Supporters of the Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe in Shoreham Monday, May 13. Left to right: David Madigan, former Assemblyman Marc Alessi, Jane Alcorn, and filmmaker Joe Sikorski. (Photo credit: Spencer Rumsey/Long Island Press)

The same day that Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced plans in Albany to overhaul the Long Island Power Authority, the executive board of the nonprofit Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe hosted an informal gathering for the media on the overgrown grounds and the decayed buildings in Shoreham, where visionary scientist Nikola Tesla once hoped to transmit free energy to the world.

The event on May 13 marked the first time since the 16-acre site was acquired from the Agfa Corporation for $850,000 earlier this month that the media was invited to view the laboratory that famed architect Stanford White had designed for Tesla, with financial backing from J.P. Morgan.

Built from 1901 to 1905, the brick lab was connected by an underground tunnel to a nearby transmission tower, which once stood 187-feet above ground and could be seen from Connecticut. Torn down in 1917 and sold for scrap after Morgan stopped funding Tesla, today only the foundation of the tower remains, plus an ongoing mystery about the all the other tunnels that Tesla reportedly constructed as part of his design electrify the ionosphere and “grip the Earth” with resonating chambers somehow connected to the aquifers.

Jane Alcorn, president of the Tesla group, told the Press she hopes to clear up that mystery soon because someone with “ground-penetrating radar” has offered to do some pro-bono exploration. For years, it’s been rumored that Tesla’s lab equipment was tossed into the tunnels as landfill.

The group had been unable to locate Stanford White’s designs for Wardenclyffe until recently when Alcorn connected with the director of the Tesla Museum in Belgrade, which has a large collection of Tesla’s archives.

“It turns out that all his papers, including the Wardenclyffe blueprints, are in Belgrade,” she says excitedly. The museum officials have promised to send copies of the significant paperwork to the board soon.  “We hope that it will help us with the restoration process and answer some questions regarding the tower and the tunnels.”

Those details would come in handy for filmmakers Joe Sikorski and Vic Elefante, who are working on a documentary about Wardenclyffe, “Tower to the People,” which they hope to complete by this summer “to bring as much attention as possible” to the project, Sikorski says. The filmmakers had donated $33,000—all the seed money for their fiction film about Tesla, “Fragments From Olympus”—to help the science center meet its original goal of $850,000. Online comic Matthew Inman helped spark an online fundraising campaign on Indiegogo.com that netted more than $1.3 million.

Tesla Science Center has to decide whether this dilapidated interior of the photo products warehouse will have to be torn down. (Photo credit: Spencer Rumsey/Long Island Press)

Helping the cause was a $400,000 state grant, originally set up by the former Democratic Assemb. Marc Alessi, which the Town of Brookhaven was administering. According to Alessi, who was beaming with pride as he talked with reporters at Wardenclyffe (while proudly proclaiming that he’s out of politics), there’s an additional state grant of “close to $600,000 that needed some matching money.”

The former Superfund site, polluted from decades of photo-product use, has been officially cleaned up, Alessi tells the Press, adding that “one thing the town could do is stay out of their way as they redevelop the property and make sure it’s done without a lot of red tape.”

The building’s interior is in very bad shape. This reporter was shown inside what had been an annex of the original lab used to ship products. Graffiti covered the walls, a 15-foot puddle was on the cement floor, days after it had rained.
Pointing into the darkness of a corridor that led to the original laboratory, David Madigan, president of a commercial real estate company in Holbrook and a member of the Tesla Science Center board, cautioned reporters from going further because of the high concentration of mold, asbestos and lead paint. The remediation will cost millions, the board predicts. They say $10 million, but that’s just a number “we plucked out of the air,” says Alcorn. Besides raising that daunting amount of money, the board will commission a feasibility study to determine what to renovate and what to demolish.

In the mean time, the Suffolk County police K-9 unit will begin using the site for training and provide security.
Interestingly, the job of transforming Wardenclyffe into a world-class museum was actually made a little easier by Peerless Photo, which bought the site in 1935, because “they boarded up the original arched windows without dismantling them,” Madigan says. “They created a labyrinth of other uses within the building but never tore the building down.”

Today there’s a large warehouse on the west end of the original laboratory, plus a storage area and loading docks attached to the east end.

“When they did build the surrounding buildings,” Madigan says, “they created a space between [them] so perhaps in the future, if a museum was ever created here, the original building would not have to be destroyed to take the other buildings down.”

