The U.S. Postal Service has flashed another fiscal alert to its patrons in Congress–funds will run dry by next year without relief. The attached brief from the Cato Institute frames the falloff in usage that has precipitated the latest mail crisis. Simply put, even with the various (but limited) efficiencies this public corporation has been permitted, it hasn’t been able to shrink in tandem with its customer base. Given the already low prices for marketing mail, it’s hard to see that business being enticed back. The first-class letter, at 78 cents still a money loser, is supposed to be an American birthright but is close to being an artifact. (And, in any case, the real cost of sending meaningful content is now at least $6.08–the postage plus the cumbersome fixing of a bar-coded wrap so the USPS can track the item. I waited in the usual slow line to get that “Certified” delivery from NYC to Florida, which has now taken 4 days and counting.) The walls are crumbling on this operation and literally so in some of its thousands of antiquated post offices. The politics of postal reform remain fractious, but maybe a wave of digital-savvy congresspeople will help size this relic for today. –March 27, 2026
The Passing of a Pine Barrens Partisan
Decades after hydrologists and other Earth scientists had identified the Central Pine Barrens of Long Island, N.Y., as sitting atop a vital aquifer and fostering a complex ecosystem, the 120,000 remaining acres were still being treated as scrublands. By the 1970s they separated the increasingly precious Hamptons and farm belt of the eastern end from the suburbs that had risen in western Suffolk County, and commercial interests had plans to put them to use: for industry or housing, generally, or odd one-offs like a fireworks factory or a huge ice rink. One golf course had already been built and others were envisioned. And that water beneath the surface? Some promoters wanted to bottle it. A trio of environmental academics took up for the forests (which include cedar and maple) and started the Long Island Pine Barrens Society in 1977. Before long they found their (foghorn) voice in P.R. man Dick Amper, an area resident and clean-water hound. The stakes were rising as the local development boom took off in the 1980s. As the society’s pugnacious director, and aided by an increasingly preservationist political bent on the East End, Amper got state protective legislation enacted in 1993. With that leverage and fitful support from surrounding town and county governments, the society by 2020 was celebrating the shielding of 100,000-plus acres from routine building–more than half of that from any disturbance at all. Amper stepped down in 2023 and died this week, one more departed warrior from the pivotal land-use battles of the Hamptons’ recent past.
Chicken or Egg: A Farm May Disturb Hamptons-Adjacent Rusticity
It’s a conceit on the East End of Long Island, N.Y., that the agricultural character of the area should be preserved. Attempts to do that go back half a century, to when land values rose to the point that farm families wanted to sell out to subdividers. But the gloss of today’s version–mostly vineyards and boutique row crops–obscures the sometimes noxious aspects of living near active plant and animal raising, which earlier generations accepted. A particular rub has developed in the North Fork town of Southold, where a 16-acre plot that had been legally preserved–though it apparently had not been farmed in that same half a century–was bought by someone who plans to tend 6,000 hens on it. Some nearby homeowners, who may have been attracted by proximity to the fallow acreage, are screaming about elements of the intended egg (or chicken) operation. As the latest East End Beacon story on the controversy explains, some unusual twists to Grant Callahan’s application exist, but then ag preserves often involve the unexpected, as on the South Fork or “Hamptons.” (Who knew that trees or horses could be a problem?) Such are the vexations in some of America’s most valuable precincts.
Big Part of Phone Costs Is In the Small Text
Recently I succumbed to replacing my mobile phone. Though I chose one of the simpler Android models, and avoided nearly all add-on accessories, the price jumped up as I got to checkout. The reason: New York’s voracious taxing authorities. Whether it be on monthly usage bills or on purchases of the devices, governments have seized on this now ubiquitous personal computer as a way of escalating their take with seemingly little organized objection.
At my request, my cell-service provider broke down the official damage: Better than half was state and local sales taxes–I expected that. But more than 43% of the add-on came from assorted state and local excise and “mobility” or transit charges. These are junk fees put on consumers who have no real alternatives (much like the add-ons for vehicle purchases that only some drivers can get around). All together, the public sector got 16% on top of my bill–including on the shipping charge.
From a September 2025 report from the Tax Foundation policy group, I see that New York’s are the 4th highest phone-tax charges. (Everybody in the U.S. pays an additional 13.36% federal tax on mobile service bills.) Not surprisingly, Illinois and especially the city of Chicago impose the worst penalties. I suppose I should be grateful for small favors.
