From every mountainside

What does freedom mean to you?

Yes, you.

Whoever you are, wherever you're reading this, stop for a moment and think about this. What does freedom mean to you?

Freedom is what it's all about, isn't it? Freedom is what the Founding Fathers (and Mothers) were seeking when they crossed the Atlantic in wooden sailing ships to make a new home in a new world. Freedom is what they fought and died for in the revolt against the crown that began with the shot heard round the world at Lexington in 1775. Freedom for all people, regardless of race, is what divided our country in a bitter, bloody battle that nearly destroyed our nation less than a hundred years after its birth. The goal of protecting our freedom sent the doughboys off to war in Europe during "the war to end all wars" and the G.I.s to Europe and Asia a generation later during World Ware II. "If you love your freedom, thank a Vet."

Freedom is something to covet, to protect, to fight for, to die for.

Freedom is what we're all about here in the U.S. of A, isn't it? It's what we've got, what we've always had, what we've always had so much of that we didn't know what to do with it. So we take it for granted. We hardly give it a second thought. Freedom is woven into the fabric of American society. It is the very essence of America. It's what generation after generation of people from all corners of the earth have come to America to pursue. Freedom to live as you please, in peace, without being bothered. Freedom to think what you want. Freedom to speak your mind. Freedom to move about the country. Freedom to associate with whomever you choose. Freedom to work, to make a buck, to pursue opportunity and make something of yourself, no matter how humble your beginnings. Freedom to worship — Jesus, Allah, Jehovah, Buddha, Satan, the sun, Mother Earth, yourself. Or nothing at all.

Freedom to vote, to choose who will run your government and oversee how they do it. Freedom to know what they're doing, so you can hold them accountable. Freedom to criticize them if they don't do right by you. Freedom to turn them out of office if you see fit. Freedom to ask the government to do what you think is right. Freedom to demonstrate with a group of like-minded people for things you believe in.

Freedom to do nothing. Freedom to sit on your couch every night and watch sitcoms or sports on TV, to never think about freedom. You don't have to. You live in the USA, after all. Your freedom is in the bag. No need to pay attention to what elected officials are doing with your tax dollars. No need to be concerned about government controlling information about how it operates. No need to worry about your rights. You're so certain that all's well, you barely even have to worry about voting. (Fewer than a quarter of eligible voters will participate in next month's general election.)

What's it all about, anyway, this thing called freedom? Does it really matter to us today? Why do some people make such a fuss about these things — especially when we're engaged in a "permanent war" against an "invisible enemy" and some "sacrifice" of individual liberty is "necessary" to secure "freedom" not only for us, but for the rest of the world, to whom we will carry "democracy" (whether they want it or not).

Hey, if you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to worry about. Right?

I'm going to dedicate this space to freedom in the coming weeks. Because freedom is, in fact, what it's all about. And freedom is, in fact, in danger. Your freedom. Right here, right now. Your children's freedom, today, next year, 10 years from now. Freedom is under assault in the U.S. — by government at all levels. Even your local school board. But first and foremost, your freedom and your children's freedom are in jeopardy because of complacency, apathy, maybe, even, if the truth be told, a little ignorance — your assumption that it will always be there when you need it.

This newspaper, because we cherish freedom, is participating in the N.Y. Press Association's First Amendment Essay Contest. It's open to students in 11th and 12th grades. Go to our Web site for details at www.northshoresun.com. The grand-prize winner in this statewide contest gets $10,000, with cash prizes for local winners chosen from each school district by the Sun and one overall grand-prize winner who will represent the Sun in the state contest.

Encourage your high school age kids to log on and participate. The future of freedom is in their hands.

Ms. Civiletti's e-mail address is denise@timesreview.com.

About those letters

As the 2007 campaign season kicks off, it’s a good time to dust off the “Ground rules for letter writing — special silly season edition” column.
1. Keep it short. Letters should be no more than 350 words. Letters longer than this will be returned to you for cutting.
2. Make it accurate. Be prepared to document all statements of fact for the editor. If you can’t back up what you’re stating with documentation, we won’t print it. We don’t have the staff or time to research your facts for you. So “documentation” means more than telling us something was in a recent edition of this paper. At a minimum, give us the edition date and page number. Better yet, provide us with the clipping.
3. Don’t confuse facts with opinions. You’re entitled to your opinion. Letters are often intended as expressions of opinion. That’s fine. But don’t ascribe your opinion of or about something to the person you’re criticizing.
Let’s say you believe an elected official or candidate has a “hidden agenda” about something. You may say so, as in: “I believe Mr. So-and-so has a hidden agenda to raise taxes,” followed by a statement of why you believe this is true. That’s different from “What is Mr. So-and-so’s hidden agenda to raise taxes?”
4. Be civilized. Don’t use the commentary section of the newspaper for personal attacks on other people, including public officials. People in the public arena (whether elected or appointed, in the public sector or in private industry) are subject to criticism for their activities and points of view. Criticism is not (necessarily) the same as a personal attack.
5. Identify yourself fully and accurately. If you’re a member of a political party committee or working in a candidate’s campaign, identify yourself as such in your letter. We’ll do it for you if we’re aware of it. But even if we’re not, you can be sure other people are. In the end, you’re only fooling yourself.
6. Don’t get mad at the editor for enforcing the rules or for insisting that libelous statements be removed from your letter. He’s doing his job. He’s also got the final word, and, ultimately, he can simply refuse to print a letter if you refuse to have the offensive language deleted. We don’t want to argue with our readers, nor do we have the time, on deadline, to debate the issues you’re writing about.
7. Don’t hog the space. We love how enthusiastic our readers are about voicing their opinions. But give other people a chance and wait a week or two between submissions. It often seems we have more letters than we have space. That’s a wonderful problem to have from a community newspaper’s perspective. But if we published your letter last week, your letter this week is going to the bottom of the pile and may not get run.
8. Use e-mail if at all possible (editor@timesreview.com). Attach your letter (Word format) to the e-mail or write it in the e-mail message itself. Include your hamlet of residence (and state if not N.Y.) as well as a daytime phone number where we can reach you to confirm the letter (to make sure you really sent it) and/or discuss any problems.
9. Candidates for office, including incumbents seeking re-election, and their supporters, are entitled to use this forum to voice their opinions about local issues and to respond to articles, editorials, columns and letters printed in this newspaper. An important goal of this forum is to provide a place for civil public discourse. We don’t mind candidates using it to tell us what they think; that can only result in a more informed electorate, which is always a good thing. But candidates’ and supporters’ letters shouldn’t be blatant campaigning. This is going to be the editor’s judgment call. (See rule six.)
10. Keep it short. Refer to rule number one.
One last thing: Please don’t confuse the opinions expressed by letter writers and columnists with the editorial viewpoint of the newspaper . The only place you’ll find this newspaper’s opinion is in the editorial column on page eight. The editorials are a collaborative effort by our editorial board — generally drafted by an editor with input from reporters and approved by yours truly, as co-publisher. Just because we print a letter or a column doesn’t mean we agree with the point of view expressed therein. But since we place great value on free speech, we’re honored to provide a forum for its expression.
Let the campaigns begin. And God bless America.
Ms. Civiletti invites you to join a discussion of this topic at civiletti.blogspot.com. Her e-mail address is denise@timesreview.com.

Broadwater – the musical

If you're interested in the fate of the Broadwater proposal — and if you're interested enough to be reading your community newspaper, you've got to be interested in the fate of Shell Oil's plan to moor a gargantuan natural gas storage facility nine miles off our coast — a recent federal court decision in an unrelated case is worth looking at.

A proposal to build a cross-Sound natural gas pipeline called Islander East, connecting Long Island to a New England natural gas transmission system, has been kicking around for several years. The subsea pipeline would connect an Algonquin pipeline at North Haven, Conn., with KeySpan's transmission system at Shoreham. Last week, a federal district court judge in Connecticut dealt the plan what many are calling a fatal blow.

The court overruled a decision by the U.S. secretary of commerce, who had essentially overruled the Connecticut secretary of state, who was trying to effectively overrule the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

Come again?

This stuff is so dense it's almost impossible to wade through and make sense of. It takes lots of time, patience and an almost psychotic obsession — which makes me uniquely qualified for the job.

The fate of Broadwater — like the fate of the Islander East Pipeline — will turn on the interpretation and application of a federal law called the Coastal Zone Management Act.

The CZMA is a 35-year-old statute enacted to encourage coastal states to develop comprehensive coastal resource management programs that balance competing uses of and impacts to coastal resources.

When a coastal state joins the national coastal management program and adopts a coastal zone management plan that's approved by the federal coastal zone management agency, the CZMA gives the state the ultimate decision-making authority over its coastal zone. In other words, the state's decisions will trump decisions made by federal agencies concerning management of the coastal zone resources.

Activities that affect coastal resources must be consistent with the state's adopted coastal management plan, even when the activities are pursuant to federal licenses or permits or undertaken using federal funds. Under the CZMA, the state can stop a federally permitted activity if the state determines the activity is inconsistent with its coastal zone management plan. The state determination trumps the federal agency ruling, turning the usual pecking order upside down.

But wait, there is a loophole — and one big enough to pilot a 900-foot-long oceangoing LNG tanker through: an appeal to the U.S. secretary of commerce.

If a state with an approved coastal zone management plan (like New York) raises a consistency objection, arguing that a proposed activity (like Broadwater) for which a federal permit has been approved (like the one FERC is now considering) is not consistent with the state's coastal zone management plan, the applicant (Broadwater) can file an appeal with the U.S. secretary of commerce, asking the secretary of commerce to override the state's objection. The applicant must show that the activity is consistent with the objectives of the CZMA and/or is otherwise necessary in the interest of national security.

OK, make that loophole big enough for two 900-foot-long oceangoing LNG tankers side by side, including their Coast Guard-mandated floating security zones.