Like the other board members, Madigan continues to find inspiration in Tesla’s vision and the mission of preserving “the last place on Earth” where Tesla actually did experimental work.

“Everything he did embodied embracing the future,” Madigan says, adding that the goal of the Tesla Science Center is to create “a living thing that looks forward rather than a static thing that only celebrates the past.”

But, of course, the Shoreham facility would honor the inventor of the x-ray photograph, robotics, wireless technology, desalination, bladeless turbines, as well as the induction motor for the long-distance transmission of alternating current, which, Madigan points out, “is the reason we can turn the lights on where we live today from a power plant miles away.”

The entrance of the Bay Park Sewage Treatment Plant on Tuesday, May 14, 2013.

Nassau County officials took nearly 100 residents on a tour Tuesday of the embattled Bay Park Sewage Treatment Plant to explain why such a stench is emanating from temporary post-Superstorm Sandy repairs.

Officials said they’ve gotten a head start on their plans for a $1.2 billion project to upgrade the plant and harden it against for future storms—nearly half of which would fund extending the outflow pipe from Reynolds Channel into the Atlantic Ocean. But a completion date won’t be clear until New York State and federal funds start flowing.

“Clearly, the Bay Park Sewage Treatment Plant has not been a good neighbor,” County Executive Ed Mangano told reporters and residents during a news conference at the facility. “Although operating, it is fragile.”

The apology tour came less than a week after the plant spilled 3 million gallons of partially treated sewage into the waterway—a spill the county blamed on a power outage at the plant—and two weeks after an environmental watchdog ranked Bay Park’s more than 2 billion gallons of Sandy spill the worst in New York State.

Parts of the Bay Park facility had been flooded with more than 9 feet of saltwater in the storm surge. The plant is still running on backup generators more than six months after its four engines were knocked out in the Oct. 29 storm. Temporary digester tanks that have been contributing to worse-than-usual smells in the area are scheduled to be moved.

“I’m hearing a lot of crap,” said Cynthia O’Rourke, a makeup artist and mother of two who took the tour with her 2-year-old daughter to find out why they still can’t return home since her family’s Oceanside home was flooded with sewage in Sandy. “Nobody’s taking responsibility for 20 years of mismanagement.”

The rickety state of Bay Park and its sister plant, Cedar Creek, had been the subject of a Press investigative series. The county later committed millions to repair the plant before Sandy hit and knocked it offline for more than a month, causing pipes to burst and sewage to flood some homes before pressure could be released on the plant.

Adrienne Esposito, executive director of Citizens Campaign for the Environment, called on Gov. Andrew Cuomo to help get Nassau its sewage plant repair funds.

“This is a basic human necessity; this is not a luxury item,” she said. “Societies have lived and died based on their sewage systems.”

Assemb. Harvey Weisenberg (D-Long Beach) echoed concerns that the sewage spills into Reynolds Channel impacts fishing, swimming, the air and groundwater.

“There was no containing anything that was coming out of here,” he said of the Bay Park’s failure during Sandy. “This is an emergency situation that has to be addressed.”

Gov. Andrew Cuomo announces LIPA proposal on Monday, May 13.

The Long Island Power Authority could be hit with a severe power downgrade if New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo gets his way.

The governor laid out a proposal Monday that would shift the embattled utility company’s day-to-day operation to PSEG, the New Jersey-based company slated to replace National Grid next year, and would freeze rates for three years, slash LIPA’s staff considerably and reduce LIPA’s debt load.

Essentially, LIPA would become a holding company, but would remain under government ownership for tax purposes and to ensure reimbursement from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the governor said.

“Simply put, LIPA is broken,” Cuomo said at the afternoon briefing.

The governor’s long-awaited announcement regarding the utility’s future comes more than six months after Superstorm Sandy pummeled LI, knocking out power to more than 90 percent of the 1.1 million homes and business that LIPA serves. LIPA came under intense pressure amid the storm’s aftermath from local and state officials, including Cuomo, who at his state-of-the-state address in January said “the time has come to abolish LIPA. Period.”

The governor didn’t go that far Monday, nor did he call for LIPA to be privatized, which he suggested early on after the Oct. 29 storm. But he made clear that the utility’s power would be diminished considerably.

“I think the storm was the straw that broke the camel’s back,” Cuomo said, joined in Albany with Nassau County Executive Ed Mangano and Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone. “It is the status quo and it has failed.”

