Our Basic Needs
Poughquag, N.Y.
April 17, 2026
To the Editor:
The astronauts’ recent photos of the Earth were stunning and may have increased people’s appreciation of our planet. During this week of Earth Day, we might also pause and consider how the Earth tends to our basic needs.
Her soils nourish our crops. Her streams and waters quench our thirst and keep us hydrated. Her vegetation, on the land and in the ocean, supplies the oxygen we breathe. And her everyday sights and sounds, from birdsong to flower buds, lift our spirits.
Indigenous peoples frequently speak of the Earth as a caring mother, and rightly so. Perhaps we can take a moment to look at a tree, field, or shore and silently say a few words of gratitude.
BILL CRAIN
Reassuring Solace
North Haven
April 20, 2026
Dear David:
This week I was amazed and reassured by several events that gave me faith in our future. Amid all the chaos in the world and evidence of politicians gone wrong, I discovered many folks here in the Hamptons are busy with important projects, some with an honest historical interest, and many with strong humanitarian commitments.
This spring awareness invites a reassuring solace and encouragement for our future. I found joy and inspiration being exposed to the good, creative work of my neighbors in our community of intelligent and decent people doing good things.
Saturday, the Sag Harbor Historical Museum launched its new book, “Sag Harbor in the Revolution.” It is a magnificent professional study into the American Revolution as it relates to this little historic harbor village.
This year is our country’s semiquincentennial celebration of independence from the Crown of England. Most history books forget to mention any local significance contributing to that important event. At last, we can now see our long-forgotten significance with a more complete history of this little place. It was a brave and dedicated community that participated in this fight for freedom and democracy — a freedom from royal tyrants, with actual battles for survival. We now have a well-researched history of the historic Battle of Sag Harbor, which some of us might find relevant to the current “No Kings” protests, and other political goings-on today.
The book launch was attended by many whose labor and talent, and years of hard work, created this important document. Sag Harbor seems finally free of the stereotype of thinking that the defunct, often grisly, whaling industry was our most important moment in history.
Then, on Sunday morning, I read a brief history of the First Presbyterian Church of East Hampton in the service program. The community and humanitarian goals of the founding settlers in 1648 appear to remain to this day, which reminds me why I feel so affiliated.
It is said the settlers’ relationship with the Native American communities commenced then and survives to this day. As Puritans, they must establish their church promptly for worship, and they also developed the business of the community, and laws, and schools, all of which became the town of East Hampton. They promptly built a small, thatched building that served as church and all other functions. Over time, other buildings replaced that, up to today’s beautiful Main Street home, sometimes referred to as “the first church.” Its mission is a blend of spirituality, good thought, and hard work, which seem to be the basis of what this country was founded on.
Today, all of the above has given me strength and confidence knowing that we are in a community of wise and decent people who enjoy hard work for the benefit of themselves, their families, and those among their community, which includes those diverse people throughout the world.
Let’s keep this spirit alive.
ANTHONY CORON
Health Care Deficiency
Montauk
April 14, 2026
Dear David:
For many summers, I have walked the highway in my striped shirt and have made many friends doing it. No more. I have been struck with cancer, and I have been in hospitals for months.
I am writing to point out a serious deficiency in health care in Montauk. There is little or no professional home care here. Paid health care costs a minimum of $40 an hour.
I have been forced to open a GoFundMe page in my name to defray these costs. It is Support James Devine’s Cancer Care.
I ask the town board to seriously address this matter.
JIM DEVINE
Hamptons Whodunnit
East Hampton Village
April 20, 2026
Dear David,
The fourth Hamptons Whodunit took place this past weekend and was once again an incredible success! We welcomed extraordinary mystery and thriller authors, forensic and true-crime experts for a weekend full of panels, workshops, crime scene competitions, murder mystery and trivia games, graveyard tours, as well as breakfasts, teas, and dinners. We would not be successful without the collaboration of East Hampton Village, as well as our fantastic partners that include the East Hampton Library, East Hampton Historical Society, St. Luke’s Episcopal Church and other nonprofits, restaurants, inns, local and national businesses, as well as newspapers and media and valued donors. (I wish I could name them all here; but they are on our website!) The entire Hamptons Whodunit team is so grateful for their contributions. We are also fortunate to have extraordinary volunteers, who do a wonderful job representing our village.
Hamptons Whodunit is a 501(c)(3). Our mission is education, and we were thrilled to bring our programming, once again, into East Hampton High School. The students were extremely enthusiastic to participate in interactive events that introduced them to varied professions in the forensic and judicial fields. And for the first time, we will be offering two scholarships to seniors who are interested in either the field of forensics or law enforcement as well as mystery or true-crime writing.