But doesn’t New York City have a new young mayor who ran on an “affordability” platform? Alas, he also has a socialist agenda, and that will need his wireless constituents to keep ponying up. –March 16, 2026
The (Unwanted) Bridges of Suffolk County
The nowadays Quixotic notion of bridging Long Island Sound surfaced in the news this week, with Newsday picking up on such a flare in the Connecticut legislature. The scheme in question would link Bridgeport with Kings Park, N.Y., and the Sunken Meadow Parkway through western Suffolk County. It would have a ballpark cost of $50 billion and isn’t going to happen for that and other reasons. But the item did stir memories of when such a bridge–and much farther east, touching down in the Wading River hamlet of Riverhead town–was one of multiple such crossings seriously considered by state planners. (Another idea was for a span to Orient on the North Fork of Long Island with subsidiary links through Shelter Island to what became “the Hamptons.”) An element in all these visions, which were alive into the 1970s and still floated by Gov. Andrew Cuomo in 2017, was that Long Island’s East End needed a direct connection to lower New England. In today’s world, the aim would be to alleviate congestion on limited east-west roads at peak times or in an emergency. But in earlier decades, the hope of some was to bring more mainlanders to enjoy the ocean splendor of what was then a rural Suffolk County. (At the time, before the widespread installation of cable television, eastern Suffolk was much attuned to Connecticut, where it got its broadcast signals.) This was an era of extensive motorway construction, and fast routes to the shore were on the planning boards–one such stretch, Suffolk Route 111 that connects Hamptons traffic from the Long Island Expressway to the Sunrise Highway, was originally to go on to Westhampton Beach. However, wealth on the South Fork took off and preservation of its remaining character displaced development promotion as governing orthodoxy. The roads–and the bridges–receded into remains of the drafting tables.
Long Island Sound bridge proposal gets a hearing in Connecticut – Newsday
Hamptons Pivot: Preserve Land or the Landless?
Call it an inflection point: One of the two news weeklies on the South Fork of Long Island, N.Y., propounds, “[I]t’s time to turn the page on land preservation as a priority and begin to think about preserving something else: a workable, livable community.”
For decades under previous and current ownership, the Southampton Press with its now-sister publication, the Sag Harbor Express, has championed efforts to shield increasingly valuable acreage from development. This was the cause that, more than anything else, transformed the area from a Republican stronghold to one dominated by Democrats.
Now the scales are being tipped in favor of “workforce housing.” Staff positions in the public and private sectors have become too difficult to fill because potential or current employees can’t afford a nearby place to buy or rent. Some try, regardless, and face hours of commuting that in turn chokes the lucky-enough residents trying to get around on limited roads.
The history of efforts to build “affordable” units on the South Fork also goes back decades. Ultimately, few got done. Beginning in East Hampton township and now creeping into Southampton town’s affluent areas, the tide is turning. Planning agencies, nudged by the New York State government, are pushing past familiar neighborhood resistance.
To have the sanctity of blocking the bulldozers questioned, to have the Press/Express editorial further say, “Land preservation was the right priority for a generation. It may not be the right priority for the next one,” and to have no published pushback to this in the following week’s edition, is to witness a shift. It must be noted that the newspaper group qualified its support: for “redeveloping properties, aggressively, to avoid turning to virgin land.” But even that sort of buildout has met past objection, that it “changes the character” of the place.
The counter-argument is that holding off relatively modest housing by restricting supply and setting zoning minimums that guarantee super-expensive properties has already changed the South Fork’s character, in ways that even many of the well-ensconced do not now accept. Just how many? That will be an ongoing subject for the local press and a pressure point for the Democrats who rule the towns today. –Feb. 28, 2026
Why the Hamptons Can’t Have (Many) Nice Sewers
One hair-trigger topic of land use on the South Fork of Long Island, now that “the Hamptons” have mostly been built out, is the construction of sewage or water treatment plants. This early February story in the Southampton Press, subsequently picked up in Newsday, concerns plans to put such a facility on 6 wooded acres in the more-rustic north section of Hampton Bays. The purpose is to treat effluent from the downtown section of the hamlet, thus allowing for more intensive development there. Sewage limitations for that commercial strip, as elsewhere in Suffolk County, constrain the capacity for new usage (read residential toilets or restaurant wastewater) in such centers. It has been a repeated issue for Southampton Village, and for Southampton township’s plans to redevelop the partly blighted Riverside hamlet and add worker housing. (It’s less of a barrier in Sag Harbor Village, thanks to a plant built–unfortunately on the now-valuable waterfront–in the 1970s in a failed effort to retain industrial jobs.) The backdrop to all such local controversies is that Suffolk County remains largely unsewered, a legacy of its agricultural days, and therefore the groundwater, lakes and estuaries are highly susceptible to contamination by widely-present septic tanks. These units rarely can accommodate intensive uses of property without costly adaptation. So sewerage is the next big step if much is to be built in core areas–an otherwise popular idea. Despite technological advances that mask much of the smell of a treatment plant–and even can leave much of the ground cover undisturbed–neighbors are quick to object. And in the Hamptons, they frequently have lawyers at the ready.