Cuomo is seeking to privatize much of the utility’s operation by transferring duties to PSEG come January, improve customer service during storm response and stabilize rates—partly by instituting a rate freeze through 2015. He’s also calling for more government oversight of the utility.

“Getting rates down is essential,” Cuomo said, “getting the cost of power down is essential.”

He decided against privatizing the LIPA altogether, noting that doing so could endanger future reimbursement from FEMA. Sandy aid has already been allocated to cover the cost of raising or relocating LIPA’s power lines so property owners don’t have to foot the bill as they continue construction of their storm-ravaged homes.

The proposal would also impact LIPA’s staff, cutting it from 90 to 20, the governor said, and would slash the number of board members from 15 to five.

Cuomo is looking to push the proposal through this legislative session, which ends at the end of June. The top leaders in the state Senate and Assembly gave no indication that they would pass the bill through their respective chambers.

Dean Skelos (R-Rockville Centre), co-leader of the state Senate, said he “will closely review this plan,” and added that officials are moving the in “right direction.”

“I think this is a thoughtful plan that has many great ideas,” said Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan). “It’s an important step in the right direction.”

Both Mangano and Bellone accepted the governor’s recommendations.

“I think we have a critical moment to be responsive to this issue,” Cuomo said.“There is no alternative because the status quo is dangerous for Long Island.”

John Sampson

The New York State Senate’s former top Democrat is the latest legislative leader whose mug shot appears in the rogues’ gallery of disgraced lawmakers busted for political corruption in the state capitol.

Sen. John Sampson (D-Brooklyn), an ex-ethics committee chairman, pleaded not guilty Monday to charges of embezzlement, obstruction of justice and making false statements to federal investigators.

“We share what may well be the concern of many New Yorkers that incumbent and defendant cannot be accepted as interchangeable,” FBI Assistant Director in Charge George Venizelos said. “Elected officials are referred to as public servants and that should not be confused with self-serving.”

Prosecutors alleged that the 47-year-old—who led the state Senate’s Democratic minority from June 2009 to December 2012—stole $440,000 in escrow funds from foreclosure sales he was involved in as an attorney between 2008 and his election in 1997. He allegedly used some of the money to fund a failed bid for Brooklyn district attorney in 2005.

Later, when Sampson learned one of his associates was charged with mortgage fraud, authorities said the senator contacted an employee in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York to find out if he was also under investigation and who the witnesses were.

Sampson allegedly told the associate that if he found out who the witnesses were, he would arrange to “take them out,” according to the FBI, which tapped the senator’s cell phone to make its case. The senator then lied to FBI agents who questioned him about the allegations, authorities said.

The news broke less than a week after Assemb. William Boyland (D-Brooklyn) was indicted on new charges of allegedly stealing money from a nonprofit to pay for self-promotional materials.

It also comes after Sen. Malcolm Smith (D-Queens) and Assemb. Eric Stevenson (D-Bronx) were each charged with separate bribery scandals days apart last month.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo proposed legislation after those two arrests aimed at cleaning up the longstanding public corruption problem in the Albany statehouse.

Law enforcement officials said the goal is to empty medicine cabinets of unwanted painkillers before they’re stolen by substance abusers. Environmentalists said that the event ensures the drugs are incinerated instead of thrown in the garbage or flushed down the drain, eventually leaching into drinking and surface water supplies.

“I urge all New Yorkers to check their medicine cabinets and visit one of the many drug take back sites this Saturday to discard their unused medications and eliminate the potential dangers associated with these drugs,” said Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

More than 2 million pounds of drugs—over 1,000 tons—have been incinerated since the Drug Enforcement Administration launched the national program two years ago. Upward of 6 million Americans abuse prescription drugs, according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health.

The event will be held from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday. Locations can be found on the event website. There are about 250 drop-off locations across New York State. The drugs will then be disposed of at the Covanta Energy-from-Waste facilities.

“Dispersing oxycotin, antibiotics, and valium should be left to doctors, not to the water company,” said Adrienne Esposito, executive director, Citizens Campaign for the Environment. More information about how drug pollute the environment can be found at www.dontflushyourdrugs.net.

Those who miss the event can still anonymously drop off drugs in designated bins installed in Nassau and Suffolk county police precinct station houses.