I cannot thank the community enough for its support. Additionally, I am so grateful to work with a board and a team comprising the most dedicated and hard-working members who toil year-round on this endeavor and do so as a labor of love. The resounding feedback from our attendees is tremendously positive. Thank you so much to everyone who made Hamptons Whodunit 2026 a success!
Sincerely,
CARRIE DOYLE
C.E.O. and Co-founder
Rooted in Education
East Hampton
April 20, 2026
Dear East Hampton Star,
I am writing to introduce myself to the East Hampton community as a candidate for one of the open seats on the East Hampton School Board.
As a public-school educator and a parent of a high school student, my life has long been rooted in education and service to others. I have spent my career working with diverse students and families, and I bring that same commitment to my involvement in our local schools. Over the years, I have made it a priority to stay informed and engaged by attending board of education meetings and remaining connected to the work happening within the district.
I care deeply about the strength of our schools and the role they play in shaping our community. I am grateful for the opportunity to become more involved and to contribute in a meaningful way. I look forward to continuing to listen, learn, and support the students, families, and educators of the East Hampton School District.
The vote is on May 19 from 1 to 9 p.m. at East Hampton High School.
Sincerely,
KIMBERLY SARRIS ROYAL
Napeague Strip
Montauk
April 20, 2026
Dear David,
It seems every other day I have the pleasure of hitting a doctor’s office. Therefore, I travel on the strip coming and going in and out of Montauk. The view is such a disgusting, dangerous eyesore.
Each time I’m driving in this area I say a prayer for all who live in Montauk, may we be safe from any kind of fire, similar to the godawful one in Hawaii, that had very few or no survivors.
We can spend big dollars on bull but can’t find a dime to clean up a fire hazard. Perhaps the elites won’t continue on the road once they see the danger. Wishful thinking.
Sincerely,
BEA DERRICO
Road Paving
East Hampton
April 20, 2026
Dear David,
Today I received and read the Spring 2026 Town of East Hampton newsletter. One of the topics covered was titled, “From Winter Wear to Road Repair.” It says, “the 2026 budget includes $2.148 million for road paving to help improve road conditions across the community.” Although it mentions East Hampton, Springs, and Montauk, no specific roads are named.
What does it take to get Two Holes of Water Road repaved? For years, I have written and called but nothing happens (except ironically just two holes were recently filled but not the 50-plus remaining). The road needs repaving.
Again, I ask, what does it take to fix the whole, long, heavily used road — an accident? A death? More flat tires? Will the town ignore it as it has in the past? Or will it repave and give the taxpayers something from which many many people, cars, trucks, bicycles, pedestrians, and dogs would benefit?
JANE ADELMAN
No Competition
Wainscott
April 13, 2026
Dear David,
I suggest everyone check their Optimum cable bills. They just snuck a raise into your bill. And they have eliminated several channels but never lowered the cost.
There used to be a “page” for vintage movies that they eliminated. All you had to to was select the movie by entering the spelling and it came on the screen. Now we have a decades-old sitcom, “Two and a Half Men” broadcast on two different channels at the same time.
They also eliminated other vintage channels. The movies in demand now include titles no one heard of before. It’s time that another provider be allowed to service this area.
I asked why they raised the fee $10. They referred me to the Public Trade Commission, with negative results. Since they have no competition, they do whatever they want.
The age demographics of this town is getting older, and with the expense we don’t need the awful programing they ram down our throats. No wonder many of my friends unplugged Optimum. It did offer me a package to combine internet, phone, and cable and it was $50 a month more then I am paying. “Such a deal.”
Respectfully,
ARTHUR FRENCH
Work Together
East Hampton
April 16, 2026
Dear David,
I am writing this letter to the editor today not to blame or point a finger at our elected officials on the East Hampton Town Board or the trustees but to bring awareness to varied situations that have taken place over the last few years and up to the current time wherein our cherished wildlife community has taken a hit.
Let’s start with the avian bird flu fiasco that continues today from the hundreds of dead, diseased geese and other waterfowl at Georgica Pond and Beach. I think the learned lesson here is that in the future when something like this happens out of the blue, the responsibility doesn’t fall on the shoulders of one entity but that all groups concerned should come together willingly and quickly to access the situation, to bring in additional players who have knowledge and experience, which could have in this instance been the East Hampton Town Board, willingly to reach out to the harbormaster and our Natural Resources Department heads, as well as village governing personnel, to work together for a better outcome. If this had taken place in this instance, cooler heads would have prevailed, and no one would have been left holding the bag so to speak.
