LIMBA mtg recap 8/5

Members and friends 

Our speaker this morning was Brian Foley. Brian is a Suffolk County legislator and is the Democratic candidate for the position of town supervisor for Brookhaven.

Mr. Foley gave us his take on the nature and depth of the corruption in Brookhaven. The gist of his comments that entrenched political parties have little incentive to change.

According to Foley, Brookhaven political party dominance by the Republicans has led people in government to look at public service as a means to game the system and get rich. Perhaps so, as my friend Paul Townsend was fond of saying “vote the ins out” Terry Townsend was in the audience and reminded me of that sentiment from Paul. He was right of course; monopolistic power destroys good politics as much as it does good business.

Foley promised to address cleaning up politics. We wish him well.

When we went to the Q&A I started out by naming three of our four stated goals and asked Brian where he stood on the issues. I said that robust ferry links to Connecticut are not only good for business and tourism the are also essential for Homeland Security and I asked him if he was supportive. I did not get the statement of solid support I had hoped for, but I did get commitment to address all of the various interests in a fair manner.

There were questions about the immigrant housing problems, and particularly those landlords that are being closed down because of health and safety reasons. He agreed that those landlords that who were creating unlivable sanitary conditions should be criminally charged and put out of business.

On the issue of repowering he was supportive. He pointed out that the Caithness plant in Bellport was an excellent plant that should be built and used, displacing more polluting plants.

On rail sidings being rebuilt for freight operations he was not as supportive, but not closed to the issue either. He was supportive of the idea that these rail links had value in freeing up our roads and reducing diesel fuel emissions from heavy trucks. He pointed out that people close to the rails would have to be considered.

Overall it was an excellent meeting and there were questions that were asked that I did not include for the sake of brevity.

Please join us next week when former congressman Felix Grucci will be our speaker. I’ll have more on that in next week’s announcement. Meanwhile have a nice weekend.

Ernie Fazio