veteran investigative reporter and columnist, the winner of numerous awards for his work and a member of the L.I. Journalism Hall of Fame. He is a professor of journalism at SUNY/College at Old Westbury and the author of six books. 

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP: With Climate Change "Resilience" Is Not Enough

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

“We know this is the result of climate change,” said New York Governor Kathy Hochul after Tropical Storm Ophelia struck this region in September with eight inches of rain in Suffolk County and more than nine in New York City where cars floated in streets and rail and subway service was crippled. “This event was historic. In some areas, it was recording-shattering.”

Late October provided an encore of hot weather. On October 28 in Suffolk the temperature hit 83. In many U.S. cities during the summer, temperatures exceeded 100 degrees. It was 110 in Phoenix for 54 days, a record.

The summer of 2023 was the Earth’s hottest since global records began in 1880, according to scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute. 

And then last week, the temperature in Suffolk dived into the lower 30s—a reminder of how climate change delivers extreme weather.

In Canada, the opposite of torrential rain and flooding occurred in 2023. Drought fueled intense wildfires—the worst in Canada’s history—sending smoke south, impacting the air here.

Meanwhile, in Mexico there was a happening last month that represented an especially ominous trend for Suffolk and many coastal areas. In 12 hours wind speeds in what had been a mild storm increased by 115 mph. And Category 5 hurricane named Otis, with winds of 165 mph, struck and wrecked Acapulco with its million people. It was the first Category 5 hurricane ever to hit the Pacific coasts of North or South America. 

“In a single day, Hurricane Otis went from a nuisance to a monster,” reported NBC News, noting how the U.S. National Hurricane Center described it as having “explosively intensified” in a “nightmare scenario.” 

The cause: warmer waters all over the planet for hurricanes and typhoons to feed on, a result of climate change. 

What does this portend for this area with ocean waters off Suffolk increasingly warmer—and forecast to become yet warmer if climate change isn’t stopped? A recent study in the journal Science Reports concluded that “rapid intensification” of storms is becoming more common and, said Dr. Andra J. Garner, a climate scientist who directed it, “increased chances of storms intensifying most quickly in regions that include,” yes, “a region along the U.S. East Coast.”

What’s to be done? What can be done?

In Suffolk, the big word these days regarding climate change is “resilience.” Indeed, there are steps that need to be taken such as restoring and expanding wetlands along our shores to soften the impact of storms. 

Still, the causes of climate change or global warming must be tackled—and widely—not just trying to deal with effects. The main cause: the burning of fossil fuels.

Pope Francis thoroughly understands this as do virtually all scientists. Last month he issued a 28-page statement addressed “To All People of Good Will on the Climate Crisis.”

“Despite all attempts to deny, conceal, gloss over or relativize the issue, the signs of climate change are here and increasingly evident,” wrote the leader of the Catholic Church. “No one can ignore the fact that in recent years we have witnessed extreme weather phenomena, frequent periods of unusual heat, drought and other cries of protest on the part of the earth that are only a few palpable expressions of a silent disease that affects everyone.”

He detailed the series of international conferences seeking to limit greenhouse gas emissions. But, “Despite the many negotiations and agreements, global emissions continue to increase” and “the necessary transition towards clean energy sources such as wind and solar energy, and the abandonment of fossil fuels, is not progressing at the necessary speed.”

Pope Francis protested that “gas and oil companies are planning new projects.”

Indeed, in October—as The New York Times reported—“Exxon Mobil and Chevron, the two largest U.S. oil companies, this month committed to spending more than $50 billion each to buy smaller companies in deals that would let them produce more oil and natural gas for decades to come. But a day after Chevron announced its acquisition, the International Energy Agency released an exhaustive report concluding that demand for oil, gas and other fossil fuels would peak by 2030 as sales of electric cars and use of renewable energy surged. The disconnect between what oil companies and many energy experts think will happen in the coming years has never been quite this stark. But oil companies are doubling down on drilling for oil and gas and processing it into fuels for use in engines, power plants and industrial machinery.”

As for government leaders, Governor Hochul just announced new New York green energy initiatives in a statement headed: “Nation’s Largest-Ever State Investment in Renewable Energy.”

But the new speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, flatly denies climate change is caused by burning fossil fuels. He’s from Louisiana, a top state in the nation for drilling and processing oil and gas. 

Karl Grossman is a veteran investigative reporter and columnist, the winner of numerous awards for his work and a member of the L.I. Journalism Hall of Fame. He is a professor of journalism at SUNY/College at Old Westbury and the author of six books. 