Let’s now move on to the premature and vast overclearing almost two years ago of the acreage at the proposed senior center off Abraham’s Path and the impact on the protected endangered long-eared northern brown bats, and the habitats of foxes, rabbits, opossums, various bird species, etc. Had the town board included all three appointed boards in the zoning, planning, and design process, it would have slowed this project down and possibly prevented all this overclearing because perhaps with time, the town board would have finally realized how much this project was not in keeping with what the community wanted, thereby a lot of this acreage would have been saved in time before the fallout with the architects.
We can then go back three years ago when the Department of Environmental Conservation opened up an additional spring turkey hunting season during the month of May in Suffolk County. Every town had the option to either adopt this or not. Southampton chose not to add any more hunting in the town.
Many of us wildlife supporters petitioned the town board not to approve this because the majority in our community are not in favor of hunting or its expansion. Before then-Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc came back from time away, most board members said they were not in favor of it because it was disclosed to them that this would take place during the wild turkeys’ mating and nesting season — we don’t have an overpopulation of turkeys to begin with, and as well as that, they are good neighbors that do no harm to the environment and continuously feed on and forage for ticks for most of the year when ticks are present in the woodlands and our neighborhoods.
Unfortunately, when the supervisor returned, he pressed the board to approve the vote and did not, at that time, disclose to the public that he was a current member of the gun club, which to me was a conflict of interest. The board approved the additional turkey hunting season, and now during the most-active time during the month of May, hunters with guns are in the woods and on our trails shooting male turkeys who are in close proximity to nesting females.
And let’s not forget our deer population that over and above hunting is continuously targeted because of overpopulation and plant destruction, when, in fact, the town has created this problem because of the allowance of rapid overdevelopment that has forced these animals out of their natural habitats and into our yards, neighborhoods, and on our busy roadways.
To come full circle, the Town and Village of East Hampton governments created all these problems, and it should be an incorporated effort by all entities that govern our land, beaches, and waterways that when tragedy occurs, especially out of the blue, to come together and make educated and well-thought-out plans that leave no stones unturned so that the best outcome is provided for our wildlife caught in the crosshairs — and our public safety.
Lastly, the upcoming spring turkey hunting season will be upon us by the end of this month during the month of May, and I urge the town to make use of their position to warn that there is the potential that avian influenza could spread to wild turkeys.
I understand the chance is not as common with turkeys because they usually don’t share the same areas with waterfowl, where the disease is transmitted in the waterways and habitats, but birds being birds don’t usually stay in one place all the time.
Wild turkeys are lethally susceptible to the disease, and many states warn hunters and citizens to take precautions. Personally, I would like to see this additional spring hunting season revoked for next year so that we can build our wild turkey population instead of reducing it. They already have natural predators but, most important, they constantly forage for ticks.
Our local turkeys and federally protected bats took a hit these last couple of years by unpopular choices made by our town board, and the really unpopular missteps ignored by the trustees during the cleanup of the Canada geese die-off in early March.
It’s my opinion and hope that our elected officials have learned to work together and act more consciously to protect our wildlife with compassion, focused awareness, and protection for the betterment of all of us.
With kindest regards,
BETSY PETROSKI
Real and Enhancing
Montauk
April 20, 2026
Dear David,
Having just read of East Hampton Town’s $7.25 million purchase of the land at Pathfinder Day Camp, some sincere thanks are in order.
Like most Montauk local parents whose children went to Pathfinder (both daughters 30 years ago), it was a convenient, affordable, and fun camp for them. To preserve it from undesired development is really great news for future generations.
Some further, additional heartfelt thanks are also in order. I was at Mermaid Beach a few days ago (across from Gosman’s) and it is amazing. It may well be the widest beach in all of Montauk! In my life I have never seen so much dredge spoil come out of the inlet. I know the town financially contributed to the barge and its completion, and we fishermen (especially commercial) are grateful.
Ditch Plain has been another recipient of the town addressing a critical need and it financed an enormous sand and dune replenishment project there. Ditch remains a favorite beach for us locals who swim and surf there (if we can find a parking spot!). I’m hopeful the sand stays put for a while and we have a much wider beach to spread out on this summer.
The Carl Fisher House (Akin House and hill) is currently undergoing a major restoration financed, again, by the town and operated by the Montauk Historical Society. The home is such an important part of Montauk’s history, and it is quite fitting the restoration is occurring on the 100-year anniversary of Carl Fisher breaking ground in Montauk.