All of this must be examined in the context of current global politics and the policies of the Bush administration. We have a national energy policy that favors development of natural gas facilities as a "clean" alternative to oil. We have a federal agency (FERC) whose very mission is to assist energy companies with the development of new gas (and oil) production, storage and transmission facilities. We have a president who has pronounced natural gas to be a preferred way to reduce our dependence on "foreign oil" — which is, in turn, like the development of oil fields in the Gulf of Mexico and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, important to "national security." So would it be reasonable to expect the (Bush-appointed) U.S. secretary of commerce to do anything but override a state's CZMA consistency objection in the interest of national security? Heck, no.

Ah, but God bless America with its system of constitutional law and built-in checks and balances. The secretary of commerce's decision is reviewable on appeal by a federal court. That's good news. But there is, of course, bad news — and that's the standard of review. Like all judicial review of administrative decisions, the standard is a really tough one to meet: the appellant (the state) must establish that the administrative decision was "arbitrary and capricious" without any "reasonable basis" in the record.

Fortunately for the state of Connecticut, which has been battling the Islander East Pipeline for years, the commerce secretary's decision wasn't supported by facts in the record on appeal, and the federal judge found the secretary's decision "arbitrary and capricious."

What does the Islander East case mean for Broadwater? Not much, according to Broadwater, which says New York needs gas from both Islander East and Broadwater.

Vindication and hope, according to Broadwater opponents, who are heartened by a federal court's willingness to take a hard look at the feds' approval of an energy project over a state's CZMA consistency objections.

An interesting aside: The judge, Stefan Underhill, was appointed to the federal bench in 1999 by the Clinton administration, nominated by Democratic senators Dodd and Lieberman. A Rhodes scholar and Yale Law School graduate, he was on the board of directors of Connecticut Legal Services and, according to a press release announcing the appointment, he "has a special interest in his community's underprivileged populations and youth." Not exactly the kind of guy who'll mete out cowboy justice for the Bush gas and oil crowd.

If we're to take away a lesson from Islander East, maybe it's this: We should scrutinize the members of the federal bench for the eastern district of New York sitting in the Alfonse M. D'Amato federal courthouse in Islip. Their backgrounds, scholarship and prior decisions might prove to be the best predictor of whether Broadwater's natural gas storage facility is eventually moored in the middle of the Sound.

Copyright 2007 Times/Review Newspapers Corp.

We won't get fooled again

We'd like nothing better than to report on a good, solid, issues-based campaign for town offices this election year. There are plenty of important issues to debate.

Instead, we're being treated to mudslinging and name-calling. And it's not even Labor Day yet. I shudder to think what might be in store for us in the home stretch of this campaign season, when things traditionally get ugly.

Both sides are guilty of this to some degree. But this is one realm where Brookhaven Republicans will never be outdone, and, true to form, they're proving themselves again this year.

The DiCarlo campaign issued press releases this week. One announced a radio ad campaign and the other blasted Brian Foley for taking a $10,000 corporate donation in violation of state election law, which limits such donations to $5,000.

According to the press release, the radio ads accuse Foley of trying "to use our tax dollars to support illegal aliens." They also blast him for an "outrageous property tax increase" and "out-of-control spending."

"Brian Foley won't fool us anymore," the ad claims.

No, from now on Robert DiCarlo will be fooling us.

For instance, he's asking voters to believe the town can reinstate the John Jay LaValle "tax holiday" that jeopardized Brookhaven's financial standing with the Wall Street bond traders.

He's also taking credit in the ads for being a "proven tax cutter." When asked to back up that claim, his PR guy (a veteran Republican negative campaign "handler") said DiCarlo, as a state senator from Brooklyn, "supported" Gov. George Pataki's budget.

Message to Jesse Garcia, Frank Tassone and Robert DiCarlo: Negative campaigns, devoid of substance, don't work when you've got a candidate of substance on the other side, fellas. It's a lesson you should have learned from the Grucci, Manger and Zanzi campaigns.

Voters are not stupid.

Neither are newspaper reporters.

Jesse Garcia told us the GOP financial disclosure on file with the state Board of Elections shows an incorrect bottom line due to technical difficulties with the software. The committee's treasurer was working on resolving it. Nearly a month later, same bottom line. What's up? Garcia told me last week he didn't follow up on it. Right. The state BOE spokesperson told us that agency has no record of any "technical problems" with its software that affected the Brookhaven Republican Committee's filing.

Robert DiCarlo, who is happy to pick apart Brian Foley's campaign disclosure report ("Why is this builder [E.W. Howell Co.] so interested in raising money for Brian Foley?" he asked the Sun), didn't bother to file his own disclosure report with the state, as required by law. (The July periodic disclosure report was due July 16, in electronic format, for filing on the state's Web site, for all to see.) He said he filed a report on paper with both the state and the county BOE. The state agency told us this week it had no record of any such filing. In fact, their spokesman said, the state BOE sent DiCarlo a warning letter about missing the filing deadline.

DiCarlo told the Sun he couldn't file electronically with the state because he was waiting for the state BOE to issue him a new identification number and he couldn't file electronically until a new number was issued. Not true, says the state BOE. And if DiCarlo filed a paper report with the county BOE, it's not scanned and posted on its Web site yet. (The political hacks at the county BOE are too caught up in their respective parties' political shenanigans to be worried about the public interest.)

DiCarlo did provide the Sun with a copy of the paper report he says he filed with both elections boards. We've posted that on our Web site (along with Foley's) so voters can view the reports themselves, as the law intended. Enough with these silly games.

Interesting thing is, DiCarlo, who said he couldn't file electronically with the state because his current campaign committee needed a new state ID number, this week did electronically file a report: his JANUARY periodic report — which was due Jan. 15. And guess what? The committee is using the same ID number.

DiCarlo might not want to make his disclosure forms public because they're a mess: hand-printed, barely legible, missing essential information — including, even, some donors' names. (There's a $1,000 donation from some unnamed individual.) The law requires the report to list names and complete addresses for each contributor.

The DiCarlo disclosures also show "outstanding loans" from the candidate to the campaign committee, for loans he says he made to himself in mid-2006 for "campaign expenses." What campaign was that, we wonder? The report also shows a loan repayment to the candidate of $7,500 for a loan it says was made by the candidate to the committee in 2005. There's no way to verify that, because there are no DiCarlo reports on either the state or county Web sites for 2005 or 2006 prior to period covered by the Jan. 15, 2007, periodic report.

We've learned the hard way that nobody really scrutinizes these campaign disclosure reports. Candidates and elected officials have recently been caught using their campaign funds as personal slush funds — or worse. Some state senators have allegedly invested campaign funds in businesses doing business with the state. That's a matter under investigation by the Albany district attorney. The point is, nobody is really taking a hard look at these. We invite you to do so yourself at www.northshoresun.com.

Of course, it's right to question why certain businesses and the people who own or run them make hefty contributions to candidates for office (particularly incumbents running for re-election.) There's no doubt it's part of the process of "greasing the wheels" for themselves or their clients. And that's part of what's wrong with how our political system functions — and part of the argument some people make for public campaign financing.

In an interview this week following his press release blasting Foley for accepting a $10,000 check from a corporation, in violation of state election law (a check that the Foley campaign returned per a May 29 letter it wrote to the donor), DiCarlo said, "Everybody in this business knows what the rules are." As a veteran politician and former elected official, you know what the rules are too, Mr. DiCarlo. Why don't you follow them?

Copyright 2007 Times/Review Newspapers

$850,000 for what??

LIPA ratepayers (like me) spent $850,000 on a 157-page "compilation" of information (the Levitan report) that Kessel now says LIPA may or may not even use! Kessel asked Levitan in 2005 to do this "assessment" so LIPA could make "a recommendation" to the governor. I'm certainly not anxious for that to happen, because it's pretty obvious where LIPA would come down on Broadwater, at least if Kessel has anything to say about it. But $850,000 of rate payer's money for what amounts to a PR event for Broadwater? That's pretty outrageous, even for LIPA.

Levitan & Associates is an LNG industry consultant. Among other things, it failed to take into account many of the proposed storage facility's costs — both to the environment and to the local economy. The report is a ratepayer-funded $850,000 "justification" for Broadwater prepared by one of the LNG industry's trusted consultants.

Environmentalist Tom Andersen (author of "This Fine Piece of Water: An Environmental History of Long Island Sound") writes in his "Sphere" blog that the 10-year "value" of the Sound, based on data collected by the Long Island Sound Study, is $55 billion. Andersen poses the question: Does it make sense to jeopardize a resource worth $55 billion to the local economy to save $14.8 billion?

Tallying LNG savings vs. cost

It's a huge chunk of change, no doubt about it. Broadwater's floating natural gas facility in the Long Island Sound would save New York consumers $14.8 billion over the course of a decade, according to a report prepared for the Long Island Power Authority by Levitan & Associates Inc., a Boston-based energy industry consulting firm.

The $14.8 billion figure is not a reduction in current energy costs. It represents our potential 10-year savings compared to what the equivalent natural gas would cost regional consumers without Broadwater's one billion cubic feet per day.

Still, it's nothing to sneeze at.

Heck, $14.8 billion is how much we're going to spend to wage war in Iraq between now and, oh, the beginning of autumn, approximately 56 days from today.

It's twice as much as Royal Dutch Shell, one of Broadwater Energy's owners, earns in one quarter of its fiscal year. (The company posted a second-quarter profit this year of $7.56 billion.)

