Long Island to receive $87 million for upgrades in new federal spending bills

WASHINGTON — More than 50 Long Island projects will get nearly $87 million in federal funds through congressional earmarks in the recently enacted appropriations bills to improve sewers and water mains, upgrade libraries and police departments and boost training and other programs.

The biggest earmarks — $5 million each — will go toward the Smith Point Bridge replacement and the Brentwood Workforce Training Center, both in Suffolk County, and road elevations in the Village of Amityville.

Other large earmarks will provide $4 million for a Floral Park recharge basin to reduce flooding, $3.3 million for a Bellport coastal flood resiliency project and $3 million for a bulkhead replacement in Greenport.

The earmarks, called community project funds, also will provide $3.6 million to a state-of-the-art Kulanu facility in Cedarhurst for special-needs individuals, $3.1 million for a police training facility for Nassau County and nearly $4 million for planning for the Long Island Greenway, a trail envisioned to connect from Manhattan to the East End.

Long Island’s Republican congressmen, Andrew Garbarino of Bayport, Anthony D’Esposito of Island Park and Nick LaLota of Amityville, and New York’s Democratic senators, Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, requested the funds from the House and Senate Appropriations committees.

Practice draws criticism

Tom Schatz, president of the Washington-based Citizens Against Government Waste, a conservative policy and lobbying group that seeks to reduce federal spending by eliminating waste and inefficiencies, said, “Earmarks are one of the most corrupt, costly and inequitable practices in history. This excessive spending will only further add to the fiscal burden on taxpayers.”

Garbarino disagreed. “It's not additional money,” he told Newsday.

“If we didn't have the community project funds with this directed spending, some bureaucrat here in D.C. would be spending the money,” Garbarino said. “Projects that have needed to happen for years are now going to happen because of this directed spending.”

Congress banned earmarks in 2009 after prosecutors charged four lawmakers with federal corruption crimes tied to such directed spending. But in 2021, Democrats brought earmarks back with more limits, more transparency and a more appealing name: community project funds.

“We reach out to the municipalities, the villages, the towns or counties, and we ask them for projects that they want to get done,” Garbarino said, who won the three $5 million earmark awards. “Then we go through the projects and find out which ones would qualify for funds and which ones wouldn't under our current rules.”

Long Island could have gotten more earmark funds if the 3rd Congressional District had had a sitting representative. But the House expelled indicted Rep. George Santos on Dec. 1, and his replacement, Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-Glen Cove), took office last month after the community project funding process had ended.

Congress funded 15 projects totaling $36.4 million submitted by Garbarino.

“These are projects that have had to get done for a long time,” he said, noting that the Amityville Road elevation project has been needed since Superstorm Sandy. “Sandy was 2012. Yeah, 12 years ago.”

New money for police and water projects 

D’Esposito won funding for 13 projects totaling $20.5 million. He was the only Long Island congressman to have earmarks approved in both the first and second tranche of appropriations bills that Congress approved this month.

Seven of the former NYPD detective’s successful requests totaled $6.7 million for police departments in the villages of Freeport, Lynbrook and Rockville Centre, the Town of Hempstead Department of Public Safety, and police training technology for Nassau County.

LaLota’s 13 granted requests totaled $14.1 million, and most involved sewer-related projects, water mains and stormwater infrastructure. He won $3 million for the Mitchell Park bulkhead replacement in Greenport and $1.5 million for Port Jefferson harbor dredging and a wall to break waves and protect the port. 

LaLota said a request he won for $1 million will help pay to extend Riverhead’s public water main 37,000 feet to allow it to connect to 90 homes near the former Naval Weapons Industrial Reserve Plant at Calverton that do not have access to clean drinking water.

Schumer and Gillibrand together supported a dozen of the Long Island congressmen’s requests and co-sponsored two of them, and also made eight joint requests that brought Long Island projects $10.5 million.

With his own requests, Schumer also won $1.5 million each for Shore Road improvements in Port Washington and a stormwater project in the Town of Hempstead.

In addition to asking for the funds for the Long Island Greenway planning and the Kulanu facility, Schumer and Gillibrand won funding for the preservation of the oral histories of descendants of American presidents by The Roosevelt School at Long Island University in Brookville and disabilities history education at The Viscardi Center Inc. in Albertson.