Foothold for a Future Trader Joe’s in the Hamptons?
Progress toward a major distribution center for retailer Trader Joe’s may increase the chances of one or more of the budget-gourmet stores finally reaching the East End of Long Island, NY. To date, most parts of the “Hamptons” are 40 or more miles from the nearest outlet. Other economical shopping choices are also in short supply, aggravating affordability issues on both the south and north forks of the island, where service workers find it challenging to live. This, in turn, contributes to traffic nightmares as commuters use likewise limited highways to access East End work. So today’s update from Newsday on approvals and construction of nearly a million square feet of facilities on 66 acres in the Suffolk County village of Islandia will raise hopes that more stores can be profitably accommodated. The site of the project is also a throwback to the late 1900s on Long Island, when it housed headquarters of Computer Associates, a tech giant of the day and major regional employer. The company’s CEO, Charles Wang, was in the early 2000s the majority owner of the Islanders franchise in the National Hockey League.
https://www.newsday.com/long-island/towns/islandia-trader-joes-distribution-site-i4kvz30h
Checking Hamptons’ Building Bent, From the Ground Up
Growth controls on luxury housing may be coming to the town of Southampton, N.Y., after earlier moves in East Hampton township and Southold town on the North Fork of Long Island. Southampton councilman Michael Iasilli, a young Democrat with a progressive bent, is taking a slightly different tack in legislation he’s adapting for formal introduction. Whereas the neighboring towns have focused on building size–a direct reaction to the mansionizing of the modern Hamptons and surrounding areas–Iasilli’s plans target “land disturbance.” This gets at the same aim, because most mechanized clearings stem from either a new big residence on raw land or a smaller home on a sizable lot being displaced by one sized for today’s luxury tastes. Iasilli knows that the uprooting of mature trees or the bulldozing of wooded areas, often carried out with little or no warning to neighbors, is a particular trigger of public anger among those (frequently voting residents) who think their peace and beauty is being surrendered to cater to a super-wealthy seasonal crowd. So the councilman’s draft would require permits–subject to review–before 500 square feet is “disturbed” on lots bigger than half an acre. (He says he’s “amenable” to giving ground to an 800-sf threshold.) Some commercial projects would also be covered. If passed by the majority-Democrat council after a public hearing process Iasilli hopes to start next month, this stands to affect much if not most new development in the town. Not for nothing is the fact that traffic–another triggering issue in Southampton–is greatly increased by the “trades” vehicles involved in construction and then in the tending of the landscaped estates that result from it. Iasilli last year spearheaded an official committee to weigh steps toward containing that problem. –Jan 29, 2026
UPDATE 3/19/26: Iasilli’s resolution is slated for a town-board public hearing on March 24. Meantime, the growth-control push has spread to the village of North Haven, just north of Sag Harbor. A proposal to reduce structural square-footage limits, especially on smaller lots, generated vocal opposition at a board meeting. The idea is backed by North Haven’s mayor and is similar to what was adopted in East Hampton and Southold towns.
A Peek Into Special-Ed Primacy
Before the smart phone disrupted American classrooms (a disruption that is now being contained) the earlier great change in recent decades was what is broadly called “special ed.” Programs designed to address a range of learning disabilities have shifted resources across U.S. schools, for better or otherwise. The subject is an extremely sensitive one for parents of affected children, for naturally, everybody wants their kid to have the best shot. And, these efforts have surely spared any number of youngsters from academic isolation and failure. But the chips haven’t always fallen where a good policymaker might wish. I was reminded of this by a paragraph buried in a recent New Yorker article about freeing early-graders from the trap of dyslexia that might otherwise doom them to miserable lives. (For the usual reasons, a disproportionate number are from poor households.) The passage is reproduced below. Consider the unintended consequences of legislation followed by a sweeping court order. –1/24/26
Tim W. Ferguson 