Still, East End consumers don't know how much of that savings we'll see. According to the Levitan report, LIPA ratepayers will save $2.7 billion in natural gas costs between 2010 and 2020 if Broadwater goes online. LIPA CEO Richie Kessel — the one-time consumer advocate who, as an energy executive, has presided over what some irate ratepayers argue is a huge pricing scam on consumers, namely the imposition, without regulatory review, of "fuel surcharges" that equal or exceed energy use charges — says that 20 percent of Broadwater's savings for Long Island consumers is just not enough. As the host community for this behemoth, Long Island should get more, Richie says. Long Island should get more PILOT payments, and more "community benefits" — something of a code word for hush money. "Community benefits" help a company buy the silence, if not the support, of community segments that would otherwise oppose a proposed project. Community benefits often consist of cold, hard cash for schools, towns, community organizations. It's a euphemism for "community bribes," if you ask me.

But you can bet Richie will fight for benefits for LIPA — if not LIPA's ratepayers, whom he seems quite willing to skewer.

I've just read Levitan's 157-page "technical assessment" of Broadwater. It was interesting reading, even holding my attention into the wee hours of Wednesday morning.

As LIPA communications director Bert Cunningham noted, the report is "a compilation" and summary of documents from a variety of sources: FERC's DEIS, Broadwater's "resource reports" and responses to FERC's information requests, the Coast Guard reports, and LNG safety studies. As such, it's a handy little document.

LIPA engaged Levitan to prepare this report in April 2005. Originally, according to LIPA's April 20, 2005, board meeting minutes, LIPA was going to use the Levitan report, which Kessel said he expected to have by September 2005, to form a recommendation on Broadwater for the governor's office. LIPA has since backed off that idea. On Tuesday, Kessel said he didn't know if LIPA was going to make a recommendation one way or the other.

Levitan knows LNG very well; senior members of the firm specialize in consulting to the LNG industry and the firm has a long track record with the industry. Given the firm's background, resources and expertise as an LNG industry consultant, it's hard to understand why it took Levitan almost two years longer than first expected to complete its assessment. But it's not hard to understand why the energy industry consultant would focus on assessing the benefits rather than the costs — costs to the economy, the environment, and the government, which will have to provide expensive security for the operation.

What will the total of all those costs be? We still don't know, but it's no mystery who will foot the bill, is it? Open your checkbook.

I'm wondering what we've already spent just reviewing the Broadwater proposal to date. The preparation of the EIS, government staff time to review applications, documents and submittals, publication of notices, public hearings held, legal fees to firms retained by the county and towns to fight it, all of that. I wonder if anyone anywhere is keeping a tab.

One cost we know for sure: the $850,000 LIPA blew on the Levitan assessment report it was supposed to have two years ago, which LIPA now may or may not use for anything. This makes it a ratepayer-funded PR boondoggle for Broadwater Energy, resulting in headlines about multibillion dollar "savings" that don't factor in costs which may equal or exceed those "savings."

That's an awful lot of fuel surcharge money, isn't it?

Who's looking out for us?

"I don't think I could stand to read another article about Broadwater," said a newspaper staff member the other day.

It stopped me cold, since lately I've been the person doing the Broadwater reporting in our newsroom. What was she saying? Am I boring her to death? It must be bad, to inspire a staff member to tell her, er, boss that she can't stand reading what said boss is writing.

If newsroom staff feel that way, what about our readers?

What about you? Are you sick of Broadwater?

I hope not, because there's plenty yet to come. There has to be. This issue is the biggest and most important issue we've seen in decades. Broadwater, if built, will have irreversible impacts on what is arguably our region's most unique and precious natural resource: Long Island Sound. We will be living with the consequences of Broadwater for generations to come, and those consequences are not small.

Broadwater will pollute the Sound, a designated estuary of national significance, a fragile ecosystem already under stress (thanks to existing industrial and municipal discharges) into which the federal and state governments have poured tens of millions of dollars for cleanup and restoration. Broadwater will take in sea water, killing marine life caught up in the process, then discharge wastewater treated with a chlorine derivative that's harmful to aquatic life.

It will pollute the air with its smokestacks. Broadwater has asked to be exempt from air-emission standards, arguing that the air at the site is not "ambient air" because the entire area surrounding the facility — 1.5 square miles — will be a designated security zone from which the public is barred. Last I heard, air travels. What will those of us downwind from the facility be breathing in? We are already living with the dirtiest air in the state outside of New York City.

As we've reported, Broadwater will wreak havoc on the commercial and recreational fishing industries in the Sound. The floating security zones required by the Coast Guard will create a nightmare for commercial and recreational fishermen and boaters from the Race off Orient Point to Port Jefferson.

And unless the Coast Guard rules otherwise, ferry operations out of Orient will be disrupted every time a liquefied natural gas carrier crosses the ferry routes — four to six times a week, at least.

Broadwater's impacts are not limited to the environment. The annual economic value of the Sound to New York State is in excess of $250 billion.

Broadwater creates significant safety risks for our community. According to the Draft Environmental Impact Statement the farthest reach of an ignitable vapor cloud in the event of a carrier accident in the eastern Sound encompasses most of the North Fork, from mid-Southold to Orient Point. That's a vapor cloud that will burn if it comes into contact with any ignition source — any flame or spark. If there's a carrier accident in the eastern Sound, a cloud of liquefied natural gas — which won't yet be "odorized," by the way — can encompass most of the North Fork and, if ignited, scorch everything it comes into contact with.

But, hey, don't worry. This is, we're told, "very unlikely."

How confident can we be that the public and the environment are going to be protected by federal regulators — versus the interests of the rich and powerful multinational corporations proposing Broadwater?

Joseph Kelliher, the chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the federal agency that decides if Broadwater gets approved, was previously a partner in the Washington, D.C. law firm representing Broadwater before FERC: LeBeouf, Lamb, Greene & MacRae. According to the firm's Web site, it's been "intimately involved" in representing clients before FERC for 30 years.

Intimately, indeed. "Many of our specialist attorneys have held leadership positions at the FERC," the LeBeouf site boasts. Yes. For instance, Lawrence Acker, the LeBeouf partner who lists Broadwater among his clients and who "concentrates his practice" on FERC cases. Three other partners in the firm were previously attorneys at FERC — including its former general counsel and an assistant deputy general counsel — where they worked on natural gas projects and regulations.

LeBeouf, Lamb has 11 lawyers who practice regularly, if not exclusively, before FERC. That comes in handy for the firm's clients, since they have to work closely with FERC to get projects like Broadwater approved.

Here's how FERC describes the review process on its Web site: "Prior to a company filing an LNG-related application, company representatives commonly meet ... staff to explain the proposal and solicit advice. These meetings provide prospective applicants the opportunity for staff to offer suggestions related to the environmental, engineering and safety features of the proposal. In this manner, staff learns about future projects which may be filed at the Commission and help direct companies in their application preparation."

This sure sounds pretty cozy — like our "public servants" are serving as consultants to the attorneys they used to work with, who are now representing companies seeking FERC approvals.

These are the folks looking out for the public interest? And if not them, then who?

It's up to us to look out for ourselves on this one.

Which is why there will be plenty more about Broadwater on the pages of this newspaper in the weeks and months to come.

Copyright 2007 Times/Review Newspapers Corp.

Broadwater report by Karl Grossman

This aired on WVVH Sunday night. You can view it on YouTube here:

Broadwater Part 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zb1lNak4q48


Broadwater Part 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLikMcmR_No
Pretty comprehensive treatment of the Broadwater topic by veteran journalist Karl Grossman.

A Broadwater-sized investment

During my follow-up interview this week with Pete Maniscalco, the Manorville man who’s held an anti-Broadwater vigil on the beach in Wading River since June 3, he made a statement that I’ve been mulling over ever since.

America needs to make a Broadwater-sized investment in renewable energy, Pete said.

A Broadwater-sized investment. The thing itself is huge: 1,200 feet long, 180 feet wide, it will rise 75 to 80 feet above the water, nine miles off the Wading River shore. A behemoth. The floating regasification and storage facility will cost between $700 million and $ 1 billion to construct, according to TransCanada, the Canadian energy company partnered with Shell Oil in the Broadwater Energy venture. Its operation and securing its safety, along with the safety of the international tankers delivering LNG to the facility, will cost millions more annually.

A Broadwater-sized investment. Think big.

This week’s paper also includes stories about the efforts of local residents and businesses to “go green.” It is possible to wean your home and business off nonrenewable energy, to cut or even eliminate your dependence on fossil fuels — oil and gas — to heat and light your home or business. The technology exists to power your house with solar and wind energy — energy sources that are free, clean, won’t run out and won’t require the Coast Guard and a private army to protect them from terrorist attack (like Broadwater). But for the most part, the cost of installing the technology remains out of reach for most families, even with LIPA rebates and state and federal tax credits.

So why are we, as a nation, continuing to spend billions to build and operate facilities like Broadwater’s proposed LNG FRSU? That whopper of an acronym, by the way, stands for liquefied natural gas floating regasification and storage unit, bafflegab for the behemoth described above.

And why are we, as a nation, spending comparatively little on refining renewable energy technologies and making them accessible and affordable to consumers?

For the same reasons we’re spending a projected $1.2 trillion to wage a war about foreign oil. Make no mistake: that’s what’s at the heart of the Iraq war. The control of oil and gas supplies has dictated U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East forever; the Iraq war is the most recent tragic manifestation of it.

For the same reasons dumped billions into the development of nuclear power, the construction of nuclear power plants and nuclear waste “disposal” sites. (The quotation marks are because there is no such thing as nuclear waste “disposal”; that’s a fantasy.)

It’s all about green — not being green, but getting green. Greenbacks, that is. Money. Follow the money.

If the people profiting from the sale of oil, gas, uranium and nuclear technology could have found a way to stake an ownership claim in the sun’s rays or the earth’s breezes, rest assured solar and wind power would be the energy sources of choice today rather than the afterthoughts that they are.

