SOURCE:
https://www.newsday.com/opinion/newsday-opinion-the-point-newsletter-1.40901749
January 22, 2020
Who gets a piece of the action?
Perhaps the surest bet regarding Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s State of the State and budget proposal for a $3 billion environmental bond act to go before voters in the fall is that it will set off a feeding frenzy.
What gets included and what not? Will money be allotted per region (some Long Island leaders hope so) or for specific projects or for general categories? Or for some combination of the above?
Officials from the governor’s office and the state Department of Environmental Conservation have called environmental groups around the state to ask for suggestions but also to convey a message: The bond act is for big projects that might not otherwise get done, it’s focused on climate change and clean water, and it’s meant to be “additive” — in other words, it’s for new initiatives, not proposals for which funding already has been committed.
If true, that last assurance should alleviate worries that in a very difficult budget year a voter-approved bond act might be used to provide funding for previously announced initiatives — like the $2.5 billion over five years for wastewater and drinking water infrastructure approved in the 2017 budget, or the $500 million for clean water initiatives with a promise of $500 million more each of the next two years approved in 2019.
One other local concern has to do with timing. With a big state bond act on the ballot in November, is this the best year for local environmentalists to be pushing, for example, a referendum in Suffolk County asking voters whether they would be willing to pay a fee on water to help get nitrogen out of groundwater and drinking water?
Some advocates say, emphatically, yes.
“Because the state will be launching an environmental bond act, this is the ideal time for Suffolk to launch a complementary environmental bond act,” Citizens Campaign for the Environment Executive Director Adrienne Esposito told The Point.
For evidence, Esposito and others point to 1996, when Suffolk voters supported Gov. George E. Pataki’s state $1.75 billion environmental bond act, while also approving a local proposal to buy land in the pine barrens using $55 million in surplus money in a county drinking water program financed by a 0.25 percent tax on real estate sales, as well as bond acts for farmland preservation and open space purchases in four of the five East End towns.
But history also provides a note of caution. In 1990, six years before Pataki’s success, a $1.975 billion state environmental bond act was narrowly rejected. It also was pitched during tough financial times with the state trying to close a budget deficit. And it also was proposed by Gov. Cuomo — Mario M. Cuomo.
Will his son’s act fare better?