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News 12 Long Island reports on increased demand at food banks News organizations are reporting a huge surge in demand for food as the result of people losing paychecks and jobs because of the business shutdown sparked by the coronavirus pandemic. Nassau County Executive Laura Curran on Monday announced a partnership with Island Harvest to establish nine food banks in the county; New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said he was providing $25 million in funding to food banks because of the increased demand; and News12 did a story today,  focusing on a food bank run by Island Harvest, and reporting a 40 percent increase of demand on Long Island. But look at all the plastic bags! Not a reuseable or paper bag to be seen as volunteers put together staples for people lined up to get their next meal. Remember? New York banned plastic bags. The ban, intended to protect the environmental, took effect March 1, just as the coronavirus was noticeably sickening people. (The virus had been a...

Hempstead Town's $770,700 in personnel moves at the end of March were more than tone deaf. They were a slap in the face to private workers who lost jobs, had their salaries cut or were furloughed because of economic crisis resulting from the coronavirus pandemic. But Newsday left out a few details in its earlier story and editorial today about the town board's unanimous decision to award 11 raises, nine promotions and 10 new appointments on March 31. One of those details concerned the reported promotion for the daughter of former Hempstead Parks Commissioner Daniel Lino, who had approved a questionable lease extension for concessionaire Butch Yamali's Dover Gourmet Corp. to run Malibu Beach Park. Not reported was that his daughter was promoted off a competitive civil service list from $54,426-a-year clerk laborer in the water department to an office services assistant in the department for a whopping annual salary of  $57,057 a year. Also reported was the raise fo...

New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, at his daily news briefing today, said it would be "repugnant" amid the coronavirus crisis to call for an accounting of the amount of money each state contributes to the federal government compared to what it gets back. But if you did, Cuomo said, "You're making a mistake because you lose if you do an accounting." He then flashed the above chart to show how much more some states give to DC than get back from DC. "If you want to do an analysis of who is a giver and who is taker, we are the number one giver. The number one giver. Nobody puts more money into the pot than the state of New York. We're the number one donor state," Cuomo said. By that logic, then, Long Islanders are the number one "donors" in the country, according to candidates for political office on Long Island. For more than 30 years, local political candidates have complained that Long Island gives more money in taxes and other ...

Somehow few news outlets thought it worth reporting New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's advice yesterday to the newly unemployed -- people who are struggling financially after losing their jobs and paychecks to the economic shutdown caused by the worldwide pandemic. So Cuomo's recommendations are worth repeating here. When an Albany CBS reporter asked Democrat Cuomo for his reaction to protestors who say "they need to get back to work in order to feed their families. Their savings is running out...They're not getting answers, so their point is the cure can't be worse than the illness itself." Cuomo said, "The illness is death. What is worse than death?" Okay, those comments were widely reported. But the reporter persisted.  She said protesters have yet to get a response from New York's cumbersome unemployment system. "They can't wait for the money. They are out of money." Cuomo said it will take "a couple of days" ...

Nassau County Executive Laura Curran appears to be using the 2008 stock market crash and ensuing recession as a model for what to expect during the economic crisis sparked by the worldwide pandemic. At her daily coronavirus briefing today, Curran predicted a $260 million deficit this year in her $3.5 billion budget because of the business shutdown forced by the pandemic. The predicted deficit included a 10 percent decline in sales tax revenues, which were budgeted to come in at $1.277 billion this year. In 2008, after the Sept. 15 collapse of the global financial services firm Lehman Brothers, the stock market plunged. The subsequent economic downturn was dubbed the Great Recession, second only to the 1930s Great Depresssion in terms of negative financial impact and unemployment. By the end of 2008 --- just three months later-- the Nassau budget office reported that total sales tax revenues had dropped 9 percent year over year compared to 2007. That left a $41.9 million sales t...

After the Nassau County legislature last week proposed an emergency  bill to postpone interest and penalties for taxpayers late in paying their second half school property tax bill, County Executive Laura Curran said she wasn't sure if she favored the plan. The legislature had proposed that interest and penalties for the school tax bill due May 11, be postponed a month until June 11. The intent was to ease the pain of the economic crisis caused by the worldwide pandemic. On Saturday, Curran said she needed to evaluate the bill, warning "everything has a cost." She added, "The legislature has to provide a financial impact of this proposal." But today, Curran announced at her near daily briefing on the coronavirus pandemic that she was asking Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo essentially to do the same thing the legislature had requested. She said she wanted Cuomo to issue an executive order delaying the property tax deadline to June 1 "to give homeowners and co...