The companies that make billions from our fossil-fuel dependent energy policy have made sure renewable energy resources — and conservation — remain afterthoughts as far as our national energy policy is concerned. It began with the dismantling of the energy policy changes initiated during the Carter administration in the 1970s. It continues till today, with the policies hatched during the secret proceedings of Vice President Cheney’s energy task force.

The costs of our failed national energy policy are humongous. The price of crude oil and gas has risen dramatically, by as much as 143% since 2001. Families are spending record amounts for energy. The amount spent by the average American family on gasoline, home heating, and electricity increased by more than 60% between 2001 and 2006, according to a Congressional report. And the indirect costs of higher energy prices in the form of higher prices for consumer goods and services are costing families an additional $1,400 per year.

America’s dependence on foreign oil has increased from 56% of total oil consumption in 2000 to 65% of total consumption in 2006.

Meanwhile, the energy industry — which has played a central role in shaping U.S. energy policy has benefitted tremendously, earning record profits in 2005 and 2006.

Imagine if the U.S. government got its priorities straight. How much cheaper would it be to install solar or wind power systems in our homes? How much more advanced would these technologies be today if they had not been virtually abandoned by the federal government under President Ronald Reagan? Imagine the result if we reallocated to renewable energy and conservation programs the kind of resources we’re pumping into fossil-fuel dependent, nonrenewable energy sources and technology — which includes Broadwater’s LNG FRSU and the Caithness power plant. Imagine if we’d invested in these technologies to the same extent we’ve flushed out money down the toilet in Iraq, a debacle that’s costing us to the tune of $275 million a day. Would we ever need another barrel of foreign crude? Not likely.

No wonder the vice president’s cronies on his secret energy task force — whose companies are making record profits off our failed energy policy, not to mention the Iraq occupation and “reconstruction” — made sure the energy policy required continued pursuit of a failed foreign policy that has fossil fuel consumption at its center.

We just don't go there

As editors and publishers of small community newspapers, we have to wear many hats. If you're involved in running a small business of any kind, you can relate, I'm sure.

You have to do whatever it takes to get done the things that need doing — including the things you'd never ask anyone on the staff to do, like dealing with that stopped-up toilet. That's what makes running a small business fun, right?

If your business is publishing local newspapers, though, you sometimes have to assume roles that are, on the face of it, seemingly in conflict with one another. We've got a small editorial staff — those are the people who report and write the news content of our newspapers. Though our editorial staff is fairly typical of community weeklies, it's much smaller than the staffs at most dailies. As a result, our editors find themselves doing just about everything from writing obituaries to reporting and writing local news, to editing articles written by their reporters, to writing editorial commentary on local issues, writing headlines and proofreading pages. (Not to mention writing columns like this.)

We are dead serious about maintaining a strict division between our news and advertising departments. Advertisers, no matter how "big," will never dictate the editorial content (by this I mean news coverage and commentary) of our newspapers. It's not that they don't try. But we just don't go there. In fact, we have separate management overseeing advertising and editorial. If you want to pitch a news story, write a letter to the editor, or complain about a story we've written, talk to me. But if you want to buy an ad, I'll introduce you to my co-publisher, Andrew Olsen, who oversees advertising.

There's only one place where ads and news cross paths — we call it "political" advertising. In essence, these are ads whose purpose is to express a point of view rather than sell a product or service. We've got some long-standing policies about political ads.

For starters, we don't print anonymous ads. Every ad must disclose the name of the person, group or committee paying for it. And if the ad is from a group or committee, the ad must disclose the name of an individual officer (chairperson, president, treasurer, etc.).

The statements made in every political ad must be documented. This sometimes drives political party operatives nuts. Some of them want to be able to say whatever they want in their ads, and they resent it when we tell them they have to back up their allegations with facts. When in doubt, we ask for documentation, on paper. No exceptions.

When a political ad is taken by one of our sales representatives, an editor must approve it before publication. Among other things, it's the editor's responsibility to ensure that statements made in the ad are accurate and that they're documented. If an ad passes these tests, we'll print it. But publishing an ad doesn't mean we agree with the point of view expressed in it.

A newspaper is a unique business, because, even though it's a private business, it's a business that provides an important public forum. We have a duty to preserve that forum as an open forum, accessible to all. The forum extends beyond the letters pages, to the pages where paid advertising appears. As long as it's from an accountable source, and as long as it's accurate, and not libelous, we'll print it.

Last week, Broadwater Energy, whose proposal to site a huge floating liquefied natural gas facility in the Long Island Sound is something we've editorialized against more than once, took a full-page ad in our newspapers to promote its project. That we took Broadwater's ad will affect neither our coverage of the Broadwater plan nor our opinion of its merits. But Broadwater is entitled to access the public forum provided by the pages of our newspapers, just as anyone else is.

Before agreeing to run the ad, I asked for — and got — documentation of every statement Broadwater alleged in its ad. Some of the facts and figures they cite are, in my opinion, subject to interpretation and debate. But it's not my role to debate them in this context — any more than it's my role to engage in a debate when I'm reporting a story. I have to remember which hat I'm wearing, keep my opinions to myself — and save my opinions for the commentary pages.

Since this is an opinion column, I'm free to opine. I think Broadwater is a very bad idea. It doesn't belong in the Long Island Sound. That seems patently obvious. It also seems pretty obvious that the Bush administration, under which the natural gas industry has enjoyed favored son status since before the first inauguration (remember the vice president's "secret" energy policy committee?), is determined to foist this thing on us, like it or not. I for one don't like it, and I won't hesitate to say so — in the appropriate forum. But we also won't hesitate to provide full access to this forum to others with contrary opinions, no matter how fervently we disagree with them.

Going in circles

Deja vu. That's how I felt reading Tim Gannon's story about the town and county discussing ways to solve the Route 58 traffic nightmare. I've read this story before. More than once. Tim Gannon must feel like the weatherman character played by Bill Murray in Groundhog Day — stuck in the same story.

Route 58 is a mess. Not only is it inconvenient, it's a safety hazard. It's the route to our community hospital.

Traffic levels have outgrown the capacity of this two-lane "Old Country Road." It was built as a by-pass for people traveling to points on the North Fork, so they wouldn't get snagged in traffic on Main Street in what was then a bustling regional commercial hub: downtown Riverhead.

The town has allowed intense commercial development along Route 58. The existing road can't handle the volume of vehicles using it.

Rt. 58 must be widened. It can't be widened with the existing traffic circle in place. The obvious thing to do is remove the circle. The county has been recommending these changes for 20 years. The county would have started the work (Rt. 58 is a county road) many years ago (at a fraction of the cost of what it's going to cost today). But the town wouldn't agree to remove the circle. (Rt. 58 intersects with a town road, Roanoke Avenue, where the circle is,so the town must agree.) We've been having these same discussions for 20 years.

The traffic engineers who prepared the "traffic element" of the town's master plan several years ago recommended that Rt. 58 be widened and the circle be removed.

Residents and some town officials went bonkers (as usual) at the idea of removing the circle.

So the traffic engineers changed their recommendation. They then proposed the circle be expanded to a two-lane circle. Lots of luck with that. (My prediction: same bottleneck, more motorist confusion, more accidents.) But that wasn't the traffic consultants' original advice.

County and town officials recently met (again) to discuss (again) what to do about Rt. 58. The county public works people said (again) Rt. 58 should be widened to four lanes in each direction. They also said (again) the circle must go. Riverhead officials (again) objected. DPW said let's agree we'll go with the recommendations of traffic engineers (again). Town officials argued the engineers already recommended a two-lane circle. But that's not quite true. That was the engineers' fall-back position after the town rejected (again) the idea of removing the circle.

That circle is part of our heritage, says Councilman Ed Densieski, who is leaving his council seat to run for highway superintendent. Like many Riverheaders, he is emotionally attached to that circle. I guess it's nostalgia; it reminds them of a simpler, quieter time in our little town, the good ol' days.

It's fitting that our government leaders see a circle as something emblematic of Riverhead. Riverhead government is pretty good at going in circles, after all.

You know, I have a funny feeling. I could swear I've written this column before...

I guess it's just deja vu all over again.

When the spirit moves you

Spirituality. For me, it ebbs and flows. I'm usually too caught up in the brick and mortar world to spend much time trying to get in touch with things spiritual. And lately, I've been feeling especially bereft, spiritually. Not long ago, this was different. I spent time each morning in meditation and prayer. I felt my connection to a higher power, a life source, God. Not lately. I guess I just work too much.

Finally taking some time to dig in the dirt of my garden this weekend, I felt reconnected with earth, always a good first step to connecting with the spiritual side of life. How can you observe all the amazing things of the natural world without feeling a connection to something so much bigger than yourself?

Then on Sunday, I met a man who seems to spend a great deal of his time in the spiritual plane. More work for me, though. I went to a press conference on the Sound in Wading River, held by a man who was starting a 35 day vigil to protest Broadwater. Well, protest isn't exactly the right word. His vigil is held to "invoke the spirit of nature," the spirit of the Sound, to stop Broadwater.

Now, protests I can relate to. Vigils to invoke the spirit of a body of water to rise up and stop a development project... Well, that's not something I understand very well.

I expected the guy to be a crackpot, if you want to know the truth. What I found when I met Pete Maniscalco at Wading River Creek Sunday afternoon was something else entirely. Sure, what he's doing is really sort of "out there" — but he is intelligent and thoughtful and a delight to speak with. (And quite a good interview.) He exudes an inner peace. I found myself wondering what it would be like to camp out on the Sound for more than a month, to spend all that time meditating, praying, communing with Mother Earth and the spirit of nature. I have a hard time sitting still and being quiet (without reading or writing) for more than five minutes.

