NY Breakup Plan: Shades of ‘Peconic’

In states dominated by one party, especially when that dominance emanates from a giant metropolitan area, you get periodic efforts to break up the state so as to allow the dissident regions to have their own way. Often this is about ideology, although it can also reflect urban vs. rural concerns. California sees this. And New York does, too, with a renewed such effort the topic of the article below at a political website. The NY scheme would separate all of Long Island into a governing region. With that part of the state recently evolving back into being a Republican stronghold, there’s a partisan cast here. But Long Islanders know that “home rule” historically has had other implications. On the eastern half, in Suffolk County, various pushes for secession of the farthest reaches into a “Peconic County” occurred for decades prior to the Millennium. Initially these were prompted by a Suffolk governing structure that favored the western towns, though all were still heavily agricultural. After that was reformed, fear of a development wave sweeping east into the picturesque two forks (including “the Hamptons”) led to new activity into the 1980s and ’90s. The bid for Peconic County finally was quelled by the state allowing enactment of a real estate transfer tax, beginning in 1999, in the Peconic areas to fund open-space preservation. The Suffolk strife may have ended, but the desire to keep governments closer is always an active one.

https://nystateofpolitics.com/state-of-politics/new-york/politics/2023/10/10/proponents-of-dividing-new-york-believe-movement-has-momentum