Hempstead pol calls on town to review public notices after error
Updated
By Stefanie Dazio stefanie.dazio@newsday.com
Stop scratching on holidays
Off Track Betting in New York State has been racing into a crisis called shrinking revenue. Some people have spitballed a solution: Don’t close on holidays.
New York State Racing Law bars racing on Christmas, Easter and Palm Sunday, and the state has ruled OTBs can’t handle action on those days, even though they could easily broadcast races from out of state.
“You should be able to bet whenever you want,” said Jackson Leeds, a Nassau OTB employee who makes an occasional bet. He added some irrefutable logic: “How is the business going to make money if you’re not open to take people’s bets?”
Elias Tsekerides, president of the Federation of Hellenic Societies of Greater New York, said OTB is open on Greek Orthodox Easter and Palm Sunday.
“I don’t want discrimination,” Tsekerides said. “They close for the Catholics, but open for the Greek Orthodox? It’s either open for all or not open.”
OTB officials have said they lose millions by closing on Palm Sunday alone, with tracks such as Gulfstream, Santa Anita, Turf Paradise and Hawthorne running.
One option: OTBs could just stay open and face the consequences. New York City OTB did just that back in 2003. The handle was about $1.5 million – and OTB was fined $5,000.
Easy money.
By Stefanie Dazio stefanie.dazio@newsday.com
Puerto Rican law school students ‘so grateful’ to Touro, donors
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Claude Solnik
Long Island Business News
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Home > LI Confidential > Stop scratching on holidays
Stop scratching on holidays
Published: June 1, 2012
Off Track Betting in New York State has been racing into a crisis called shrinking revenue. Some people have spitballed a solution: Don’t close on holidays.
New York State Racing Law bars racing on Christmas, Easter and Palm Sunday, and the state has ruled OTBs can’t handle action on those days, even though they could easily broadcast races from out of state.
“You should be able to bet whenever you want,” said Jackson Leeds, a Nassau OTB employee who makes an occasional bet. He added some irrefutable logic: “How is the business going to make money if you’re not open to take people’s bets?”
Elias Tsekerides, president of the Federation of Hellenic Societies of Greater New York, said OTB is open on Greek Orthodox Easter and Palm Sunday.
“I don’t want discrimination,” Tsekerides said. “They close for the Catholics, but open for the Greek Orthodox? It’s either open for all or not open.”
OTB officials have said they lose millions by closing on Palm Sunday alone, with tracks such as Gulfstream, Santa Anita, Turf Paradise and Hawthorne running.
One option: OTBs could just stay open and face the consequences. New York City OTB did just that back in 2003. The handle was about $1.5 million – and OTB was fined $5,000.
Easy money.
Nine students from The University of Puerto Rico School of Law in San Juan began classes at Touro Law Center in Central Islip on Monday, Oct. 16, 2017. Contributions from law firms and New York City-based Puerto Rican Bar Association, will provide the students the opportunity to earn eight credits toward their law degree tuition-free, and offer free housing for the semester. (Credit: James Carbone)
The plane was soaring high above the island when Monica Rocafort looked down and saw the brown waters and destroyed houses. For the first time, she felt the enormity of her decision to leave her home in Puerto Rico to come to Long Island and continue law school.
“You think of all of the families and the kids — everyone who is really, really hurting right now. It’s tough to be forced out of your island,” Rocafort, 26, said through tears.
The San Juan resident was among a group of nine second-year and third-year law school students from the University of Puerto Rico who arrived Monday at Touro Law Center in Central Islip for their first day of classes.
The University of Puerto Rico School of Law, located in the Rio Piedras neighborhood of San Juan, has been shuttered since Hurricane Maria ravaged the island on Sept. 20. Rocafort, who spent that night in a closet with her mother and her dog, recalled the concrete walls of the family home trembling and, like others, the weeks after without electricity and potable water, the hours of waiting in line for basic supplies. She took her first hot shower in more than three weeks on Saturday night at a friend’s apartment in Manhattan.
“I’m so grateful for this opportunity,” Rocafort said of the Touro program.
The visiting students will spend eight weeks taking four classes specially designed to comply with American Bar Association regulations, to ensure they will earn eight credits toward their law degree. While they are at Touro, they will receive a mentor, have the opportunity to network with lawyers in New York and likely have better access to the resources that could help them advocate better for those they left behind in Puerto Rico.
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While they had to buy and arrange for their transportation to the school, each student will attend tuition-free and have free housing at the Marriott Residence Inn, next to the Central Islip campus. The college will provide meals and arrange for their transportation while on Long Island.
On Monday, the students spent the morning filling out forms, learning their way around the law school building, the computer system and the law library and meeting professors.