So I asked him to blog about his experience for our papers. After explaining to him that a blog is sort of an online journal, he readily agreed to do it. He'd planned to keep a journal anyway, he said. So every day at around 5 p.m. for the next month, Pete is going to phone in his blog entry to me, and I am going to type what he dictates and post it on a blog I've created for him, which I called Pete's Broadwater Vigil.

To learn more about Pete and his vigil, read one of Times/Review's papers this week. And please do check out his blog, and post your own comments about what he's doing, feeling and thinking about. I think this could be a very interesting community dialogue about an extremely important subject.

Long Island's death by taxes

Tallgrass The magnitude of it takes your breath away. Set in the context of the lot lines of surrounding properties and roadways, the Tallgrass PDD map makes your jaw drop. At least it did mine.

Three hundred seventy-eight homes, 175,000 square feet of retail space, and an 18-hole golf course set on 320 acres. High density but “smart” development, at least according to proponents who say the overall environmental and economic impacts of the 283 single-family homes the developer could build as-of-right under current zoning. A Hobsian choice.

Small wonder many Shoreham residents were clamoring for the government to buy the land for preservation, and why Shoreham Councilman Kevin McCarrick tried to maneuver a moratorium to give the preservation effort time to bear fruit.

Is preservation the right thing for Tallgrass? I’m not so sure. Public funds for preservation are scarce and must be spent according to a well-thought-out plan that prioritizes properties according to objective criteria — which, in the best of all worlds, shouldn’t include “not in my backyard.”

When it comes to development, we’ve gotten a lot wrong on Long Island. We’ve carved this place up into large lots and built big homes surrounded by a lot of lawn, kept green and pretty by high doses of fertilizer and pesticides. We’ve shunned public transportation, and made being a pedestrian a life-threatening endeavor. We’ve constructed “The American Dream” on this fragile spit of barrier beach, and we’re learning that the dream is, in some ways, more of a nightmare.

Astronomical property taxes stalk us in our nightmare. Taxes have driven businesses and people off Long Island. They’ve made it hard to hire qualified employees from other places. I speak from hard experience in this. I lost a great editor because he got fed up with his $12,000 annual property tax bill. In his new home in the Midwest, he’s got a bigger house and his property taxes are around $2,000. I lost the opportunity to hire, over the past couple of years, two great editors — one from Virginia and one from Missouri — because of Long Island’s property taxes. Both were flabbergasted by the amounts we have to shell out every month to pay property taxes around here. Their tax bills now, they told me, are under $2,000 a year, an amount that would at least triple if they came to work for me here on Long Island. As an employer, I’m struggling to be able to pay employees enough to afford to live here. And it hurts.

Taxes, taxes, taxes. They were the talk of the town at the Republican convention last week. The Republicans, who arrived at the convention in cars bearing “Hi-Tax Foley” bumper stickers, would have us believe that property taxes were invented by Brookhaven Democrats. But there isn’t a thoughtful person alive on Long Island who would buy into that oversimplified poppycock. (Advice to Brookhaven Republicans: Don’t insult the voters’ intelligence.)

Property taxes — along with electric rates — are indeed killing us. Most of the property tax burden (around two-thirds) is the tab for education. Developers, in recognition of this fact, have crafted proposals to limit impacts on our schools, and, therefore, on our tax bills. These are often ultra-high-density projects like Tallgrass, but the pitch — now a familiar refrain — is that the project won’t bring a lot of children into our schools, either because ownership is limited to the over-55 set or because the housing units contain fewer than three bedrooms. So a plan with 378 homes developed with (theoretically) child-limiting housing stock is “better” than one with fewer, bigger homes, a large retail development and a golf course.

I find this all very sad. For one thing, children are not one of the seven plagues (though as the mother of teenagers, sometimes I wonder). And housing developments that don’t “add” children to the schools are not, by definition, automatically wonderful. Senior citizen housing comes with its own burdens — ask hospital administrators and our volunteer ambulance squads about that. Besides all that, the health of our local economy depends, in large part, on young workers who need to be able to buy houses and raise families.

We need the right mix of housing; single-family homes, townhouses, condos and rental units are all an important part of the mix. Sometimes it requires biting the bullet on a gargantuan housing project, like Tallgrass or the one being planned for Yaphank. Sometimes it means tacking a TDR component onto an open space bond or transfer tax.

But we also desperately need tax relief, and it can’t come from limiting the child-bearing-age population. It must come, in part, from the frugal administration of governments at all levels, from Albany down to the local school districts. And it must come from a wholesale restructuring of how we fund public education, one that shifts the burden from property taxes to income taxes. Without such a shift, property taxes here have nowhere to go but up; let’s not allow ourselves to be fooled by shallow promises of politicians willing to cook the books to win elections. (Did somebody say “tax holiday?”)

We’re in trouble here, folks. Who has the chutzpah to admit it and the backbone to tackle the crisis head-on? That’s what we need. As County Executive Steve Levy, a scrappy Democrat and self-described fiscal conservative, told the Republican convention when he accepted their cross-endorsement last week, taxes are not a partisan issue. Quality of life is not a partisan issue. These things transcend party politics. They are the stuff of the American Dream, things that are important to all of us, regardless of which box we check off on the voter enrollment form.

“Hi-Tax Foley” may sound good to Republican campaign strategists, just as the refrain of government reform in “Crookhaven” was sweet music for Democratic operatives two years ago. But voters will be looking beyond campaign slogans to the meat-and-potatoes of candidates’ plans to control property taxes and their ability to make the tough decisions that need to be made — to deliver government services efficiently, protect the environment, preserve our quality of life and allow the next generation to pursue its dreams in the place we call home.

Who is Joe Latini? (Or, the return of the llamas.)

I covered the Brookhaven Town and Suffolk County Republican party conventions at the Radisson Hotel in Holtsville Thursday evening. But the most interesting part of the evening involved Riverhead politics.

After the proceedings ended, I was chatting casually with the man who's running for tax receiver — I'm sorry but his name escapes me; I didn't write it down — when this other man I'd never met before came over and joined the conversation.

He started telling the tax receiver candidate he should move to Riverhead, like he himself had done. Things are so easy out there, he said. You can really influence elections. It's so small. Etc. He said, you can knock incumbents out so easily, because without the committee designation, there's no way they can win a primary. And then he started bragging about what he did in the last town election in Riverhead.

"I did it to Rose," he boasted. "And I can't wait to do it to Barbara. She's not going to get re-elected. She's not even going to get the nomination," he said with a big smile. "And I'm going to be grinning from here to here." He pointed at his ears with his two forefingers.

All right, then. I wasn't sure how, or whether, to respond to this. Who the heck was this guy? That's what I wanted to know. So I asked. Joe Latini, he told me. I introduced myself, but I'm fairly certain he knew exactly who he was talking to when he came over and said these things about Riverhead politics, Rose Sanders — who got railroaded out of office in a very sleazy campaign in 2005 — and Barbara Blass, who has a target on her back now. (Her party is mad at her for supporting Rose in the 2005 primary, among other things.)

Joe Latini. He lives in Wading River, apparently a recent transplant, because he was the Republican candidate for county legislator in the 5th district in 2003. He ran against Vivian Viloria-Fisher, the deputy presiding officer of the county legislature.

Blass, a Riverhead Republican, and Fisher, an East Setauket Democrat, have one thing in common that I know of (besides gender): the Long Island Environmental Voters Forum wants them both out of office.

I don't recall whether LIEVF took an official position against Sanders in 2003. But LIEVF board member Anthony Coates, who ran Republican Ed Densieski's failed supervisor campaign in 2003, was involved in creating a couple of very nasty anonymous mailers that went out to Republican voters on the eve of the GOP primary. (The Riverhead GOP didn't support their incumbent councilwoman, Sanders, nominating instead John Dunleavy. Sanders ran a primary campaign to try to get the nomination.) One of the anonymous mailers had a picture of Sanders, Blass and Hillary Clinton at an anti-Broadwater rally, organized by the Anti-Broadwater Coalition (of which LIEVF is a member). It didn't mention Broadwater; it just said, "Birds of a feather?" obviously trying to smear Sanders and Blass by associating them with the devil Hillary. Pretty ironic, a LIEVF board member involved in creating a mailing that slammed a candidate with a picture taken at an anti-Broadwater rally sponsored by a coalition LIEVF belongs to.

The News-Review tracked down the name of the owner of the vacant condo whose address was the return addresss on the anonymous mailer: Christopher Carbonne. We also tracked down the name of the mailing house that owned the bulk mail permit used on the mailer, Village Graphics. Anthony Coates admitted to me that he was the one who involved Chris Carbonne, a graphic artist, in the Sanders mailings. Carbonne was a personal acquaintance, he said. But Coates claimed, quite incredibly in my opinion, that he didn't know who had placed the order or who paid for the mailings. Carbonne and Village Graphics both wouldn't say.

LIEVF's campaign finance disclosure statements, posted online at the board of elections Web site, show a $1,725 payment to Christopher Carbonne, Inc. for "graphic design and printing" and a $540 payment to Village Graphics, "mail house" both on Nov. 3, five days before the 2005 general election. I looked at all of LIEVF's disclosures that are posted online. These were the only payments to Carbonne and Village Graphics ever made by LIEVF, at least for the eight reporting periods for which statements are posted online. So, did LIEVF order and pay for the Sanders mailers? Oh, irony of ironies, LIEVF paying for an anonymous mailer slamming a candidate with a picture taken of her at an anti-Broadwater event!

This was a question I had to ask. So I called up LIEVF's treasurer, Richard Amper, and asked him.

No, no, Amper said.

"That was a mailing we did against Viloria-Fisher," he told me.

