First District Assemblyman Dan Losquadro is calling on North Fork residents to speak out against a plan to split Riverhead and Southold in the redistricting plan proposed by a state legislative task force.
Losquadro is urging residents to attend a public hearing on the proposed plan next Thursday, Feb. 9, in Smithtown to object to the way the East End assembly district lines are being redrawn.
The Legislative Task Force on Demographic Research and Reapportionment last week released a plan that creates a new First Assembly District that would include the South Fork towns of East Hampton and Southampton and the towns of Shelter Island and Southold. Riverhead would become part of a new Second Assembly District, which would also encompass northeastern Brookhaven, from Wading River to Port Jefferson.
“The North Fork and the South Fork are very different districts," Losquadro said. Agriculture, vineyards and primary residences are characteristic on the North Fork, but not so on the South Fork, he said.
Losquadro said he'd be teaming up with Riverhead Supervisor Sean Walter, Southold Supervisor Scott Russell and First District County Legislator Ed Romaine to "put pressure on" the state task force to prevent the North Fork from being split into two separate assembly districts. The assemblyman blamed the majority-party Democrats for the devising a plan he said would be "a logistical nightmare" for Southold residents.
Walter said last week he thought the plan was "ridiculous," and speculated about what the political motivation might have been. "Reapportionments always further political agendas," Walter said.
The First Assembly District, as currently drawn, includes Shelter Island, Southold, Riverhead and northeast Brookhaven. It is the most populous district in the state and had to lose 20,000 people to achieve the reapportionment population goal of 130,000.
Walter said he thought it would make more sense to excise the Brookhaven portion of the existing district to achieve the population goal.
"But," he noted, "that's solid Republican territory and would dump a whole lot of Republicans in Steve Englebright's district," Walter said, referring to the longtime Fourth District Assemblyman, Steven Englebright, a Democrat, whose district shares a border Losquadro's.
The First Assembly District has always been a Republican stronghold. It has only once in history elected a Democrat: Marc Alessi, who won the seat in a hard-fought special election in 2005. He was turned out of office by Losquadro in a tight race in 2010.
Until reapportionment following the 1980 census, the First Assembly District encompassed both the north and south forks, as well as eastern Brookhaven.
Next Thursday's public hearing begins at at 11 a.m. in the legislative auditorium at the W.H. Rogers Legislative Office Building, 725 Veterans Memorial Highway, Smithtown.