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP: "We're All Affected"

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

“No I’m not OK! That’s how I want to respond when people ask me how I’m doing,” said Rabbi Josh Franklin opening a “Rally in Solidarity with Israel” held at the Jewish Center of the Hamptons in East Hampton. 

“I’m angry. I’m sad. I’m disgusted. In pain. My heart hurts. And my soul feels crushed,” said the rabbi. “It might feel easier to say I’m fine, but let’s be honest, we’re not fine. None of us are really OK, and that’s why we’re here.”

Some 300 people filled the synagogue the evening of October 11. There were so many in its sanctuary that the overflow had to go to a social hall below to watch those speaking on a large video screen, hear JCOH Cantor Debra Stein sing, and participate in reciting psalms with those in the sanctuary.

“What we’re experiencing right now is trauma,” said Rabbi Jan Uhrbach of The Bridge Shul. “We’re all affected differently. But we’re all affected. Even as we look to identify and care for those in immediate peril and in greatest need, it’s important to recognize that we all need some care right now, in different ways, to different degrees.”

“We need to find moments of calm amid fear and heartbreak and we need to know we’re not alone,” said Rabbi Uhrbach of the Bridgehampton-based congregation.

“We discover in the psalms that there’s nothing we’re feeling now that hasn’t been felt by our ancient ancestors thousands of years ago and in all the generations between—it’s all in there,” she said. “We have been here before, we’ve survived.”

Rabbi Uhrbach led in reading Psalm 142 which says: “They have laid a trap in the path I walk….Listen to my cry, for I have been brought very low; save me from my pursuers.” Yet, “The righteous find glory.” 

Those attending the rally included young and old. 

Rabbis joined in messages of hope—and strength. 

Not only Jews but those of other faiths were there including public officials. Among them were Suffolk County Legislator Bridget Fleming, Southampton Town Councilman Tommy John Schiavoni, East Hampton Councilwoman Kathee Burke Gonzalez and East Hampton Village Mayor Jerry Larsen.

And there was Southampton Town Supervisor Jay Schneiderman who is Jewish and whose mother’s family in Hungary was murdered in the Holocaust.

Schneiderman after the rally ended commented that “it is very important that elected officials stand with the people of Israel during this time defending themselves against the terror of Hamas and to send a clear message that Israel’s sovereignty and homeland security needs to be protected.”

“This is not a time for silence,” he said.

Rabbi Franklin of JCOH in his opening remarks also said: “A weird thing happened to me over the weekend, Saturday night: a freak accident. I scratched my cornea. And one of the results of that was tears were streaming down my face. Yet my eyes were already swollen and my cheeks were already damp from all the crying that I was doing during the day. And I couldn’t tell if crying was because of the pain in my eye or the excruciating agony in my heart.”

“These have been some of my hardest days in my ten years as a rabbi. I’ve never felt so close to teetering from internal anger to externalized rage. I want to remain calm and collected, but, quite honestly, I’m having a lot of trouble doing so.”

“I do not hate,” said the rabbi, “but—a big but—I do unequivocally condemn the brutal and sinister actions of the terrorists who murdered more Jews in a single day than any day since the Holocaust. These were primarily unarmed Israeli women, children, and, yes, babies, too. They weren’t collateral damage; they were targeted because they were defenseless. They were brutalized by terrorists in ways that is nothing short of an expression of pure evil; and the perpetrators proud of their work, posted videos of it and mocked their victims while doing so. No moral equivalency should ever be made to justify or rationalize this kind of behavior.”

Rabbi Avraham Bronstein of the Hamptons Synagogue in Westhampton Beach said: “This moment is really about empathy.” He spoke of “the shock and the horror that we feel towards those that simply don’t see Israelis, those who simply don’t see Jews, as human beings. Our empathy defines us. Their lack of empathy defines them.”

Rabbi Dan Geffen of Temple Adas Israel in Sag Harbor, the rally’s last speaker, said he would “focus on hope” and spoke about a song, Lu Yehi, or “Let It Be,” which became an anthem for the soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces during the Yom Kippur War of 50 years ago. Israeli songwriter Naomi Shemer was inspired to write the song by the Beatles’ tune “Let it Be,” but the phrase “let it be” in English has a different meaning in Hebrew. Instead of acceptance, it translates to let there be. Lu Yehi is about creating a future. 

“Hope isn’t always what we think it is,” said Rabbi Geffen. “It’s not a blind wish, but rather a seed planted in hearts that reminds us, we are not alone in our grief—or in our wishes for a different reality.” Rabbi Geffen urged those at the rally in singing Lu Yehi, “sing with your heart — and let us shed tears of hope.” 