There were several moments of levity — even a little salsa music was played on an iPhone — that served as a much-needed emotional respite.
Tuition at Touro costs about $1,645 per credit. The effort is being paid for by private donors, including the Manhattan-based law firm of Davis Polk & Wardwell and legal education provider iLaw-BARBRI, which offers the Bar Exam review course, as well as the Puerto Rican Bar Association, one of the oldest minority legal organizations in the United States.
“It’s our obligation and our privilege — our honor — to have them here,” Touro Law Center Dean Harry Ballan said.
Another student, Jose Camacho Vazquez, 26, lost the windows of his second-floor apartment in San Juan to the hurricane. When he left on Saturday, his building still had no power, even though it is near the island’s largest government medical center. He spent most of the last three weeks looking for diesel fuel and safe drinking water and waiting on long lines for canned food. His top concern was leaving behind his 66-year-old mother, he said.
“I was overjoyed when they said we could come here. I finally can get back to school,” Camacho Vazquez said. “We’ve just arrived but already it feels so meaningful.”
In recent weeks, several colleges and universities on the mainland have welcomed students displaced from their education while the island recovers. Students from Puerto Rico are able to pay in-state tuition at the State University of New York-operated campuses, as well as at Miami Dade College and Tulane University in Louisiana.
Students, educators and lawmakers have said it is critical for Puerto Rican students to continue higher education — and that in doing so they will be better positioned to aid in rebuilding the island.
“They are leaving a disaster-torn area. We have to make them feel comfortable and embrace them. Long Island has always been very family-oriented, so I’m calling on everyone to help out,” said Betty Lugo, founding partner of the Brooklyn law firm Pacheco & Lugo and immediate past president of the Puerto Rican Bar Association.
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Within minutes of a bar association email message to Ballan, Lugo said, Touro had offered assistance to the students. Touro officials said is likely the students will stay past the fall semester if they are unable to return to their own school.
However challenging her studies at Touro may be, Aurelys Alers Ortiz, 27, said not knowing what is happening back home is going to be the hardest part of the next eight weeks.
“I’m really attached to my mom and my family,” said Alers Ortiz, who is the first in her family to attend law school.
“She’s so happy that I am here, and I know she is well too, but it is still hard.”
Hempstead Town councilmembers Erin King Sweeney and Bruce Blakeman. Photo Credit: Danielle Finkelstein
Two Hempstead Town Board members on Thursday called for a special meeting of the town board to revive a public hearing on their legislation that would restrict taxpayer-funded mass mailings, after a hearing earlier this week was adjourned due to an error in its public notice.
In a memo to town officials, council members Erin King Sweeney and Bruce Blakeman requested the special meeting be held on Nov. 2. Town spokesman Mike Deery could not be immediately reached for comment Thursday night.
Town officials first blamed Tuesday’s adjournment of the mass mailing hearing on the timing of its public notice, but then said instead that the notice lacked the required explanatory statement — which King Sweeney’s office pointed out also was missing in the notice for Santino’s ethics law.
Town Supervisor Anthony Santino, who has been embroiled in a feud with the duo for months over ethics reform, then called for a revote on his ethics law, which the town board passed last month, because of the error.
Also on Thursday, King Sweeney called on Town Attorney Joe Ra to review nearly two years of public notices for similar errors. Deery said Thursday afternoon that Ra was reviewing that request, but King Sweeney said in a statement that evening that deputy town attorneys had told her staff they would begin an investigation on Friday.
“We will give their office until the end of the day Monday to review the matter and let us know their findings,” she said.
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A Newsday review all of the public notices listed on the town’s website since January 2016 found at least four notices, including the one for the ethics reform legislation, in which an explanatory statement could not be found. They concerned legislation on disorderly conduct, drones and public parking fields, and all were passed into law by the town board.
Deery said he would not have any comment on Newsday’s findings until Ra has the opportunity to review them.
John Farrell, vice chairman of the Nassau County Bar Association’s municipal law committee, said explanatory statements are required so the public understands the purpose of the legislation ahead of a hearing.
The town could be sued over the omissions, Farrell said, adding a judge could declare the town’s laws to be invalid “for simply not complying with their own notice requirements.”
Laura Gillen, Democratic candidate for supervisor, said Thursday she is “exploring legal options to seek redress on behalf of the taxpayers in the Town of Hempstead.”
King Sweeney also criticized Ra, saying his office should have reviewed the public notice for the mass mailer legislation for any legal issues, as required by a 2000 town board resolution.
Deery said Ra did not have time to review King Sweeney’s notice before it had to be published, but did not notice any defects originally.
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