Because of better-than-anticipated tax revenue, Gov. Kathy Hochul is willing to consider shelving her proposal to end a longtime policy that guaranteed no school district would receive less state aid than it did the previous year, the state budget director said yesterday. Keshia Clukey reports on Newsday.com that Hochul, a Democrat, proposed ending the policy, known as “hold harmless,” citing declining school enrollments over the last decade. The proposal was met with criticism from both Democrats and Republicans in the NYS Legislature, as it would mean less state assistance for 337 of the state’s more than 700 school districts — including 44 on Long Island.

The governor and state legislative leaders last week released their revenue and economic forecast for the current fiscal year, which projected the state will collect $1.35 billion more in revenue than originally predicted.

State Budget Director Blake Washington, speaking with reporters Tuesday, said that money will “go a long way to smooth out any rough edges that are seen by the legislature.”

“It could go toward any number of things that are in the executive budget,” he said.

When asked by Newsday if that means eliminating the proposed change to hold harmless, Washington said: “Modifying that, I think, is probably fair game.”

Hochul’s $233 billion state budget proposal released in January for fiscal year 2024-25 kept overall spending nearly flat and reduced some aid to schools through the elimination of hold harmless. The spending plan included nearly $35 billion in school funding statewide.

The final state budget is due by April 1.

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Voters in New Suffolk yesterday approved by a vote of 83-14 shuttering a three-room schoolhouse and sending its six students to another district. Tara Smith reports on Newsday.com that the plan will turn New Suffolk into a “non-instructional” district, meaning students would be sent out of the district on a tuition basis. The three-member board of trustees last month selected the Southold Union Free School District as the school that students would attend. The four-year contract would take effect next school term.

New Suffolk, a prekindergarten-through-sixth-grade school, already sends students in the district to Southold for grades 7-12.

Six students attend classes in the red schoolhouse, which was built in 1907 and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Another 17 students in the district are sent to Southold public schools and four attend private school, according to school officials.

Now that voters have approved the change, two full-time teachers and several part-time staff, including physical education, art and music teachers, are slated to be laid off.

The superintendent and district clerk will remain employed and the schoolhouse could remain in use, possibly as a community center. Adjacent ballfields would be open to the public as green space, officials said.

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New York state prison inmates would get nearly $2,600 in taxpayer-funded pocket money to make ends meet after serving just six months in prison in a new bill making the rounds in Albany. Vaughn Golden and Jorge Fitz-Gibbon report in THE NY POST that the proposal from two NYC Democrats in the state legislature would up the amount of “gate money” given to ex-convicts from the current $40 — with the money used to pay for housing, transportation and other expenses, according to the Center for Employment Opportunities, which is backing the bill.

It calls for inmates being released from a correctional facility after paying their debt to get $2,550 over six months, with the payouts in monthly installments. To pay for the plan the lawmakers are asking that $25 million be set aside from the state general fund. “Today, people are sent home from prison with $40,” Sam Schaeffer, CEO for the Center for Employment Opportunities, said in a statement. “It’s hardly enough for even a day of food…We are not only investing in the futures of New Yorkers coming home from incarceration but fostering the creation of safer and more productive communities."

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Those caught dumping on some Suffolk County public lands would pay larger fines, and those who spot and report the crimes would receive bigger payouts under legislation passed yesterday. Vera Chinese reports on Newsday.com that the Suffolk Legislature voted 18-0 in favor of the so-called “Evergreen Initiative,” intended to prevent dumping in county parks and the pine barrens. The activity is expected to increase when the Brookhaven Town Landfill stops accepting construction and demolition debris later this year.

"It will be more expensive [to dispose of debris] which will make people want to cut corners,” said Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney. “It will make it more appealing to try and dump things.” Dumping in wetlands and the pine barrens, some 105,000 acres of environmentally sensitive land in Riverhead, Brookhaven and Southampton towns, has worsened in recent years, advocates say.

Suffolk County Executive Ed Romaine said he supports the measure and plans to sign the bill. Currently, the maximum fine for illegally dumping construction debris and hazardous waste on county land or in the protected pine barrens by an individual is $10,000 and $15,000 for companies. Whistleblowers who provide information leading to an arrest of a polluter are entitled to 25% of that penalty.