For the record, I am and have been a registered independent. My thoughts and thanks here are not political smoke blowing. They are recognition of the recent multimillion-dollar investments by the town into the wonderful community of Montauk.
I have spent almost my entire life here, my daughters were born and raised here, and like many of us have cringed at some of the unwanted changes. I remain eternally grateful for the community preservation fund that has enabled the town to preserve, protect, and restore property and structures in Montauk.
As much as we have watched Montauk change these past few decades, without the C.P.F. and investments by East Hampton Town we would be unrecognizable. I look forward to personally thanking all those responsible for these recent real and enhancing investments in Montauk. And not investment that takes advantage of it.
JOE GAVIOLA
Keeper
Montauk Point Lighthouse
Idea of Land
Amagansett
April 20, 2026
Dear David,
In the ongoing discussion surrounding the purchase of the Wainscott $56 million Osborn property for agriculture needs versus open space and spectacular vista, it may be worth reflecting on a lesson drawn not from policy or finance, but from literature — specifically, Tolstoy’s parable about how much land a person or “farmers” truly need.
Tolstoy’s message is not about land itself. Land, like wealth or progress, can serve good and necessary purposes. His warning is about what happens when the idea of land — its beauty, its symbolism, its perceived value — begins to outweigh practical reality, history, and balance. In the story, a man’s reasonable desire gradually transforms into an unexamined pursuit of “just a little more,” until the line between need and excess disappears entirely.
The three town councilmen, David Lys, Ian Caldwell-Piedmonte,and Tom Flight, seem to want agriculture to be restored to the Osborn property, and thus the community faces a different but related question: When land has not been used for agriculture for 46 years, what exactly are we preserving? Is it function or is it an idealized vision of what we believe the land should represent? And at what cost — financially and civically — do we pursue that vision?
Public decisions of this scale demand more than good intentions. They require careful consideration of competing needs, long-term impacts, and the diverse perspectives of the community. When a single viewpoint — whether rooted in aesthetics, economics, or personal experience — begins to dominate the conversation over the will of the community, we risk losing the balance that good governance depends on.
The implication for us is not to reject preservation or investment but to question whether our three councilmen’s ambitions exceed the truly broader public good. Agriculture should not be added to this management plan, as requested by the majority of the Wainscott community.
RONA KLOPMAN
Not Buying That
Amagansett
April 19, 2026
To the Editor,
I got to call into question this Joe Palermo singing canary. This, in my opinion, was for him to save his own backside. If the town was allegedly going to be contacted by the Public Corruption Bureau on Nov. 20, 2023, Mr. Palermo then noticed something was afoot in 2024? Sorry, I’m not buying that.
Mr. Palermo also has made us aware he needs to fill his last two years to get to retirement. That’s the rub — pension city.
How about all those building permits and certificates of occupancy given out on Bay View Avenue without the granting of a road-widening easement and the corresponding roadwork to obtain those? This was confirmed to be nonexistent in some of Carole Brennan’s Freedom of Information responses and email correspondences to me. Town code does not seem to exist here. Town board resolutions don’t, either.
The sheer incompetence continues, as the homeowner of 117 Bay View Avenue was given an alleged six-month extension from the Building Department as told by telephone April 9. That’s allegedly because town building permits are all given for a year.
So much for temporary permits for these structures for six months with three-month extensions. Even though a geocube structure is prohibited in this area, it still exists in its new iteration — since 2018. This is the second time the Building Department has given this permit in error. Great job, gang. Can we get our eight summers back? Nope, gone forever, as government employees get paid if they can do the job or not.
This should spark Jerry Larsen to have more questions and to have responses at the ready. Though he does have Jon Tarbet on his committee, who was or still may be the representation for Stella McCartney who was the other homeowner who blocked Bay View Avenue with the prohibited geocubes. This blocked a town nature preserve, which means everyone in town had their rights violated for multiple years.
We could all take a closer look up and down that proposed committee and find some questions on every one of them. I’d rather sit back and watch the potential chaos unfold and just keep documenting for a rainy day, like it is currently.
Jerry, keep posting on Facebook. You’ve already done wonders letting out information that was suspected but not known. This will spark some new requests for documents. I may have been quiet for a little bit but I’m always watching the multiple telenovelas happening throughout town.
