Long Island commuters will know by the end of the day whether they’ll soon pay more for their LIRR tickets. Alfonso A. Castillo reports on Newsday.com that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority Board is set to vote at its monthly meeting this morning on a proposal to raise fares by about 4%, including on the Long Island Rail Road.

The cost of monthly tickets would be capped at $500. LIRR officials have noted that, even with the increase, monthly passes will still cost less than they did in 2019, because the railroad cut prices by 10% last year.

Tolls at MTA bridges and tunnels would rise by an average of 5.5% and as much as 10% for those that don't have E-ZPass. On New York City subways and buses, the cost of a single trip would increase to $2.90, from the current $2.75.

The new rates would take effect around Labor Day.

The fare hike — the first since 2019 — comes after the MTA twice postponed scheduled increases in 2021 and 2022, and despite the recently passed state budget including an additional $1.1 billion in tax revenues for the transit agency. Without the boost in funding, the MTA was projecting annual deficits of up to $2 billion, largely caused by declining ridership since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The MTA originally proposed a 5.5% fare increase — the highest in a decade — but dialed it back after receiving the additional state aid.

MTA officials have said regularly-scheduled, modest fare increases are essential to address growing costs, and to avoid larger hikes in the future.

The MTA is reportedly eyeing another 4% rate increase in 2025, and again in 2027.

Democrat David Calone has $2,370,977 to spend in the race for the open Suffolk County executive seat while Republican Ed Romaine has $1,548,216 heading into the November general election, according to campaign reports filed Monday. Vera Chinese reports on Newsday.com that Calone, a former federal and state prosecutor turned entrepreneur, and Romaine, the Brookhaven Town supervisor, are running to replace County Executive Steve Bellone, a Democrat who is term-limited after 12 years in office.

While Romaine has less cash on hand than Calone, he has outraised Calone since January, with $1.3 million in contributions compared with Calone's $868,925 since then. Calone also made a $250,000 loan to his campaign, according to his spokesman Shane Wolfe.

Calone, 49, of Setauket, has spent $331,472 compared with Romaine's $111,193, the filings show.

Calone said in a statement, “There’s a clear enthusiasm across our county to elect a leader with a background in law enforcement and business to tackle the challenges we face, most crucially, keeping our families safe, making Suffolk a more affordable place to live, and protecting our environment and water.”

Romaine, 76, of Center Moriches, compared himself with Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney, a Republican who was outspent nearly 4-1 in the 2021 race yet defeated incumbent Democrat Tim Sini.

“I have to rely on my friends and neighbors in Suffolk County,” Romaine said. “I'm just going to do the best I can with what I have.”

At least one of the Christmas Tree Shops’ two Long Island stores will close next month, as the bankrupt retailer works to unload merchandise at going-out-of-business sales. Tory N. Parrish reports on Newsday.com that selling seasonal and home décor year-round at approximately 70 stores in 20 states, the Middleborough, Massachusetts-based retailer filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in May. It began liquidation sales early this month, and merchandise is on sale for up to 60% off.

The chain has two stores on Long Island — in Deer Park and Riverhead.

The Riverhead store will close Aug. 22, store manager Greg Koplinka said yesterday.

A manager at Christmas Tree Shops at Tanger Outlets Deer Park said store employees had not been told when that shop will close.

Christmas Tree Shops had been planning to open a 38,000-square-foot store this past spring in the former Babies R Us space in Sayville Plaza in Bohemia.

That store never opened and a new tenant is being lined up, said Robert Delavale, vice president and director of leasing at Breslin Realty Development Corp., the Garden City-based real estate firm that owns part of Sayville Plaza through an affiliate.

The state’s top money manager painted a bleak fiscal future for New York in a sobering report released yesterday, estimating a jaw-dropping deficit of $36.4 billion by 2027. NYS Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli pointed to several factors leading the revenue decline: lower tax collections, increased Medicaid enrollment and the end of federal, pandemic-era funding. The cumulative $36 billion price tag surpasses the roughly $20 billion estimate through 2027 previously provided by Gov. Kathy Hochul’s state Division of Budget. Bernadette Hogan and Jesse O’Neill report in THE NY POST that previous estimates from the state’s projected expenses to increase by $4 billion in fiscal year 2024-2025, but DiNapoli’s report shows that number grows to $9.1 billion over the same time period.