Villoria-Fisher's opponent in 2005, Joe Michaels, doesn't list any in-kind contributions showing payment for mailings by LIEVF. (He shows one contribution from LIEVF, for $100, on Oct. 28, 2005.) But if it was the same nasty, anonymous mailer — an attack piece on the incumbent rather than a piece soliciting support for Michaels, maybe Michaels wouldn't have to disclose it by law. Or maybe, as Sanders' opponent John Dunleavy claimed in 2005, he knew nothing about it. Funny, if there was a nasty anonymous attack piece against Villoria-Fisher, she doesn't remember it. (I called and asked.) You'd think she would, but, she said, she tries not to dwell on the negative.

I guess we just have to take Dick Amper's word for it that LIEVF didn't pay Carbonne and Village Graphics for the anti-Sanders attack pieces.

It's interesting that Riverhead's got all these Brookhaven "players" involved in its local politics now. And maybe a little scary. Just like Latini said, Riverhead is small. And, yes, it's elections are probably very easy to influence, compared to a town like Brookhaven. But though it's a small town, it's got big issues, and lots of land. There are deals to be cut and there's money to be made. It's very appealing to these "players." The fun has just begun.

Flying a flag of remembrance

Memorial Day. As a kid, war seemed long ago and far away. World War II and Korea were ancient history for me, born in the late 1950s. Then the tumult of Vietnam swept the country. The older brothers of my peers got drafted and sent to the jungles of Southeast Asia. The death and destruction there was distant, detached. And Vietnam, for me and so many young people of that era, was all about resistance. Resisting the draft, resisting the yoke our parents' generation put on us to fight a war that made no sense, resisting "the establishment."

Honoring our war dead at that time did not occur to many people my age. The men who donned a military uniform and went off to fight in Vietnam, the 58,000 of them who were killed there — they deserved pity, perhaps, for being exploited that way. But honor? My generation was too caught up in the frenzy of protest to even consider honoring those men and women who lost their lives in that awful war.

Vietnam so complicated things for young people of the 1970s. Our parents and grandparents fought wars that mattered. Our nation seemed much more clearly on the side of what was right back then. Vietnam, on the other hand, was pointless — fighting to preserve the rule of one horrible dictator versus another, protecting Southeast Asia from the spread of communism, and thereby protecting democracy throughout the world. The threat didn't seem real. The arguments shallow. And our government lied. Repeatedly. Tens of thousands died. For what? The distrust for government bred in my heart during those formative years of my life remains with me to this day.

So I was never one to observe Memorial Day. It seemed somehow a celebration of war. I couldn't separate honoring the soldiers who gave their lives from honoring the war that claimed them. And war, the war I knew (albeit, gratefully, from afar) was no cause for honor.

War is nothing to celebrate. War rarely accomplishes anything. War breeds more hatred, more violence, more war. More destruction and death.

There are loud echoes of Vietnam in Iraq: wars fought under false pretenses, government leaders lying, the true purpose of battle, and its efficacy, justifiably questioned.

But those of us opposed to the present war should not make the same mistakes we made during Vietnam. We must not get the matter of honoring the men and women who sacrificed their lives in this war tangled up in our opposition to it. They answered a call — whether patriotic or economic. They put on a uniform. They went into battle in service to their country, and died. Honoring that sacrifice is not the same as honoring the war that claimed them, or honoring the war's purpose, or its perpetrators.

When I fly the flag on Monday, it won't be an expression of support for the war in Iraq, or solidarity with the administration's purpose or plan for this ill-conceived battle. It will be to remember, acknowledge and respect the lives cut short — all lives — by the insanity of war — all wars. It will be an expression of grief, not glory. It will be flown in the hope that by remembering, truly remembering, the real costs of war, we will diminish the opportunity for war in the future.

E-mails to denise@timesreview.com.

'Tis the season to be silly

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To normal people living normal lives, spring has arrived. Trees are flowering, peonies are budding, bulbs are blooming. The air is sweet and warm, infused with the optimism of new life.

But there's a dark underbelly to this season. Beware.

Aroused perhaps by the spring peepers that fill the night with song, sleeping creatures awaken in a netherworld existing parallel to the universe normal humans occupy. It's a dangerous place, this netherworld. The streets run with mud (for slinging) and blood (for letting). Citizens of this netherworld come to life right about now, in the heart of this glorious time called spring by the innocent masses.

We ink-stained wretches of the fourth estate know this season for what it is. We have a better name for it.

Silly season.

Silly season is the dark underbelly of spring, especially in odd-numbered years, which herald local elections. It's that unglorious time of year when the netherworld begins seething with life. The office fax machine begins spitting out daily (or more frequent) messages from political strategists, political party committees, campaign headquarters and politicians. E-mail inboxes are stuffed with an assortment of "news" announcements by elected officials, clamoring for ink and a photo op. And sooner or later — sooner and sooner in silly seasons of late, it seems — the mud begins to fly and blood begins to flow.

Silly season is a time when leading citizens of the netherworld do and say peculiar things, often orchestrated by self-styled strategists in dark, ill-fitting suits, who are obsessed with making "the other side" look bad. These creatures, living in the shadowy netherworld, are the enemies of good government. And they're damn proud of it. For them, it's all about the game. It's all about winning. It isn't how you play the game, but whether you win or lose, you know.

Silly season is well under way in Brookhaven. And it's as compelling an argument for four-year council and supervisor terms as you can make.

Case in point: this week's press conference by Republican council members to announce a bill that would prohibit elected officials, town employees and candidates for public office from appearing in "taxpayer-financed advertisements, promotional, educational or informational materials."

In other words, now that Democrats are in control at Town Hall, the Republicans are indignant that town taxpayers are paying for printed materials that might benefit the re-election prospects of elected officials (read: Democratic elected officials) because the names and photos of said officials appear therein.

Gimme a break.

Don't get me wrong. It's not that I enjoy reading the self-promoting "newsletters" from various elected officials that arrive in my mailbox — at frequent intervals during silly season. Though these mailings are sometimes unintentionally humorous, they are, I agree, a waste of taxpayer dollars. Their purpose is to promote the politician much more than to inform the public about important issues, as is their guise.

But this week's campaign stunt — and that's all it was — by board Republicans reeks of such hypocrisy, it's hard to believe they could assemble at that press conference and announce their new "ethics" resolution without breaking into loud guffaws. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.

It's especially ironic that the offending mailer with which the Republicans took umbrage is the town's "Green Gazette," a newsletter with a legitimate purpose — informing residents about waste reduction and recycling — that actually contained useful information whose dissemination is totally appropriate for the expenditure of public funds. That this four-pager had pictures of the supervisor in it didn't make it "political." GOP strategists hope voters to forget this publication actually predates the current administration. Under prior (Republican) administrations, it used to be called "Trash Talk." Hilariously apropos, if you ask me, all things considered. And you can bet your sweet bippy it had pictures of Republican supervisors and council members in it. Not unlike the oversized magnet stuck on my refrigerator door at home, with the name and picture of a certain Brookhaven Republican councilman prominently splayed across the top, above a "service directory" listing various town departments and phone numbers.

The Republicans this week were dancing to a number choreographed by campaign strategists, a political consulting firm called The Roosevelt Strategy Group, which advised the recent campaigns of Republican candidates Jeanine Pirro (for state attorney general), Judith Pascale for county clerk, Jay Schneiderman for county legislator, and Conservative Vincent DeMarco for sheriff. News of the Walsh-Mazzei-McCarrick — ahem — initiative came in a press release issued by the Roosevelt group — presumably hired by the town Republican Party, and not paid for with tax dollars.

These are the kinds of people who put the "silly" in the season. And this is something we can expect more of as the season unfolds. For those of us hoping to engage people seeking elective office in a meaningful discussion of important local issues, it's a disappointment but no surprise. That is, after all, how this season got its name.

Ms. Civiletti invites you to join a discussion of this topic at civiletti.blogspot.com. Her e-mail address is denise@timesreview.com.

Of Mothers and Daughters

Motherhood. Some days, it's not what it's cracked up to be. Especially when you happen to be the mother of teenage daughters. When raging hormones collide in the kitchen at 7 a.m. before school — this could be a WWF spectacular: Adolescence vs. Menopause, battle of titans — well, look out.

Being a mother is a tough job. It's the hardest thing I've ever taken on in my life, much harder than publishing newspapers — and often a lot less fun. To all you new mothers out there, I'm sorry to tell you that pregnancy, childbirth and infancy — even with all those sleepless nights — are the easy days in this odyssey called motherhood. Just buckle your seat belts. Babies are so uncomplicated. They eat. They burp. They soil their diapers. The colicky ones, like my older daughter, are more of a challenge. (If she's any indication, the challenge of colic may be a precursor of challenges to come.) But babies are relatively easy to keep happy — and entertained.

In hindsight, even the rough spots in infancy and early childhood really aren't so rough. Looking back, they can even be funny. Like the time when I picked my crying daughter up from her crib just in time to experience projectile vomiting for the first time — square in the face. I wax nostalgic for the days when my biggest struggle with my daughters was whether they'd wear their Barney or Mickey Mouse T-shirts to preschool.

Teenagers are much more complicated beings. I once saw a bumper sticker: "Adolescence is the reason some species eat their young." I can relate. Teens are totally self-absorbed. Sometimes I'd swear if I dropped dead on the kitchen floor, they'd step over me on their way out the door, peering down long enough just to see if I happened to be clutching cash in my hand.

Motherhood is a euphemism for indentured servitude. Heavy labor from dawn till dark, no pay, little notice or appreciation, and frequent abuse.

So why is it I wouldn't trade this vocation for anything? Why, no matter how hard the days get, or how hurt I feel, or how crazy they make me, why would I do anything for those two girls I call my daughters? Why do I feel so blessed just to be their mom?

Actually, I don't really know. It's completely illogical. Call it love. Call it the deepest, most abiding, life-changing love imaginable. Call it motherhood, because that's as good a word as any. And it certainly sounds better than "indentured servant."