Still here,
JOE KARPINSKI
Basilisk Moment
Amagansett
April 17, 2026
To the Editor:
In my endless, meandering free speech project I call the “Mad Manuscript,” I have a defined term, the “basilisk moment,” in which you discover that your world is not at all what you thought. The iconic example must certainly be when the person you married a few days ago pushes you off a cliff on a day hike through gorgeous scenery on your honeymoon. Short of and less definitive than that was the moment when I discovered that every elderly white male intellectual I had quoted in the “M.M.” was a friend of Jeffrey Epstein (including Noam Chomsky; that makes me want to be silent for a long moment, which is hard to do in a letter).
Another huge formative “reveal,” around age 12: Israel did not seem to be a very ethical nation, if it bulldozed the home of every Palestinian parent whose child was suspected of terrorism. In America, we call that a “bill of attainder,” and the Constitution says don’t do it. But when I set out to ask every older, putatively wise and kind member of my parents’ Jewish circle in Brooklyn, they would start to stammer and say something like, “You haven’t lived there. You couldn’t understand.”
I am experiencing a rather intense basilisk moment now — actually, 2026 seems to be all such moments all the time. But the one which is central to my experience these last weeks is the unspoken, systemic Islamophobia of the New York court system. As I have mentioned in prior letters, I unexpectedly took on a full-time, pro bono (unpaid), civil liberties law practice after Oct. 7, 2023, representing, among others, hundreds of Muslim and Arab-American students targeted by their universities for their anguish about the Israeli carpet bombing of Gaza.
Here is a situation which resulted in several of my clients being suspended or expelled from Columbia (my basilisk alma mater). During the encampment, three aggressive counterprotesters tried to enter with the expressed purpose of screaming into the faces of the protesters, bullying and threatening them, and filming them with phones shoved into their faces.
The video then would be uploaded to Canary Mission, with the result that 20-year-old hijab-wearing women students started receiving floods of death and rape threats texted to their cellphones and sent to their personal email.
One of the counterprotesters, all of whom had done this before, was visibly inebriated. A trained de-escalation team that included students and a professor, spoke to them calmly, asking them to put their phones away and not to scream in people’s faces if they still wished to enter the encampment. The answer: We are Columbia students, and we can go anywhere and do anything we want.
Decades of federal case law arising from situations in which people charged into Pride marches screaming hatred, or bullied and frightened women trying to enter abortion clinics, have established that there is no violation of anyone’s free speech rights when the authorities intervene to keep the rageful and ill-intentioned a few feet away from their targets. Summer Sunday afternoons in Sag Harbor, the local police have stepped in when people slammed an open hand to my chest, hit me with an Israeli flag, and spit on my security partner. (One man also shouted that I was a “demented ghetto Jew,” which made me laugh. I am thinking of adopting that as the name of my Bruce Springsteen cover band, which may one day perform at the Talkhouse. A guy can dream!)
At Columbia, neither campus safety nor N.Y.P.D. intervened. So, as a last resort, the students tasked with protecting their fellows formed a peaceful human chain. The narrative that of course emerged from this — that my clients were set up for — was a bunch of haters blocked Jewish students from transiting the campus.
Several members of the peacekeeping team are now my clients, including a woman who was a Ph.D. student and is now working double shifts as a waitress to stay afloat in New York City — her dissertation, financing, and career all memories.
Okay, allow me to ramble back to my point. These students are assaulted and insulted three times, the first by violent counterprotesters; the second by the universities that discipline them for engaging in nonviolent self-protective measures, then a third time by the judges they turn to for redress, to be reminded they are valued as Americans after all, with the same rights as everyone else. These New York State judges are dismissing almost all of these cases right out of the gate without granting the opportunity for discovery or trial, effectively informing my brown-skinned clients, in the infamous words of the Dred Scott decision, that they have “no rights which the white man was bound to respect.”
Dishonorable, inventive judges have found many ways to do this. Here’s the latest, so straightforward, brief, and cruel I suspect it will become the standard. If you are a student victimized by a pretextual, bad-faith student conduct proceeding, you no longer have the protection of New York State human rights law! I know that sounds extraordinary, but it’s the disposition reached in three of my cases last week, in New York City and Rochester, within days of each other.
Here is the lethal but quite normative-sounding legalese: “The instant plenary complaint, while couched in terms of unlawful discrimination . . . is in fact a challenge to a university’s academic and administrative decisions and thus is barred by the four-month statute of limitations for a CPLR article 78 proceeding.” (That very revealing use of the verb “to couch” would amuse the genteelly-decaying Roche Bobois creation in my living room, if it is sentient, as I suspect.)