Those who need help can call OASAS toll-free, 24-hour, 7-day a week HOPEline at 1-877-8-HOPENY, which is staffed by trained clinicians who can answer questions, help refer individuals to treatment services and provide other vital resources to facilitate recovery. All calls are anonymous and confidential.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo during press conference announcing Public Trust Act.

New York’s top elected official is now setting his sights on the next crisis at hand—public corruption.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo Tuesday joined a team of district attorneys from across the state, including Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice, in proposing the Public Trust Act, which would empower local prosecutors and creates a new class of public corruption crimes.

“Over the past few days there have been several charges brought against public officials,” the governor said. “They span city and state government, they span Democrats and Republicans and they paint a truly ugly picture of our political landscape.”

“I’d like to say that this is an unprecedented situation, that public corruption is a new problem, but it isn’t,” he added. “And in many ways that’s what makes it worse. There have been too many incidents for too many years.”

Under the proposed legislation, which the governor will try to push through during this legislative session, there will be new crimes for violating public trust. The new class of crimes would include bribery of a public servant, corrupting the government and failure to report public corruption. The penalties also call for a lifetime ban from government for anyone who has been convicted of public corruption.

“Prosecutors need better tools to hold public officials accountable when they betray the public’s trust,” Rice said in a statement, noting that the “proposal provides a much-needed overhaul to New York’s public corruption laws so we can better investigate and prosecute those who defraud the taxpayers, while strengthening the penalties for those who abuse their office.”

The proposal comes one week after State Sen. Malcolm Smith (D-Hollis) was arrested on bribery, wire fraud and conspiracy charges for allegedly bribing Republican leaders in an attempt to get his name on the GOP line in the New York City mayoral race.

And on Thursday, Assemb. Eric Stevenson (D-Bronx), was arrested and charged with conspiracy and bribery. Prosecutors accused Stevenson of taking more than $22,000 in bribes to write legislation.

“If you are a public official and if you break the law you will get caught, you will be prosecuted and you will go to jail,” said Cuomo.

The governor acknowledged that he would “like to strike while the iron is hot,” a tactic that he just recently used to pass tougher gun control laws after the Newtown, Conn. shooting.

The Public Trust Act would increase bribery penalties and it would for the first time make it a crime for any public official or employee to fail to report bribery.

Eric Stevenson

The crime wave of political corruption in the New York State capitol is still surging.

Assemb. Eric Stevenson (D-Bronx) was arrested Thursday and charged with conspiracy and bribery charges along with four others, the same week State Sen. Malcolm Smith (D-Queens) was also rounded up in a federal crackdown.

“For the second time in three days, we unseal criminal charges against a sitting member of our state legislature,” Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said. “It becomes more and more difficult to avoid the sad conclusion that political corruption in New York is indeed rampant and that a show-me-the-money culture in Albany is alive and well.”

Prosecutors alleged that Stevenson took more than $22,000 in bribes to draft legislation that ultimately became law declaring a three-year moratorium on the construction of adult day-care centers in New York City— effectively barring any other providers of day care for seniors from operating in a specified geographical area.

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan) called the accusations “a clear violation of the public trust and cannot be tolerated.” He added, “I am encouraging him to resign.”

Gov. Andrew Cuomo said he was appalled at the two cases.

“New Yorkers deserve a government that is as good as the people it serves, and the events of the last few days fail this and every standard of public service,” Cuomo said. “Those of us committed to the public and honored to hold its trust have zero tolerance for the actions brought to light this week.”

Stevenson is the latest of more than a dozen state lawmakers who have been accused of various corruption in recent years. His arrest came the same day State Sen. Shirley Huntley (D-Queens) was sentenced to probation for stealing taxpayer money from a nonprofit.

Stevenson was caught on tape telling a cooperating witness, according to federal investigators, “If half of the people up here in Albany was ever caught for what they do . . . they . . . would probably be in [jail] . . . so who are they bullshitting?”

Local leaders are concerned that the Island’s celebrated status as providing the best bang for the buck in public education is in jeopardy.

Two plus years of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s 2-percent property tax cap have left Long Island school districts struggling to make the grade, say New York educators, both union and management. Local leaders are concerned that the Island’s celebrated status as providing the best bang for the buck in public education is in jeopardy.

And if the Island loses its reputation for quality public schools—one of the reasons for our region’s economic viability—then high school graduates may find it harder to get accepted to the colleges and universities of their choice.

