Editorial: A very difficult decision (Endorsement)
Issue of October 30 2009/ 12 Cheshvan 5770
Here's a surprising fact you may not know: it doesn't actually matter for whom you vote on Election Day, on Tuesday, November 3. Not at all. What really matters is that you vote for somebody. Don't like any of the candidates? No reason not to vote. Write in your mom, or your seventh grade English teacher. Who knows? Maybe she'll win.
Orthodox Jews, like the Jewish community as a whole, are perceived as politically powerful. Perhaps, in some quarters. Or maybe 'influential' is as good as it gets. Either way, there is a dismaying trend of low voter turnout in Orthodox neighborhoods, regionally. If it continues unchecked then whatever influence or power our community might wield is going to dissipate. Not a recipe for political might or for just getting needs met. So on Tuesday, we urge you to make up your mind to make the time to go to the polls and make your — our — voice heard.
Now, as long as you're going to make sure to vote, we might as well offer our thoughts on at least one race — the rematch in the 7th Legislative District race between incumbent Democrat Jeff Toback and Republican challenger Howard Kopel.
Frankly, both are nice, intelligent and competent people and we like them both. Each has many good points to commend them to voters; each also has some negatives. Unfortunately, if you're going to make an endorsement, you've got to make a choice.
Two years ago, after interviewing both candidates in person, we chose to endorse the challenger, Howard Kopel. Mr. Toback, to us at the time, seemed out of steam and out of ideas. Toback won that race with a 600-vote margin — a narrower victory than he had anticipated. In a phone conversation after the election he pledged to make every effort to win The Jewish Star's endorsement the next time around.
Did he do it?
Here are our impressions, formed over the last two years and in telephone interviews with both candidates in the past few days.
Toback definitely seems to have been energetic these past two years — the strong role he took against a billboard on Rockaway Turnpike that offends many people comes to mind.
Mr. Kopel too has improved. His first campaign was nothing to write home about, he admits. “This time there's a lot of grassroots support and we're doing it in a more professional way,” he said.
A major accomplishment for Toback has been “taking the villages of Lawrence and Cedarhurst out of the sewer business,” as he puts it. The consolidation of sewer service is a big deal for Nassau County. In the big picture it is certainly a step in the right direction of reducing the size of government and the costs of its services — a vital component of any plan to keep county taxes at a manageable level, and keep young adults from relocating to locales with a lower cost of living. Locally, it saved the two towns the huge expense of revamping their old sewage plant.
Kopel certainly doesn't object to consolidation — “it'll bring down taxes in Lawrence and Cedarhurst a little bit, which is great,” he said, “But if you walk around in Bay Park and parts of Island Park, it smells bad. Not everywhere or everyday, but they smell bad.”
He blames it on a problem related to the sewer plan itself — a charge that Toback denies.
As at the old Cedarhurst plant “when certain conditions are present it is difficult to keep smells in the facility,” Toback told us Tuesday.
“I play golf there with my son,” he said. “We don't smell it. Every now and then it happens.” The county has spent $17 million in the last ten years containing sewage odors, according to Toback.
The problem is not related to the two million gallons of sewage flowing from Lawrence and Cedarhurst into the regional plant each day, he said.
“The plant takes 56 million gallons a day now. We have a permit to accept 70 million and the plant is actually designed to process 150 million. The additional two million gallons a day “have virtually no impact on the quality of life of the people in Bay Park and East Rockaway,” he said. The issue is a “political issue, not a governmental one,” he said.
Toback has “already voted now for 2010, 11 and 12,” Kopel charges. “He's already voted to raise taxes in each of those years.”
“Howard doesn't understand,” Toback responded. “Howard has never been to a meeting of the Nassau County Legislature or held the four year plan in his hands,” he claimed.
“Unlike other governments, it is imposed on us to pass a four year plan. The only way to do that is, in our off years, to have 3.9 percent tax increases. They, we try our best to not implement them,” as legislators have managed to do in 6 of the last 7 years, he said.
“What people don't know is that there is a 2.5 percent energy tax in Nassau County,” said Kopel. Toback did not mention that in a discussion of taxes on Tuesday.
“I'm trying to sell ideas,” Kopel said. “I'm trying to sell the fact that I'm a businessman who understands that we've neglected many levels of government.”
Toback was criticized in the last campaign and in the current one for failing to act to repair long-neglected sidewalks on Branch Boulevard. On Friday, his office announced money has been secured and repairs will commence shortly.
Was this Toback's upbeat version of an October surprise?
“We've been working on it a long time,” he said. “Items that need 13 votes to do, and Republican support, are harder to get. The dominos all have to fall into place for things like this to happen. We were lucky,” he admitted. “Someone else had a project that needed my support and we were able to [get it done].”
As we said earlier, we like Howard Kopel, and we like Jeff Toback. It's not an easy decision, both candidates are promising. The fact is that Toback has earned a tremendous amount of good will for being a responsive elected official. In the final analysis, The Jewish Star believes he deserves another term.
