SBU's push for more state aid

Daily Point

SBU president sets sights on top-25 ranking

Stony Brook University president Maurie McInnis, who is determined to get the school in the top 25 of best public universities, met with the editorial board Tuesday to voice her support for the increased state funding Gov. Kathy Hochul put in her executive budget, which is facing severe headwinds because it would raise tuition at CUNY and SUNY schools.

McInnis said no increases in state aid over the past few years has caused cuts to faculty and staff. The proposed 6% tuition increase for SBU, higher than the 3% for most campuses because of its designation as a flagship school, would allow it to keep pace with inflationary costs. Hochul’s other higher ed funding includes a matching grant program to increase the school’s small endowment and there is additional money for capital programs and technology updates.

McInnis tipped that the new head of the Brookhaven National Laboratory could be named this spring, and she should know as a co-chair of Brookhaven Science Associates, the partnership that manages the lab on behalf of the Department of Energy. While allowing that “negotiations” are underway, she declined to say who would be replacing BNL president Doon Gibbs, who is retiring.

And a big day for SBU could be coming in May, Earth Day specifically, when NYC and the Trust for Governors Island will announce the winner of a global competition to establish an educational and research institution for climate change solutions. SBU is one of two finalists winnowed from 14 applicants. Winning the contract would give SBU a marquee presence in NYC and, McInnis said, show what it means to be a “flagship university of the state.”

— Rita Ciolli @ritaciolli

Talking Point

What a difference a decade makes

During a news conference Monday, State Sen. Jack Martins criticized Long Island Rail Road for its scheduling issues in the wake of the opening of Grand Central Madison.

But what he said about the project long known as East Side Access might leave a few longtime observers scratching their heads.

“I don’t remember anyone here asking for East Side Access,” Martins said Monday. “East Side Access was something that was a Long Island Rail Road/MTA project that they forced upon us.”

Of course, no one at Monday’s news conference asked for East Side Access initially — since the project predated everyone at the podium. But Martins himself has advocated for and praised the project, as long as a decade ago during his first stint in the State Senate.

“This is one of those projects that is worthy of New York,” Martins said in 2012, in an interview in a State Senate-run segment called “Your Voice.”

Martins had just toured the project, which at that point was far from finished. He called East Side Access “extraordinary.”

“When this is done … people will be able to travel from Long Island through Jamaica directly to Grand Central Terminal. That’s going to take … thousands of cars off the road and ease the transfers not only into the city but through Grand Central to access Metro-North, making our metropolitan transit system seamless, and thereby providing, I think, some relief to some of our motorists and some of our overly congested roads.”

It almost sounds like Martins was making the case for two MTA efforts he now seems to oppose — the new terminal now known as Grand Central Madison and congestion pricing.

So, which statement represents Martins’ real views? Martins told The Point on Tuesday that he might have “overstated” his take on Grand Central Madison as a whole when he said it was “forced” upon Long Islanders. Instead, he said, he wanted to emphasize the need for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to keep its promises, so the project is a benefit for commuters.

“It has to be a positive because that’s what we were told it was going to be and that’s how people bought into it,” Martins said. “It was always going to be that you’re going to get more trains, more opportunities to get to work. With this rollout, I don’t see it. No one sees it. And I think it’s fair to question that.”

As for his take on congestion pricing then and now, Martins clarified that, too.

“I do want people out of their cars and I do want them on public transit,” Martins said. “But I don’t want them to have to mortgage their house to get into the city.”

— Randi F. Marshall @RandiMarshall

Pencil Point

Dems for Biden

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Final Point

Special counsel's LI connection

Q: What do the probe of Donald Trump’s efforts to reverse the 2020 election and his handling of classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago, the autopsy of Suffolk County’s devastating cyberattack, and a sweeping lawsuit against the Nassau County Police Department have in common?

A: Attorneys currently involved in all three pressing matters once worked together 15 years ago as federal prosecutors in the Central Islip Office of the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York.

Jack Smith, the special counsel aggressively trying to wrap up the federal probes into Trump, was deputy chief of EDNY’s criminal division in March 2007, based in Central Islip. He only stayed in that job for about nine months before taking over the bigger job of running all criminal litigation for the Brooklyn and Long Island offices.

Smith’s deputy at the time was Richard Donoghue, who was the chief for Long Island, probably best known for his role in prosecuting MS-13 street gangs. He later went on to become U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District and then move to main Justice in Washington, where he was a top official during the last months of the Trump administration. In the final weeks of his time there, he pushed back on Trump's efforts to get the department to investigate claims of voter fraud.

Now in private practice with the firm of Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman, Donahue was hired by the Suffolk County Legislature in January to probe the hack of the county’s computer systems.

The sixth-floor offices of the Alfonse D’Amato courthouse in Central Islip also had another up-and-comer, Mark Lesko, who was prosecuting the Long Island “slave” case which resulted in the conviction of a Muttontown couple for mistreating two domestic workers from Indonesia. Lesko went on to be elected three times as Brookhaven Town supervisor before returning to the EDNY as acting U.S. attorney. He moved to the Justice Department as acting assistant attorney general for national security in 2021 before joining the Long Island office of the Greenberg Traurig law firm. Last month, Nassau County hired Lesko to defend it in a 2022 class action complaint alleging “longstanding, invidious racial discrimination” in hiring by the police department.

— Rita Ciolli @ritaciolli