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers was slapped down by the State Supreme Court and U.S. Supreme Court when he attempted to postpone his state's primary election and extend the mailing deadline for absentee ballots. Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly was arguing her authority in state Supreme Court today after Kansas' legislative leaders quashed her executive order to limit attendance at church services. Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is being sued by a private attorney who argues she violated her authority when she relaxed requirements for the government to respond to Freedom of Information Act requests during the worldwide pandemic. But in New York,  Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has pretty much done all of that,  and more,  with little organized opposition. He unilaterally postponed New York's primary election, encouraged all voters to cast absentee ballots despite the state's rules for voting absentee, waived some open meetings requirements, postponed village elections, closed schools, b...

The Nassau legislature on Monday approved transferring $2.3 million from money budgeted for employee fringe benefits to emergency management to buy supplies intended to combat the coronavirus pandemic that has killed more than a thousand people on Long Island. Some $825,000 was allocated to purchase Covid-19 test kits. According to Newsday, Nassau was expected to begin administering 20,000 tests two days ago to county first responders and other employees exposed to the virus. Results were to be available within 15 minutes, county officials told Newsday. But the head of the county's Civil Service Employees Association in an email to members Friday said those tests were not happening -- yet. "We have just received notification from the Commissioner of Police that the previously announced "Rapid Tests"  will not be administered at this time . Apparently, these tests were not FDA approved / clinically tested and therefore cannot be used at this time, " CSEA ...

Nassau County Executive Laura Curran with Police Commissioner Patrick Ryder on the left and Health Commissioner Larry Eisenstein on the right After an eight day absence, Nassau Health Comissioner Larry Eisenstein reappeared today at County Executive Laura Curran's daily briefing about the coronavirus impact on county operations. Eisenstein was a constant presence at Curran's news breifings from the start of the epidemic until March 28. Then he was not seen in public again for eight days. Two county sources said Eisenstein had been in quarantine. But a Curran spokesman did not respond when asked if Eisenstein was in quarantine. Nor did the spokesman respond when asked if Curran had been tested for the virus after appearing at a news conference with Senior Hempstead Town Board member Dorothy Goosby a day before Goosby was hospitalized with the virus. Goosby has since recovered. Neither Curran nor Eisenstein gave any explanation today for his eight-day absence and...

Posted on: March 10, 2020 County Executive Curran and Local Officials Discuss Public Transportation Protocol Hempstead Councilwoman Dorothy Goosby, Nassau Health Commissioner Larry Eisenstein and Nassau County Executive Laura Curran appear together at a news conference March 10. Two county sources say that Nassau Health Comissioner Larry Eisenstein has been in quarantine for more than a week. His last public appearance with Nassau County Executive Laura Curran was March 28. See the above photograph from Curran's county website, posted March 10. Eisenstein, to immediate left of Curran, is standing next to Senior Hempstead Town Board member Dorothy Goosby to talk about about public transportation protocol to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. The next day, on March 11, Goosby was hospitalized at NYU Winthrop Hospital in Mineola where she tested positive for the virus, according to Newsday. The 82-year-old councilwoman was treated and released March 21, Newsd...

Nassau County Executive Laura Curran cut health department personnel in this year's budget and vetoed a Republican attempt to restore workers to the county agency now overwhelmed by the deadly coronavirus. County Legis. John Ferretti (R-Levittown) noted the Curran veto on his Facebook page after Newsday reported online Sunday that the number of health department workers in both Nassau and Suffolk has dropped 30 percent since 2010, crippling Long Island's efforts to track and trace the virus. Ferretti wrote that the Nassau health department and Commissioner Larry Eisenstein "are doing a phenomenal job trying to control the COVID-19 outbreak, despite reduced resources. In the proposed 2020 County budget, passed in 2019, I saw a reduction of Health Department resources and staff and put forward an amendment adding $320k to their budget to help. The County Executive vetoed that additional money. Residents health and safety must always come first." Ferretti...

The addition of former Hempstead Town Attorney Joseph Ra to the Nassau Board of Elections payroll last week boosted total salaries for past and present elected officials at the political way station to more than one million dollars. Ra, who also served as an elected town board member for a while during his 36 years with Hempstead, started last Friday as counsel to the Republican commissioner for a salary of $133,342, according to the board's Republican payroll list. By law, Democrats and Republicans are entitled to equal funding at the board, which this year has a total budget of nearly $22.5 million. Ra joins five other former elected officials and one current office holder on the Republican side of the board. GOP elections Commissioner Louis Savinetti is a former member of the Oyster Bay Town town board. He also is the elected chairman of the Locust Valley Water District Board. Savinetti's salary is $180,314. Also on the GOP payroll is former Hempstead Town Supervis...