Between 2025-2026, the number jumps from $5.3 billion to $13.9 billion and then to $13.4 billion from $6.3 billion by April 2027.

“The estimated gaps are well above typical forecasted levels over the previous 15 years,” wrote DiNapoli in the 28-page report.

Although Governor Hochul and the legislature grew the Empire State’s reserve fund to $19.5 billion in the recently passed $229 billion state budget, the Comptroller warned the move might not be enough to close the future gaps.

DiNapoli pointed to yet another concerning trend: taxpayers exiting the state. The NY Post has reported much of those leaving have sights set on tax friendly environments in the south, such as Florida.

A net average of 28,700 personal income taxpayers moved out of New York between 2015 and 2019 and four times the amount followed in 2020 – 112,400 individuals.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul announced yesterday a series of executive actions designed to promote residential real estate development and ease the state’s housing crisis, in a bid to salvage some of her housing ambitions after negotiations over a broader agreement imploded earlier this year. Mihir Zaveri and Luis Ferré-Sadurní in the NY TIMES report that the actions come months after Governor Hochul, a Democrat, failed to sway state lawmakers to support a more ambitious housing plan to tackle a housing shortage that has helped make New York City and areas of Long Island one of the most expensive places to live in the nation.

New York has been slower to take action on housing than other states, despite the severity of its crisis. Hochul said in a statement that her actions represented an “important first step,” even if their effect may be modest. The governor’s new initiatives can be enacted without consensus from legislators, but they are meant to be stopgap measures. More meaningful solutions would likely require legislation, meaning that Governor Hochul would have to wait until lawmakers return to Albany in January. But housing legislation might face even bigger hurdles in 2024, an election year for the State Assembly and Senate. New York lawmakers will likely shy away from taking up thorny policy issues that could hurt their electoral prospects, especially in the suburbs, where Republicans are more competitive against Democrats.

With the summer crab harvesting season well underway, East Hampton Town this week stiffened fines and introduced the potential of criminal charges for various methods of illegal poaching of crabs and shellfish in town waters. Michael Wright reports on 27east.com that anyone who works “in concert” with others, uses lookouts to warn others of approaching authorities or flees from police, could face new “aggravated” level charges that carry a steeper fine schedule or even misdemeanor charges for multiple violations. It also creates criminal charges for illegal harvesting of shellfish or crabs for commercial purposes. All harvesting of shellfish — which includes crabs and conch — in town waters is prohibited without a valid East Hampton Town shellfish license and at night. Fines for illegal harvesting of shellfish will now range from the current $150 to as much as $1,000 for the aggravated poaching offenses, and up to $2,500 if fines are not paid within 90 days.

The goats are going to eat Montauk’s weeds. About a decade ago, the Friends of the Long Pond Greenbelt used a hired pack of goats to rid a pasture of invasive weeds between Sag Harbor and Sagaponack. The goats, apparently, have a taste for many of the most common invasive plant species that can find roots and soon take over swaths of woods, but turn their noses up at most native species.

Michael Wright reports on 27east.com that this week, engineers working for East Hampton Town and the Concerned Citizens of Montauk, unveiled a plan to use goats as part of the effort to restore the coastal shrublands along the southern edge of Old Montauk Highway just west of downtown Montauk.

The land, known as the Benson Preserve, is owned by the Town of East Hampton and stretches west from South Eton Street for nearly a mile, sloping from the old highway down to the ocean beaches.

Rusty Schmidt, a landscape ecologist for the engineering company Nelson Pope Voorhis, told the East Hampton Town Board yesterday that a survey his company conducted in 2021 revealed that about 16 acres of the preserve, the portion that runs along the uplands that bound Old Montauk Highway, is dominated by invasive species of privet, honeysuckle and rosa multiflora. Those plants stand 12 to 15 feet high, obscuring views across the preserve to the ocean, and are choking out other plant species.

In the plan that CCOM hopes to begin this winter, as much of the invasives will be removed mechanically as possible. Then in the spring, the goats will move in.

The project is expected to take 10 years to complete and cost some $865,000.

East Hampton Town is not being asked to contribute financially, only to approve the project going forward.