Nassau County Republicans are taking it on the chin politically in the settlement of two cases claiming the GOP redistricting of the county legislature was illegally discriminatory. And Nassau taxpayers will take a multimillion-dollar hit for the costs of drawing such a flawed map of 19 legislative districts and the futile efforts to defend it.

A consent decree finalized in State Supreme Court in Westchester County increases from four to six the number of legislative districts that are majority-minority and creates a seventh seat that does not dilute the voting power of the emerging Asian population in the county.

While the new district lines will be in effect for this fall’s legislative races and for all such races until 2032, it does not guarantee that more Democrats will be elected; it just gives them a better shot at winning more seats. For example, Democrat Josh Lafazan of Woodbury, the only incumbent who lost a seat in 2023 because his home base in parts of northeastern Nassau was no longer in the 18th district, is likely to run again.

Nassau Republicans are making taxpayers pay the price for their gamesmanship. The Point has learned that the settlement will include sending a big check to the New York Civil Liberties Union, which represented 20 Nassau residents as plaintiffs in one case, and to lawyers who represented Nassau County Democrats and other community groups that filed a separate suit. The bulk of the award will be paid to the NYCLU which did the heavy lifting in the court fight.

While the settlement is confidential for now, at some point the county legislature will have to approve the payment, which is expected to be more than $2 million, according to sources familiar with the litigation. The settlement reduced Nassau County’s exposure to an even higher penalty if it had lost the case. New York’s John Lewis Voting Rights Act requires the government entity that drew the maps to pay the legal fees and expenses of victorious challengers, in part to discourage the political party in power from disenfranchising voters.

"Usually, a judge awards the plaintiffs what the losing side paid their lawyers," said a person familiar with the case. Nassau County agreed to pay its law firm, Troutman Pepper, a maximum of $2 million to defend its redistricting plan, according to a county contract that began in May 2023. The contract wasn’t filed with the clerk of the legislature until a year later.

And that wasn’t the first Troutman Pepper contract involving the legislative maps.

In the late fall of 2022, then-Presiding Officer Richard Nicolello entered into a contract with the firm, headquartered in Atlanta, to draw the map that the county paid dearly to defend. How much the law firm was paid for that first go-round is unknown because of a legislature rule that allows the legislative review process to be bypassed when the presiding officer or county executive needs advice in "certain sensitive governmental areas which require the use of outside counsel."

A spokesman for the county did not reply to a request for that information before deadline.

So far, it looks like it will cost taxpayers at least $4 million, and likely considerably more, for the Republicans' disastrous redistricting process.

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During an interview after winning the election last year, President Donald Trump said, "I won on groceries. Very simple word, groceries. When you buy apples, when you buy bacon, when you buy eggs, they would double and triple the price over a short period of time, and I won an election based on that. We’re going to bring those prices way down."

Trump promises to tackle inflation. As his administration works on fulfilling his promises, we will be keeping tabs on egg prices at a Suffolk County supermarket that is part of a regional chain. This week, a carton of 12 large white eggs is $6.49. Last week, the price was $5.99 at the same supermarket. That is a $0.50 increase.

Christine Wallen [email protected]

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Any list of perennial plagues in these parts would have to include traffic in New York City, a special version of the general Long Island moan about traffic. Newsday’s editorial board has often echoed reader concerns on that topic, including on this day in 1962, when it bluntly declared: "Traffic in New York is a mess, make no mistake about it. To clean up such a mess will require the skin armor of a rhinoceros and two deaf ears."

The board’s words came 63 years before Gov. Kathy Hochul’s attempts to deal with the eternal issue via congestion pricing, a tolling plan that sparked a fierce controversy in which deaf ears and rhino skin would have been attributes.

Newsday’s board in 1962 was inspired by the appointment of a new NYC traffic commissioner, Henry A. Barnes, whom it dubbed "a whiz-kid." In a piece called "Tough Row to Hoe," the board lauded Barnes for tackling the tendencies of medical doctors to double-park and diplomats to engage in all sorts of illegal parking. And it urged Mayor Robert Wagner — "who has never been noted for positive action in the field of traffic regulation," the board huffed — to enforce Barnes’ remedies.

But the board despaired that those steps would not be enough of a remedy given that on business days it "can take more than half an hour to cross through the garment district by cab from Penn Station to Grand Central."

The board offered a dramatic solution.

"The ideal answer, and one that will never come to pass, would be to force trucks to discharge cargoes at night and to outlaw all private cars from the city streets, during the daytime hours, where congestion is greatest," the board wrote.

Barnes kept fighting traffic as commissioner until September 1968, when he suffered a heart attack on the job and died. The New York Times noted he had become "world famous trying to untangle New York City’s traffic," parlaying his "force of personality" and a "tart tongue" into "a position of great celebrity."

Barnes reportedly was fond of saying, "You can’t be a nice guy and solve traffic."

And he had his share of achievements. He introduced bus lanes and synchronized traffic signals, as well as actuated traffic signals whose timing varies depending on the relative presence of cars and pedestrians. He pitched adding lanes to both sides of the Long Island Expressway and a four-lane deck above it in Queens, repainted the city’s dark olive-green traffic lights bright yellow, made some avenues run one way, built parking garages, and installed parking meters.

His promotion of one new idea gave rise to the phrase Barnes Dance or Barnes Shuffle, in which traffic at an intersection is stopped in all directions to let pedestrians cross in every direction. He even battled with Robert Moses and helped kill the planner’s idea for an expressway across lower Manhattan. 

But in the face of all his accomplishments and innovations, one thing has not changed. As Newsday’s board observed more than six decades ago, traffic in the city is still a tough row to hoe.

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