“Our students definitely present a transcript that shows far more rigor when applying to colleges and universities,” says Lorraine Deller, executive director of the Nassau Suffolk School Boards Association. “This has been something that has been the mainstay of public education on Long Island.”

She credits “Long Islanders’ willingness to pay higher taxes” with enabling the growth in Advanced Placement courses, the array of electives in science, technology and math, and the uplifting offering of arts and music programs, which has made Nassau and Suffolk public school graduates so competitive.

“Long Island school students continue to out perform students from every other region of the state by every measure,” she says.

But in the wake of the continuing shortfall in state funding, that positive trend may not be matched when test scores for the 2011-2012 year are released later this spring.

Educators already see troubling signs that Cuomo’s tax cap coupled with the state’s drastic reduction in aid to public schools—some $1.3 billion less than the budget five years ago—has begun to hurt students across New York. Legislators, mostly Republican, joined the Democratic governor in support of the tax cap by promising that it would come with mandate relief such as lessening the burden of pensions and the costly demands of meeting the “No Child Left Behind” standards, but that pledge was broken. Instead of more aid to make up for the decline in local revenue, the governor has let the state unilaterally slash its revenue line for school districts even further, education advocates claim. On LI, says Deller, the loss amounts to “over $1 billion in state funding” for the past three years.

Upstate, a valedictorian from a small school district reportedly did not get into SUNY Geneseo last spring because the high school’s curriculum lacked enough AP courses, according to Deller. That deficiency is now showing up in LI’s smaller districts, particularly on the East End. A recent survey conducted by the Long Island Education Coalition, a group of educational organizations, found fewer AP courses being offered in Nassau and Suffolk, 3,000 fewer positions in the schools overall, and, most troubling to educators, larger classes. Deller said that in the first year of the tax cap, only “the lower property wealth” school districts were reporting increasing class sizes of more than 25 students, “but now it’s across the board.”

For the 2013-2014 budget, Cuomo has proposed $600 million in school aid, with another $200 million in “fiscal stabilization,” which he would give to the districts he determined were needy. According to Carl Korn, a spokesman for the state’s largest teachers’ union, New York State United Teachers, the Legislature “appears to have rejected” the governor’s proposal. Instead it rolled that extra money into its own proposal and came up with $800 million. Then the Legislature added between $80 million and $100 million in “competitive grants,” which NYSUT opposes on the principle that students shouldn’t have to compete for what they all need in the classroom. The Legislature in Albany is nearing passage as of press time of a state budget with roughly $900 million to $1 billion in education funding. But, says Korn, “that would still leave schools with less than they had in 2008-2009.”

The teachers’ union is suing the state to have the property tax cap declared unconstitutional on the grounds that it violates local control and negates the principle of one person, one vote.

“It is eliminating the ability of communities to decide for themselves how much to invest in their own schools,” Korn says. The lawsuit was filed in February in State Supreme Court; the state has not yet responded. Meanwhile, New York still “owes $5.4 billion” from the Campaign for Fiscal Equity’s successful lawsuit. The Court of Appeals found that the state had unconstitutionally denied children the right to a sound, basic education by underfunding education.

“When state funds disappear, the localities fill in the difference,” says Korn. “And that’s the reason property taxes went up.”

But with cap in place—which can only be overturned by a supermajority of 60 percent of the school district’s voters—local officials have been struggling to stay within the 2 percent limit without sacrificing the quality of education that is their mission—and their pride—to provide.

“I have been a school board member for twenty years and I’ve never felt less in control than I do now,” said Jim Kaden, president of the South Huntington Board of Education and past president of the Nassau-Suffolk School Boards Association, at a presentation earlier this year. “During my tenure there has been a steady erosion of local control over both the educational program we offer and the management of the district.”

His own district in Suffolk saved full-day kindergarten and middle school sports from the chopping block in 2012 when the teachers offered to take a “full freeze” on their salaries for 2013. But his district doesn’t have that wiggle room going forward.

According to the Nassau-Suffolk School Boards Association, LI’s “educational outcomes” exceed those of the rest of the state and nation, while regionally adjusted costs are “below the state median.” The annual growth in “non-discretionary costs” in the districts already exceeds the 2 percent allowance, said Kaden, who also worries that Albany, which notoriously low-balls the cost of living on LI when it comes to its statewide funding allocations, may let hard-pressed upstate districts gain a larger share of the diminished public education pie than the Island.