Maybe it's because I remember how it felt to carry their developing bodies inside me, to feel those magical movements in my belly. Or because I remember the texture and scent of their soft baby skin and the fierceness of the grip of their pudgy little hands. Or the first time they looked at me and smiled — and it wasn't gas. Or what it was like to hold their hands and walk on the beach, gathering shells and trying to find answers to their impossible curious questions. (How do you admit to your 4-year-old that you don't know why the sky is blue, or how planes stay up in the air?) Or watching their eyes wander off to sleep during our bedtime story ritual.

I remember all the little miracles along the way, and without fail, I fall in love all over again.

And I know if I endure these difficult years, I'll eventually get my daughters back. That's what the parents of 20-somethings reassure me. "You'll get them back." I usually joke in reply, "If I live long enough." But in my heart, I'm only half-kidding.

Meanwhile, I'll watch the 200 videotapes on which my husband and I recorded much of the first decade of their lives. And I'll thumb through their baby books and photo albums and reminisce.

Until then, every now and again when they reach out to me — for a hug or advice or a shoulder to lean on — I'll be there. Remembering, waiting, and looking forward to 2017.

That we should never forget

Marion Blumenthal Lazan's hazel eyes sparkle with pride as she flips through the pages of the small photo album she carries in her purse, showing off her children and grandchildren to teachers and students at a luncheon in her honor at Rocky Point Middle School Monday.

The petite and vivacious, well-dressed woman from Hewlett could be anybody's modern-day bubbe. (For all you goyim out there, that's grandma in Yiddish.) She identifies her three grown children by what they do and where they live. She kvells — beams with pride and pleasure — over the images of her nine grandchildren. Her index finger touches each face as she says each name aloud, a broad smile on her face. My mother used to do the same thing with pictures of her grandkids.

But Ms. Lazan's pride takes on special meaning when you think about how the smiling, attractive people in the snapshots filling the pages of this grandma's brag book were almost never born.

Ms. Lazan, a German-born Jew, spent more than six of her first 11 years of life in the Westerbork refugee camp and the notorious Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. She and her family were on their way to a death camp, packed into a cattle car with 2,500 other prisoners for two weeks, facing certain extermination at the end of their journey, when an allied invasion ended their trip and ended the war.

She had nearly starved to death, weighing only 35 pounds when Russian soldiers liberated the surviving occupants of that death train, on April 23, 1945. One in five had perished on the way. Marion and her family were among the fortunate to have escaped with their lives, though barely. And her father died six weeks later of typhus contracted at Bergen-Belsen.

The nightmare she lived as a child still haunts her, 60 years later. She recalls in vivid, explicit detail the horrors suffered at the hands of the Nazis: being slowly starved to death, being beaten, terrorized by vicious German shepherd police dogs. The lice that infested her hair and clothes and spread disease and death among the prisoners. The straw mattress on a narrow wooden bunk that served as living quarters for two in an unheated wooden barracks, with one thin blanket to share between them. Standing in assembly for hours on end, while Nazi soldiers conducted head counts of their prisoners, with little to wear and nothing to shield her from the weather. The frostbite she suffered as a result. Prisoners trying to warm their hands with their own urine. Having nothing to occupy her mind but fear, nothing to play with but dirt and pebbles — and lice. The sights and sounds and odors that no little child should have to see or hear or smell. The utterly unspeakable.

And yet, Marion Blumenthal Lazan speaks. She has to. Driven by a passion that the world must never forget how six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust, Ms. Lazan speaks. I can't imagine how difficult it must be to recount the details of her imprisonment repeatedly as she travels the country with her doting husband, Nathaniel, speaking to schoolchildren, as she did at two assemblies of middle and high school pupils in Rocky Point Monday.

"I detach," she told me. "That's the only way I can do it. So it's as if I'm talking about a bad dream I had, rather than something that I actually lived through."

But Ms. Lazan's mission extends beyond making sure the Holocaust is not forgotten by future generations. Hers is a mission to make children understand the logical consequences of unbridled bigotry. The details of her ordeal are interspersed with words of wisdom: Be kind, be gentle, be tolerant. Accept others' differences, even celebrate them. Never judge a large group of people by the actions of a few of them. Don't generalize. Don't ever, ever follow anyone blindly. No one.

Quietly, but firmly, she teaches us how history repeats itself, relating current events to the lessons of the Holocaust. Religious fundamentalists, terrorists, Sept. 11, ethnic "cleansing," genocide in Darfur. All the violence in the world that's fueled by hatred, bigotry and intolerance.

Of course, I can't do justice to the compelling message carried by this 73-year-old Holocaust survivor to the children of Rocky Point this week. But I can tell you it is a message those kids heard loud and clear. They were riveted in their seats. You could hear a pin drop in the auditorium, though it was filled with 750 sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders. Nearly every student's hand shot up when Ms. Lazan asked for questions at the conclusion of her talk. They didn't want to leave the auditorium; a large group surrounded her onstage, where she spoke with students one-on-one, and freely dispensed warm, loving hugs to each of them.

Ms. Lazan's courage, spirit and determination, her zest for life, her love for humanity and her message of respect and tolerance made an indelible impression on the young hearts and minds of Rocky Point students this week. Her living history lesson will be remembered by those she touched forever.

Armed & dangerous at school

A disturbed young man, two handguns, a shooting spree on a school campus, and 32 innocent people are dead in what authorities are calling the worst shooting rampage in our nation's history.

Amid the chaos, law enforcement officials are trying to figure out why a 23-year-old college student at Virginia Tech became a mass murderer Monday. They're piecing together bits of information about who he was, what made him tick, and what was so terribly wrong.

It's not as if there aren't any clues. The depth of the man's psychological troubles was evident — to his roommates, to whom he barely spoke, to his classmates, who found him so "creepy" they dropped out of a class they shared, even to a teacher, who refused to continue to teach him, referred him for counseling and even reported him to the police.

Then there are the other "whys" about this horrific incident, the questions being asked of school and police officials: Why didn't the university administration take immediate action after two students in a dorm were shot dead at 7 a.m., hours before the rampage in an academic building? Why weren't students notified of a gunman on campus? Why didn't the administration implement a campus "lockdown"? People will continue to ask, especially the family members of the students who lost their lives — and inevitably, their lawyers. The university president's answer this week will not likely change very much: We did the best we could with the information we had available.

And they probably did. Which doesn't make the answer any more satisfying to the parents of children murdered in their classrooms Monday morning.

There are plenty of unanswered "whys" but the "how" is crystal clear. A 23-year-old man legally purchased two handguns in the last two months, according to police. He walked into a pawnshop and bought a .22 caliber pistol in February. In March, he bought a semiautomatic 9-mm Glock from a gun dealer — a gun similar to the handgun carried by police officers, capable of firing 15 rounds in rapid succession. He bought these guns pursuant to Virginia law. The dealers conducted the routine background check the law requires. He was clean. He walked out with the weapons — and ammo — in hand. In Virginia, you can buy one handgun every 30 days.

The ease with which people, even deeply disturbed people like Cho Seung-Hui, can legally purchase weapons in America is appalling. I don't understand the justification for selling semiautomatic and automatic handguns. These are not hunting guns. They are murder weapons, period. How could this even be a matter of debate?

How could anyone look at Monday's massacre and not think about gun control laws? Better still, how could anyone respond to what happened this week by accusing gun control advocates of "dancing in blood" and trying to politicize the massacre in an effort to "destroy the second amendment." That's exactly what Alan Gottleib, the founder of The Second Amendment Foundation, says in a press release e-mailed to me Tuesday. And Larry Pratt, executive director of Gun Owners of America, says in another press release, issued the same day as the attack, that gun bans are the problem, not the solution. He calls for an "immediate end to the gun-free zone law" in Virginia, which prohibits guns on school campuses. "[Criminals] don't like having their victims shoot back at them," says Mr. Pratt in the press release — sent to the media, offering him as a talk show guest. If other Virginia Tech students had been armed, they could have stopped the shooter, he says.

Give everyone a gun and we'll all be safer. Machine gun, anyone?

I doubt there's a parent in America this morning, still processing this week's events, and remembering Columbine, a similar tragedy that occurred eight years ago tomorrow, who doesn't have a heavy feeling in the pit of her or his stomach. It comes over me as I watch my daughters walk into Riverhead High School when I drop them off every morning. I think of the parents who said goodbye from behind the wheel of their car on April 20, 1999, unaware they'd never see their kids again, because of two deeply disturbed, heavily armed young men on a rampage. Most mornings, I whisper a little prayer. Keep them safe, Lord. Please keep them safe.

And that's the best I can do. Pray. Like the actions of administrators at Virginia Tech this week, it may not be enough. Only two things would stop a shooter like Cho: cure his sickness or keep a gun out of his hands. We can't seem to do either.

Good news, bad judgment

What's "news" is all too often bad. Political corruption, rising taxes, murders, fatal car accidents, suicides — you name it. At the editor's desk in the office of any community newspaper, you see it all. Sometimes, it's hard to decide what to do with some of the stuff that lands in your e-mail in-box or comes in across the fax machine. And contrary to popular opinion about modern-day media, we do give these things long, hard thought. Every story and picture we print can have an effect — sometimes a really big one — on somebody in our community, be it a neighbor, a member of our church congregation, the friend of a friend, or a total stranger. We recognize this and take very seriously our duty to be accurate and fair — and sensitive.

Last year, at the National Newspaper Association conference in Milwaukee, I picked up a copy of a book whose title intrigued me, "Bad News and Good Judgment: A Guide to Reporting on Sensitive Issues in a Small-Town Newspaper," by Jim Pumarlo. It's an instructive little handbook on best practices for small-town-newspaper editors faced with tough decisions about whether and/or how to report on difficult events and circumstances. I've read and reread it, taking away and putting into practice some key points about using good judgment when reporting bad news close to home.