The rally concluded with the singing of Hatikva, “The Hope,” Israel’s national anthem. It declares: “Our hope is not yet lost, The hope of two thousand years…”

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP: Healthcare Giants

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

There’s been a revolution in healthcare in Suffolk County led by Michael Dowling, president and CEO of Northwell Health, and the late Dr. Edmund Pellegrino who as vice president of health sciences at Stony Brook University created what’s now Stony Brook Medicine.

Both are giant healthcare networks in Suffolk. 

Indeed, under Dowling, Northwell Health—with 21 hospitals and 85,000 employees (4,900 doctors and 18,900 nurses)—is the largest health care provider in New York State. It is also the largest private employer in the state. 

There are other health systems active in Suffolk County: NYU Langone Health, Catholic Health and in recent times Manhattan-based Hospital for Special Surgery established a facility in Suffolk.  

There is competition and choice.

It’s all a far cry from the situation when I began as a reporter here in the 1962. Indeed, among my earliest articles at the Babylon Town Leader was about a woman refused admittance to Lakeside Hospital in Copiague because she didn’t have medical insurance. She returned to her car — and died in it. Lakeside Hospital, which began as Nassau-Suffolk General Hospital in 1939 with 54 beds, is no more. 

The backgrounds of Dowling and Dr. Pellegrino are fascinating.

Dowling, who last year was named by the publication Model Healthcare as Number One on its list of the “100 Most Influential People in Healthcare” in the United States, grew up in Ireland under challenging conditions. As an extensive article in 2020 about him in the magazine Irish America related: “Born just outside the town of Knockaderry, County Limerick, Dowling was the brother of four younger siblings and son of disabled parents—their conditions set the tone for his personal relationship with the healthcare world.”

“The family home was a thatched cottage with none of the modern conveniences,” it continued. “Money was always short as his father couldn’t continue to work as a laborer because every part of his body was affected by Rheumatoid arthritis, and his mother was deaf since the age of 7. Yet, his parents, his mother especially, never for an instant allowed Michael to believe that he could do anything less than what he set his mind to.”

“America, it turned out, was indeed in the cards for Dowling’s future,” the piece went on. “While many took a narrow-minded view of his prospects (one local milk farmer went as far as to tell him to his face that he would never go to college), he defied their predictions by being the first members of his family to progress to third-level [higher] education, which began at the University College Cork in the fall of 1967,”

At 17, he went to New York City “working every job he could juggle at once to fund the entirety of his four-year undergraduate degree” at Fordham University. “He compiled experience loading cargo on the docks, working in the engine room of tour boats, plumbing, cleaning, and on construction sites, often working 120-hour weeks not only in order to pay his tuition, but to continue to support the family he missed across the sea, even paying for his siblings to attend college.”

He received a master’s degree in social policy from Fordham, where he also met the woman who would be his wife, Elizabeth, a nurse specializing in oncology. They have two children. Dowling became a professor of social policy at Fordham and assistant dean at its Graduate School of Social Services.

With Mario Cuomo’s election as New York governor, Dowling was offered a position in his administration. He served 12 years including as director of Health, Education and Human Services and commissioner of the state’s Department of Social Services. Then he became senior vice president of Empire Blue Cross/Blue Shield. 

In 1995, Dowling was offered a position of senior vice president of hospital services at Northwell Health, formerly North Shore-LIJ Health System. In 1997, he advanced to executive vice president and CEO and in 2002 became president and CEO. 

He has led the expansion of Northwell. Not only does Northwell operate hospitals but has a network of 900 outpatient facilities in the state. It provides rehabilitation, kidney dialysis, urgent care, hospice and home care programs. It runs the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research with 50 research laboratories, and is a partner with Hofstra University in the Zucker School of Medicine and Hofstra/Northwell School of Nursing and Physician Assistant Studies.

On a personal level, my family has been treated at Northwell hospitals in Suffolk—at Mather in Port Jefferson, Huntington Hospital and Peconic Bay Medical Center in Riverhead (I had two cataract operations there). Excellence in care is what I observed at them all.  

Olivia O’Mahony and Patricia Harty write about Dowling at the end of their Irish America article: “From dock-hand to teacher, from government worker to businessman, Dowling’s experience allows him to think from a multitude of positions and see the world through the eyes of those from all walks of life….” 

Next week: Dr. Edmund Pellegrino and Stony Brook Medicine. 

Karl Grossman is a veteran investigative reporter and columnist, the winner of numerous awards for his work and a member of the L.I. Journalism Hall of Fame. He is a professor of journalism at SUNY/College at Old Westbury and the author of six books.