Free Republic

UNIONDALE, N.Y. — Nassau County voters, who pay among the highest local taxes in the nation, handily defeated a contentious proposal on Monday to spend $400 million to overhaul the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum, the outdated home of the New York Islanders hockey club. With 82 percent of the ballots counted late Monday, the vote was about 57 percent to 43 percent against borrowing the money through a general obligation bond to pay for the plan, which also called for construction of a minor-league baseball park and convention space. The results marked an enormous defeat for Charles E. Wang, the...

Nassau County says it has a balanced budget. The state of New York, which seized control of the county's finances earlier this week, says the budget is tens of millions in the red. Which is right? At issue are assumptions in the county's budget. The county is counting on revenue from a hiring freeze and a reduction in police overtime, among other things, as well as an increase in fees from red-light camera violations, which requires state approval. The state and at least one rating agency disagree with many of these assumptions, deeming the revenue "risky." The heart of the...

It's one of the richest counties in the country with one of the highest tax rates for residents and they still can't find enough money to make one and one add up to two.New York Times: A state oversight board on Wednesday seized control of Nassau County's finances, saying the county, one of the nation's wealthiest and most heavily taxed, had nonetheless failed to balance its $2.7 billion budget. Many hard-hit local governments have flirted with insolvency because of revenue shortfalls caused by the recession, but the financial problems of Nassau, on Long Island, owed more to a failure by...

MINEOLA, N.Y. — Thomas R. Suozzi conceded defeat on Tuesday in the race for the Nassau County executive, a harsh setback for Mr. Suozzi, the Democratic incumbent who was widely regarded as a potential candidate for higher office. He acknowledged his loss after a recount of the votes cast last month showed that his Republican challenger, Edward P. Mangano, a county legislator, had a 386-vote lead. Mr. Suozzi, speaking to reporters at a news conference, said he believed it was “mathematically impossible to win. I didn’t think it was fair to the public, my team or Mr. Mangano, and I...

Nassau Republicans take back legislature In a stunning upset, Nassau Republicans regained control of the county legislature for the first time in a decade. "We have lost, in my judgment, the majority in the Nassau County Legislature," said Jay Jacobs, chairman of the Nassau Democratic Party. The defeat came for Democrats when Republican Howard Kopel beat five-term Democrat Jeff Toback in last night's elections, giving the GOP...

A former candidate for political office in Nassau County was arrested Friday and charged with criminal sexual activity. Keith Lamar Sawyer, 44, 85064 Art Wilson Road in Yulee, was accused of seeking a sexual en-counter with an underage teenage girl. He was taken to Nassau County Jail and charged with solicitation of a minor for lewd and lascivious battery and lewd and lascivious conduct. Sawyer, a Democrat, has unsuccessfully sought election to various county offices, including the Nassau County Ocean Highway & Port Authority in 2006 - he lost to the late Ed Gandy that November - and to the...

It was Super Bowl Sunday. In a Nassau County hamlet, the Imbriale family was watching the game on a big-screen television when the kitchen phone rang. On the other end of the line was a recording of a young woman's voice — fast-talking, cheerful, and dull — reminding them to vote for Maureen O'Connell, the Republican state Senate candidate running in the high-profile 7th District special election, two days away. John Imbriale, a Republican, thought nothing of it and hung up. Fifteen minutes later, the phone rang again. The recording had changed, but the voice was the same, this time...

Nassau County Tax Assessor Harvey Levinson is taking a political gamble by questioning a property tax exemption for clergy that they say strips local schools of millions in revenue. Clergy living in private Nassau homes are given major breaks on their property taxes. Levinson says there are hundreds of clergy members paying no school taxes because of the large exemptions. He says these people live in very expensive homes and even quotes one clergy member's house at being worth $2.2 million. That cleric received more than $10,000 in tax savings. Some residents believe it is a political risk to go...

Infant Had Been Run Over Several Times (CBS) NEW YORK The dead body of a newborn baby that had been crushed by a car was discovered lying on a Long Island street Saturday. Police had few clues where the infant came from, or whether it was dead or alive when it was abandoned. A man walking his dog found the badly mangled body at 7:30 a.m. on a residential street near a golf course and a high school in Hempstead, about 20 miles east of Manhattan. "The first time I saw it, I thought it was a dead raccoon,...

There was a lot of estrogen flying at the Cradle of Aviation Museum yesterday, as Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton administered the oath of office to Nassau District Attorney Kathleen Rice, the first woman to hold the top law enforcement job on Long Island. "The torch has been passed to a new generation," said Nassau County Executive Tom Suozzi, pausing to allow the applause to crescendo before adding "of women," which brought down the house of more than a thousand supporters who had come to the inauguration of the region's newest star. As Rice repeated the oath after Clinton, the many...

Long Island attorney has been charged with being an oline sexual predator. Nassau District Attorney Denis Dillon says 46-year-old Thomas Sheehan of East Setauket is accused of having explicit sexual conversations with a person he believed to be a 14-year-old girl. Dillon says Sheehan is an attorney with an office in Jackson Heights, Queens. DA Dillon says Sheehan visited a chatroom where he began a conversation with an udnercover officer posing as a teen-age girl. Sheehan allegedly talked about meeting the girl for sexual activity. Dillon says at the same time Nassau officers were zeroing in Sheehan -- New York...

GARDEN CITY, Long Island The New York Rangers were forced to evacuate their Long Island hotel, just hours before their 5-4 loss to the rival New York Islanders, when a man wearing a surgical mask dumped a chemical on the lobby floor and then drove away. The man has been identified as former Garden City Hotel employee Scott Wallace, who's 23. Nassau County Police say Wallace entered the hotel about 3 p-m and deliberately spilled the chemical on the floor of the rotunda area and then fled. The chemical later was found to be harmless, and no one was injured....

The general assumption among New York Democrats is that Attorney General Eliot Spitzer will be the party's candidate for governor next year. He announced his bid in December and has been busy raising millions and building alliances to reclaim the office for the Democrats for the first time in 12 years. But, to the delight of Republicans and annoyance of Spitzer allies, another Democrat has recently confided to prominent party members that he is preparing to run, arguing that his profile as a suburban Italian Catholic moderate and reform-minded Albany outsider would make him a strong candidate in both New...

<p>There could hardly have been a better way for Alec Baldwin, Massapequa boy turned movie star, to show affection for the place where he grew up.</p> <p>Baldwin announced that for his first attempt at directing, he would rent from Nassau County a former Northrop Grumman airplane factory to film "The Devil and Daniel Webster.” In November 2000, his crews arrived at the cavernous building in Bethpage.</p> <p>"It was a fabulous opportunity for us,” Baldwin recalled last week.</p>