Government

Local officials and community advocates are asking residents of East Hampton Town to complete their census forms. Only 29.8 percent of East Hampton households had filled out their forms as of July 24.

Legislation introduced by Assemblyman Fred Thiele Jr. to restore state recognition of the Montaukett Indians was unanimously passed by the State Assembly last Thursday in a vote of 142-0. In 2013, 2017, and 2018, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo vetoed similar legislation.

The question of whether Wainscott should be carved out of East Hampton Town as its own village has divided residents of the hamlet. One group has gathered more than 200 signatures on a petition to draw a line of incorporation, and on the other, a new collective called Wainscott United has begun a campaign of its own in opposition to that idea.

Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. announced last Thursday that legislation he co-sponsored that would strengthen oversight of mining to protect water quality unanimously passed both houses of the State Legislature. The legislation was based on recommendations of a grand jury empaneled in the county in 2018 and 2019 regarding illegal dumping and sand mining regulation.

With the release of a new report on Plum Island and its future, environmental groups and elected officials have renewed the call for the federal General Services Administration to call off the island's sale and preserve it instead.

The East Hampton Town Trustees and the Friends of Georgica Pond Foundation have applied to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and the town board for emergency authorization to use an aquatic weed harvester in the Georgica Cove section of Georgica Pond.

Three and a half years after East Hampton Town Police Chief Michael Sarlo told the town board that the town's emergency communications system had reached the end of its useful life and was in need of a major overhaul, "we're slowly but surely getting there," he said on Tuesday. 

Nancy Goroff, the Democratic Party's nominee to challenge Representative Lee Zeldin in New York's First Congressional District, was the top vote-getter in the Democrats' June 23 primary election where it mattered most.

Nancy Goroff, the Democratic Party's nominee to challenge Representative Lee Zeldin in New York's First Congressional District, was the focus of an online "unity party" attended by hundreds on Saturday that included her two leading competitors for the nomination and the actor Alec Baldwin.

The clerk of the East Hampton Town Trustees told his counterparts on the town board Tuesday that the town's baymen "are having a difficult time making a living," and that opposition to the Suffolk County Aquaculture Lease Program by recreational users of waterways poses a real threat to their livelihoods.

Francis Bock spoke during a discussion of the program, under which 10-acre parcels in Peconic and Gardiner's Bays have been leased for private commercial shellfish farming since 2010. The program, known as SCALP, is currently undergoing its first 10-year review.

The Police Benevolent Association of the New York State Troopers has endorsed the re-election campaign of Representative Lee Zeldin in New York's First Congressional District. The endorsement represents Mr. Zeldin's ninth union endorsement in the 2020 election cycle.

The East Hampton Town Board held its most substantive discussion to date about rezoning a narrow 14.2-acre undeveloped site off Three Mile Harbor Road in East Hampton on Tuesday. As many as 60 units of affordable housing could be built there.