Under the new legislation, the fine would increase to $15,000 for individuals and $25,000 for corporations, with whistleblowers collecting a third of that amount.

Dumping other materials is now a $1,000 fine for an individual and $15,000 for corporations. The new law would raise it to $5,000 for individuals and keep it at $15,000 for corporations.

“Dumping is a problem for not only the preserved open space that we fought so hard to [protect], but also for the possible contamination of the aquifer,” said Nina Leonhardt, board secretary of the Riverhead-based nonprofit Long Island Pine Barrens Society. “Anything that has chemical contaminants can seep right through, percolate through the ground and enter the aquifer.”

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The Francis S. Gabreski Airport in Westhampton is one of 144 airports around the country on the receiving end of nearly $1 billion in grant support from the Federal Aviation Administration via President Joe Biden’s 2021 $1.2 trillion infrastructure law and its Airport Terminal Program, or ATP. Tom Gogola reports on 27east.com that the competitive grants were announced by the FAA in mid-February and will see $4.9 million go to pay for part of the estimated $16 million replacement of the 1940s-era air traffic control tower at Gabreski, which the federal government says has “exceeded its useful life and does not meet current standards.” The new tower will be built about 200 feet north-northwest of the existing tower in what’s now a grassy area between Gabreski Airport’s main terminal building and the aircraft parking apron. There’s no current construction timeline for the new building, said Nicole Russo, deputy director of communications for Suffolk County Executive Ed Romaine. Russo noted that the “anticipated timeline is for the county to send the project out for bid [in] late summer 2024.” The old tower will be torn down when the new one is fully commissioned, said Russo. The demolition “is part of the construction project and will be included in the bid.” Gabreski was one of two New York airports to receive the ATP funding in the recent round of grants. Islip-McArthur received $14.1 million for upgrades to the main terminal.

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St. Patrick’s Day parades marching across the east end begin this weekend.

Beth Young in EAST END Beacon reports that the Annual Westhampton Beach St. Patrick’s Day Parade steps off at noon on Saturday, March 9 from the elementary school on Mill Road, marching south to Main Street, and finishing at the corner of Main Street and Sunset Avenue. Westhampton Beach School District teacher and Athletic Director and Westhampton War Memorial Ambulance Volunteer Patty Ziparo-Dalton will be this year’s Grand Marshal.

Also, this Saturday, Cutchogue’s Annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade, sponsored by the North Fork Chamber of Commerce and the Cutchogue Fire Department, steps off at 2 p.m., from the traffic light at Cox Lane, marching west on the Main Road to the Cutchogue Fire Department on New Suffolk Road, where hot dogs and refreshments will be available for the community.

Paul Drum of the Paul Drum Life Experience Project in Greenport will be the Grand Marshal.

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Former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York has been subpoenaed to appear before a House subcommittee to answer for his administration’s handling of nursing homes during the coronavirus pandemic, reigniting a flashpoint that could further damage his chances at a political comeback. Grace Ashford in THE NY TIMES reports that the Republican-led Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic accused Mr. Cuomo of “recklessly” exposing nursing home residents to the virus “with deadly consequence.”

The subcommittee chairman, Representative Brad Wenstrup of Ohio, said in a letter sent yesterday to Mr. Cuomo that there was “troubling evidence suggesting the Cuomo administration at best downplayed” the effects of its nursing home policies “and at worst covered them up.”

The subpoena will require Mr. Cuomo to appear on May 24.

The subpoena is the latest in a multiyear saga surrounding the former governor’s decision to require nursing homes to accept residents who had tested positive for Covid-19 in the spring of 2020. The decision, which presaged a virus outbreak in those facilities leading to thousands of deaths, has drawn broad scrutiny from state and federal investigators.

In January 2021, the New York State attorney general, Letitia James, a Democrat, concluded that the state had “severely” undercounted deaths in nursing homes — charges that were validated when the state later revised its figures upward some 40 percent. But her office’s report stopped short of blaming the governor’s policy for nursing home outbreaks, acknowledging that the policy was consistent with federal guidance at the time.

The former governor, also a Democrat, has repeatedly denied that the policy led to additional deaths.