Okay, full disclosure: That is not a quote from one of my three cases, but from an appeals court case they cite, brushing away a huge area of liberty in a single sentence, without analysis (and without heart; just business as usual. Nothing to see here, people).
Another favorite topic of mine in the “M.M.” is synchronicity, the mysterious, Jungian way that Everything Connects to Everything. Glancing at the signature line in that case to see if I knew any of the judges, imagine my non-surprise when I saw that our good friend James Catterson was one of the authors.
Mr. Catterson, since returned by the voters to the private practice of law, is lead local counsel to Marc Rowan, the billionaire chaos Muppet (note to editor: I won’t get get mad if you substitute “hedge fund guy and restaurant hobbyist”) who is taking a mallet to East Hampton zoning law for the pure pleasure of growing Duryea’s without seeking a single permit or variance.
Mr. Rowan, a Wharton School alum and donor, has also been smashing the University of Pennsylvania with his mallet for some time. He acknowledged in an interview in February 2024 that he thought that “students rallying for Palestinians [are] more a reflection of ‘anti-Americanism’ and ‘anti-merit’ than antisemitism,” but that hasn’t stopped him from accusing everyone in sight of the latter.
Here’s the punchline: Mr. Rowan can now take the mallet to Gaza! In January, he was appointed by his friend Donald Trump to the board of Peace responsible for Gaza’s “reconstruction.” Rowan smash!
In all fairness to Mr. Catterson, I haven’t seen any indication that he is on the national or international Rowan teams, though he is an ex-appeals court judge employed by a prestigious national firm. My theory is that Mr. Catterson, despite those impressive credentials, never made it out of the minors, which, as we all know from “Field of Dreams,” is the true American tragedy — while a brown-skinned student being thrown out of academia for uttering the words “free Palestine” is not.
For democracy in East Hampton, the United States, and the planet (why not the galaxy while we’re at it?),
JONATHAN WALLACE
U.S. Score
East Hampton
April 16, 2026
Dear Mr. Rattray,
In its 2026 report, Freedom House listed its scores for the democratic status of countries throughout the world. Based on various criteria, the United States scored 81 out of 100, while Ireland scored 98, Germany, 95; France, 89, and Italy, 87. Even Mongolia (84) and Croatia (82) received higher scores than the U.S.
The report cited that the U.S. score resulted from the Trump administration’s “attempts to exert executive authority in domains ranging from immigration and trade relations to fiscal policy, domestic law enforcement, and war powers.” The report also said that the Trump administration “made sustained efforts to assert greater centralized control over executive-branch agencies and officials, to undermine anticorruption safeguards and enforcement, and to target its perceived political opponents with investigations and criminal charges.”
The U.S. score decreased from 84 last year. Imagine how much more our score may decrease in 2027 given what Trump is doing this year with his war against Iran.
SALVATORE TOCCI
Selective Claims
East Hampton
April 16, 2026
Sir,
Rep. Nick LaLota’s Tax Day message is a case study in how to overwhelm constituents with selective claims while sidestepping inconvenient facts.
The repeated use of “average” tax savings is a tell. An “average” Long Island family supposedly saving $2,860 sounds reassuring until you ask the obvious question: Which families?
Averages in tax policy distort reality. Higher earners with sizable deductions often drive those figures, while many middle-income households see far less, and some see no meaningful change at all. Presenting that number without context is misleading.
The same sleight of hand appears in the celebration of a $40,000 state and local tax cap. That is targeted relief that primarily benefits higher income homeowners with large property tax bills. Renters and families nowhere near the cap are effectively written out of the story. Calling this a win for Long Islanders as a whole is disingenuous.
Then comes the laundry list of benefits: an expanded Child Tax Credit, no taxes on tips or overtime, relief on Social Security. It sounds appealing, but which of these are fully enacted, which are partial, and which remain proposals? Constituents are given the impression these are settled facts. They are not.
And nowhere is there any mention of cost. Tax cuts do not exist in a vacuum. They have consequences for deficits, federal priorities, and ultimately taxpayers themselves. Omitting that side of the ledger is not an oversight.
This is the problem. A rapid-fire stream of favorable claims creates the impression of sweeping relief while obscuring who actually benefits and what the trade-offs are.
Rep. LaLota’s constituents deserve clarity. If these policies truly deliver what is claimed, then show the distribution, explain the trade-offs, and be clear about what is law versus what is aspiration. Otherwise, this is just a sales pitch.
Sincerely,
ANDREW VAN PRAAG