Yesterday’s speaker was Tom Croci. Croci has served as a Navel intelligence officer and also served in the George Bush Whitehouse, and is now in the reserves. He is the Republican candidate for the supervisor of Islip Town. He told us that he was new to politics and his motivation is that of frustration rather than political ambition.

He believes that strong leadership and determination sometimes works well in the political arena. He gave as an example the man he is now working for, Lee Zelden. Zeldin was given no chance of creating legislation that rescinded the MTA. It’s a tax that just about everyone thinks is an unfair tax (that would include LIMBA). He stated that Zelden was successful in passing the legislation in the Senate. It now must go to the Assembly and be signed by the Governor. He thinks it will pass.

Croci said local government "must remove the choke hold on business". Deregulation will help business work more efficiently and get out of the way. During the Q&A he was asked about the type of regulation that protects the public, such as airline safety rules. He appeared to be OK with that.

Mr. Croci thinks that there is a disincentive for bureaucrats to be more helpful. The incentive to do less and risk little is greater than the incentive to expedite work. One questioner remembered that the administration of Mike LoGrande when he was Islip Supervisor there was a timetable for processing development plans and LoGrande was on top of things. Rejections were swift and final and so were approvals. Today the timidity of the people making these decisions ties up a developers resources too long. Even when the project is approved much time has elapsed and a lot of legal and planning resources have been spent. Perhaps Leadership needs to be more supportive of the people on staff as well defining guidelines for them.

Tom Croci appears to actually think about the questions asked of him. I did not see any rapid fire canned responses to questions that are right out of a political catechism.