“Unfortunately the state may still unfairly redistribute our wealth but the tax cap severely hampers our ability to pay for things we want ourselves so we are now in the unenviable position of paying for programs in other areas of the state that we can no longer provide for our own children,” said Kaden. “Not because we can’t afford it but because the law prevents it.”

The governor and the Legislature may need to stay after school and spend some time to fix these fundamental problems, advocates warn, before Long Island’s schools flunk out.

Residents in Nassau, Suffolk and the 11 other disaster-declared counties can apply for Federal Emergency Management Agency assistance through April 13 instead of the previous deadline of March 29—the five-month anniversary of the storm.

“This extension from FEMA will provide impacted residents with more time to get help so they can rebuild as soon as possible,” Gov. Andrew Cuomo said.

The 14-day extension covers both individuals and businesses who haven’t yet applied to the Small Business Administration for lowered-interest loans.

The aid can fund rental assistance, essential home repairs, personal property losses and other serious disaster-related needs not covered by insurance.

Applicants can register online at www.disasterassistance.gov via smartphone or tablet at m.fema.gov or call 800-621-3362 from 7 – 1 a.m., seven days a week.

Nassau County Legis. Delia DeRiggi-Whitton (D-Glen Cove), left, ex-lawmaker Dave Mejias, center, and others announce their opposition to building a casino on Long Island on Thursday, Feb. 14, 2013.

About a dozen members of a new anti-gambling group declared their opposition Thursday to any proposals to build a casino in Nassau County, citing quality of life concerns and worries that a deal to bring Atlantic City-style gaming to Long Island could be in the works.

The group dubbed themselves Nassau Residents Against Gambling Enterprise Development, or N-RAGED for short, during their debut press conference on the steps of the Supreme Court building in Mineola. Members of various neighborhood civic organizations as well as current and former local Democratic lawmakers round out its ranks.

“We are afraid that our suburban quality of life will be torn apart by some backroom deal in Albany,” said Dave Mejias, an attorney, a former Nassau legislator and the chairman of N-RAGED. “We want to make sure that Long Island is not going to be sold out to those special interests.”

He was referring to Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s proposal to legalize casino gambling in New York State, a plan that requires a second consecutive vote of approval in the State Legislature before voters ultimately decide its fate in a referendum. The Shinnecock Indian Nation in Southampton has been scouting for a location to build a gaming facility since winning federal recognition in 2010.

Despite the timing of the rally about an hour after fellow Democratic former Nassau County Executive Tom Suozzi held a press conference announcing his intentions to reclaim his old position, Mejias maintained that the group was “a-political.” Nevertheless, participants praised Suozzi’s agenda and criticized the Republican who unseated him, Ed Mangano, for proposing a casino at Nassau Coliseum. Also speaking at the anti-casino rally was Nassau Legis. Delia DeRiggi-Whitton, another Democrat from Suozzi’s hometown of Glen Cove.

“It’s a question of whether or not we really want to push gambling,” said DeRiggi-Whitton, adding that she prefers alternative proposals to build sports or research centers that have been floated for Uniondale and Elmont. She and others also expressed concerns that bringing casino gambling to LI would further strain social services because there might be an increase of gambling addicts losing their homes after betting on cards and other games of chance and tearing their families apart.

Cuomo had said during his State of the State address last month that he thinks whatever casinos New York builds should be located upstate, drawing tourists from LI and New York City. When reminded of the governor’s idea, Mejias said it’s still possible LI could be dealt a gaming facility while negotiations continue.

Shinnecock Trustee Chairman Randy King told the Press in a statement that if and when the tribe settles on a potential location to open a casino, they are required by federal law to ask the community for input.

“There has not been any recent activity regarding Shinnecock gaming in Nassau County,” the statement read in part.

Aside from the aging coliseum in Uniondale, there have also been proposals in recent years to build a casino at the Belmont Racetrack in Elmont, where the latest development pitch is for a soccer stadium for the New York Cosmos.

A spokesman for State Sen. Dean Skelos (R-Rockville Centre), the co-leader of the chamber who has been instrumental in Belmont redevelopment talks, did not return a call for comment. Neither did a spokeswoman for Mangano.

“We spend a lot of money sending our kids away to college,” said Mejias. ”They’re not going to be able to live here if they come back to be cocktail waitresses and blackjack dealers.”