Here are the basics. Establish clear policies about reporting this kind of news — including reporting suicides or suspensions of high school athletes, for example, or publishing photos of fatal car accidents. Be aware of the effect your news reporting may have on people's lives, and act with appropriate care in researching, reporting and writing sensitive stories. Explain your newsroom decisions to your paper's readers.

Mr. Pumarlo was a workshop presenter at the N.Y. Press Association convention two weeks ago — you know, the convention where the Sun was crowned top weekly newspaper in the state, something I was gloating about in this space last week? I eagerly took advantage of the opportunity to hear him speak about "bad news and good judgment."

Then I came home to SunLand and blew it. Big time.

In my zeal to show off how well the Sun did in the Press Association's 2006 Better Newspaper Contest, I violated some basic principles when I decided to reprint a photo of a fatal car crash originally published Sept. 15, 2006. The scene depicted in the photo — a very unusual single-car accident in which a car became airborne and crashed into the second story of a garden apartment building in Coram, killing the driver — was news when it happened, and, as such, we were correct to print it at the time.

We reprinted it last week just to show a photo that won a first place award for "spot news" in the contest. The scene it depicted was no longer news; reprinting it simply to show our readers what won the Sun a photography award in the contest was, in a word, wrong.

I soon heard from relatives of Vincent Pontillo, the crash victim, decrying my decision to reprint that photo. A letter from the sister of Mr. Pontillo, Laura Kraus-Johnson, appears on page 8. Ms. Kraus-Johnson wrote to me to express her dismay and disappointment; I asked her permission to print the letter, because I believe its message is important and I believe my action warrants a public apology to Ms. Kraus-Johnson and the rest of Mr. Pontillo's family.

Reprinting that photo demonstrated insensitivity and poor judgment on my part. I am, as I've expressed to Mr. Pontillo's family members, deeply sorry.

The photograph — a picture the contest judges called "amazing" and "spectacular" — depicted a horrific accident that took the life of a 43-year-old Mount Sinai man. He was a gentle, family-oriented guy with a great sense of humor, his sister told me this week. His tragic death was a life-altering event for his mother and four siblings, his longtime girlfriend, Cathy, his seven nieces and nephews, and large extended family. He was, Ms. Kraus-Johnson said, an all-around good guy, loved by many.

I'll never know Mr. Pontillo, of course. But I have a sense of what he was like from my brief encounter with his older sister — not just by her words, but by her behavior. She didn't want to berate or reprimand me; she only wanted me to understand how she felt. At the same time, she understood and accepted how badly I felt about it. She taught me a lesson in sensitivity — and forgiveness — hard to glean from any book, and one I'll not soon forget.

First printed in The North Shore Sun, April 13, 2007

Good plans run amok

Leave it to government to create chaos in an attempt to create efficiency.

That's exactly what's happened as a result of the state commission charged with improving health-care facilities. The Commission on Health Care Facilities in the 21st Century — colloquially known as the Berger Commission after its chairman, investment banker Stephen Berger — was created by Gov. George Pataki and the state Legislature in 2005 to come up with a plan to fix the state's ailing health-care system. It did. Now, in the initial steps of the process of implementing that plan, the state has thrown community health-care providers into chaos, as the page one story by Julie Lane this week shows.

A good idea: strengthen and improve acute and long-term health-care facilities, which are suffering many ills, not the least of which is their ongoing financial crisis — caused in large measure by government in the first place.

A good plan: consolidate some hospitals — including the three community hospitals on the East End — to create economies of scale and eliminate duplication of services. This was a good plan that our three local hospitals had already devised and begun to put in place, in fact — forging an alliance with each other and with the county's only tertiary care hospital, Stony Brook — before the commission recommended it.

A botched execution, so far: bureaucratic stupidity in the initial implementation of the plan. It's already cost Peconic Bay Medical Center $200,000 and will likely cost it much, much more before the hospital can get back on track with its renovation and expansion plans.

The chaos: PBMC's already-approved, designed, bid-out expansion and renovation project was abruptly halted by the state health department after the Berger Commission issued its report in December.

Like Joe Jitsu in the old Dick Tracy cartoons, shouting "Hold everything!" for a quick consult with the boss via his trusty wristwatch radio, the health department stopped PBMC's construction project in its tracks. Hold everything! Freeze frame. And stay that way for months. But in this cartoon universe, the freeze frame has dire consequences.

PBMC, acting in good faith on the health department's prior approvals, obtained construction financing. It's paying interest on the debt that isn't matched by interest earned on the money in the bank.

The hospital, having no indication that its approved project would be stopped in its tracks like this, purchased construction materials, including custom-made structural steel, and must now pay storage fees to warehouse the materials.

PBMC, acting in good faith on its four health department-approved certificates of need, bid the entire project out — and arranged its financing according to the contract prices it obtained in the bidding process. Anyone who's ever dealt with a construction project like this knows bids are not a forever kind of thing. Oh, no. They're good for a set period of time. Go beyond that time and you have to rebid the project, because labor and material costs change. And because they change, if you have to rebid, you can expect to pay more.

The hospital even had jeopardized by bureaucratic inanity an opportunity to replace a portion of its ordinary financing with tax-exempt financing through the Riverhead Industrial Development Agency — because of the health department's reluctance to approve a change in PBMC's already-approved financing arrangements, now in limbo thanks to the "Hold everything!" order. The new financing would save the hospital $100 million over the life of the new facility. $100 million in savings, just by replacing one kind of financing with another. And the state agency charged with implementing recommendations aimed at saving hospitals money — blinked. Go figure. Fortunately, Assemblyman Marc Alessi got the health department to come to its senses and at least allow PBMC to proceed with the substituted financing.

The hospital's air conditioning broke at the end of last summer. New equipment was purchased — again, with the health department's approval — and would have been installed and operational in time for warm weather. But — "Hold everything!" Now PBMC must rent a temporary chilling plant, which will run on a costly generator. And even though the health department has come to its senses and concluded that the new air conditioning system is an "emergency" and should be reapproved immediately, it won't be possible to install the new permanent system before the end of summer. PBMC's cost for the temporary set-up this year: $50,000 per month, for four months — another $200,000.

The Department of Health maintains it must reapprove the rest of PBMC's already-approved construction project. And, since the Berger Commission requires PBMC to join together with Eastern Long Island Hospital in Greenport and Southampton Hospital, the health department won't reapprove the project until the other two hospitals sign off on it. But here's another irony. They already did — twice. Now they're taking a third, closer look.

With the three entities jockeying for position in the East End's health-care delivery system, and with everything PBMC has riding on the — ahem — speedy reapproval of its project by the state, including, perhaps, its very survival, I'd say our local hospital is caught by the short hairs.

"Hold everything!" Somebody get Dick Tracy on the radio. We need help.

Keep fire district scandal in context

There are always a few bad apples.

That's should be the take-away from the arrests last week of fire district officials in surrounding areas.

Because there are inevitably people motivated by self-interest and greed in every walk of life, there must be adequate safeguards to ensure that the bad apples don't have the opportunity to do what people like that will do if there aren't adequate safeguards: play the system for their own personal gain, or even steal.

The combination of a lack of safeguards and access to a lot of money is a very dangerous combination indeed. People who are so inclined can't resist temptation.

Every organization that, directly or indirectly, receives public funding or has nonprofit status and solicits contributions for civic or charitable purposes must adhere to rules that protect the public trust. And there must be adequate oversight by an independent entity to ensure that those rules are followed.

When those two elements are lacking, there's bound to be trouble. Because there are, after all, always a few bad apples. Witness the school district scandals. And now, according to District Attorney Thomas Spota, we've got similar problems in some of our volunteer fire departments.

What we should not do, however, is assume that all of the people running our local fire departments are up to no good and misusing public funds. And we should not make the burdens of oversight so onerous that we discourage volunteerism in local emergency services.

In other words, don't throw out the baby with the bath water.

It's tempting to do just that. But it's wrong.

Volunteer firefighters and EMTs are sacrificing their time and energy — sometimes their health and even their lives — to serve their communities. They are the people who run to, not away from, a catastrophe as it unfolds. They get up in the middle of the night to answer their neighbor's call for help. They rush into burning buildings, putting their own lives on the line, to rescue others. They put others ahead of themselves. They do it because they care.

Let's not forget that, in spite of the sensational headlines and TV-news hype surrounding the arrest of a handful of emergency services volunteers who allegedly abused the public trust.

I'm not a volunteer firefighter, nor is my husband. I used to think I'd someday volunteer for my local ambulance district. But life got in the way. I have young children. I work full-time. I have all I can do to keep up with my life as it is. I can't imagine finding time to complete all the training required of emergency service volunteers; there's lots of it — hours and hours worth of training. Never mind the meetings. And the calls — during dinner with your family, or in the middle of a blizzard, or at 2:30 in the morning.

So the passing thoughts I've had about serving my community as an emergency service volunteer have remained just that: passing thoughts. But because others find a way to make the time and the sacrifices, I can rest comfortably at night, knowing that if my family has an emergency, we can pick up the phone, dial 911, and within minutes, help will arrive.

That's a situation I've been in more than once. Time passes in excruciating slow motion from the moment you make that frantic call till the moment the ambulance pulls into your driveway. Those are the longest five or 10 minutes of your life, waiting for help to arrive to try to save the life of your father-in-law in cardiac arrest, or your mother, gasping for air because of a post-operative pulmonary embolism. The relief and gratitude you feel when the EMTs rush through the door and go to work — cool, calm, trained professionals — is something I can't quite find words to describe.

The men and women who answer those calls, the volunteers who serve our local fire departments and ambulance districts, deserve our gratitude, respect and support.

They are heroes. My heroes. Your heroes. Our community's heroes.

Let's not forget that.