Voter Guide: 10th Assembly District

The Situation

Republican James D. Conte is the incumbent in the 10th Assembly District, which covers portions of Huntington, Farmingdale and other parts of Nassau County.

Challenging him is Democrat John Capobianco, who serves as a trustee of the Farmingdale Board of Education.

Fast Facts

Capobianco also serves on Farmingdale's Downtown Revitalization Committee, among other duties.  Conte was first elected to the Assembly in 1988.

The Rundown

Candidate:      John Capobianco     James D. Conte 

Age:                 46                                   51

Residence:     Farmingdale              Huntington Station

Party:             Democratic                 Republican

Website:        Capobianco                Conte

Education  

Capobianco spent a year at Old Westbury.

Conte is a graduate of the State University of New York at Stony Brook with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics and Political Science.

Professional:

Capobianco has served as a marketing research interviewer and is bonsai artist, martial artist and tennis instructor.  

Conte has worked for county government and served as liaison between the State Legislature and the executive departments.

How would you create local jobs in this sluggish economy?

Capobianco: We need the right programs and incentives in place to help entrepreneurs start up and small businesses grow.  I'm advocating for the state to offer incentives to businesses to develop unutilized and underutilized properties.  These properties, like the area alongside the railroad in East Farmingdale at Airport Plaza, which is a great example of land being underutilized, need to be brought back on line.  (Steve Bellone has some great ideas for the area and the state needs to help him realize his vision, attract businesses, get the Bus Rapid Transit going along the Route 110 corridor.)  They need to be leased from the state, be developed, and start to contribute to the economy.  Properly developed, these sites could 1) generate lease payments 2) generate sales tax and/or payroll taxes, 3) provide some income for local school districts in the form or P.I.L.O.T. (Payments In Lieu Of Taxes)  The state needs to being a helping hand to businesses.  We should give them the tools they need and then get out of the way.

Conte: I think from a statewide perspective, we need to create a better business climate by cutting business taxes and that we give a tax credit to any business that created jobs,  a $1,500 annual tax credit that would increase if the job is over $40,000.

How would you get the state budget in line?
Capobianco: I would ask every department to find a way to reduce their budget by 10%, cutting whatever they could that doesn't jeopardize public and worker safety.  We also have to scrutinize Medicaid and eliminate fraud and wasteful practices.  People see the inefficiencies of the system and take advantage of it.  Look at what Andrew Cuomo uncovered this summer.

The MTA is another bloated and wasteful agency that needs to be examined in depth!  The comptroller's office needs to conduct a forensic audit of the MTA and not worry so much about how many minutes of phys ed each school district is providing.  Let the school districts count the number of minutes in gym class, mount a real investigation into the MTA's books!

Conte: I would enact a hard state spending cap that would send a message to the ablany politicians and special interests that we have to live within our means.  The Democrats over the last two years increased the deficit over $14 billion. We  cannot continue to increase spending.

 
The tax burden on Long Island is driving young adults away. How would you solve this?
Capobianco: It's not just the tax burden, it is the rents, to quote Jim McMillan, 'The rent is too damn high!"  We need to work on mixed use housing and developing cool downtowns.  Our young professionals are leaving Long Island to live in Brooklyn, where the rents aren't any cheaper, but the night life is more interesting for them.  As a member of the Village of Farmingdale Downtown Revitalization Committee, we are struggling with 20+ vacant storefronts, zoning codes that are out of sync with the times.  We've embraced the Suozzi Cool Downtown initiative.  Within a few months we hope to unveil a Downtown Master Plan that provides for Mixed Use development, "starter" apartments and a pedestrian friendly "cool" downtown.  There are many areas of Long Island that would benefit from this approach.  We need community members to gather together and take the steps to make these areas diverse, entertaining and affordable.  Making Long Island affordable is one of the reasons I became active with the Greater Farmingdale Community Land Trust, of which I am a charter member.

Conte: I'm not sure I would agree. If you're trying to afford to buy a house, the real property tax is what's causing the problem. There have also been proposals that the way to keep young people in New York State is that we do not tax income tax for the first three to 5 years they're employed here. It's out there, but we've never been able to vote on it.

A project touting affordable housing in Huntington Station was voted down in September. Are these developments needed or is there another solution? 

Capobianco: I believe in the Transit Oriented Development concept, and the rest of SmartGrowth.  I think a better approach in general would be a Community Land Trust.  With the CLT the community takes ownership of the project and decides what works best for them.  This approach takes the profit motive out of the equation, and allows the local residents to determine their destiny. 

Conte: There has to be another solution for the Avalon Bay property. That particular project was too dense for the area and it wasn't a true TOD.  It was used as an excuse to make it as dense as possible. There are ways to make affordable housing, joint workforce housing that are available to all levels of income and different people at different points in their lives. The problem with Avalon was they wanted to cram too many units of housing in too small an area. From a planning perspective, the master plan never called for that kind of density.

Where do you stand on the growing call for consolidation of school and special districts?

Capobianco: The mechanism is in place for the citizens to take control of their destiny.  IF they want to end the special districts, and consolidate schools districts, all they have to do is write a petition and gather the required signatures to get the ball rolling.  Whatever the people agree to do is what should happen.  I think Long Islanders would be quicker to consolidate water districts and sanitation districts than they would be to consolidate school districts.  There is a lot of pride in local school communities, I think it would be difficult to get many of them consolidated.  That being said, it is worth running the numbers.

Conte: I voted for the consolidation bill but school districts need to consolidate their back office and purchasing programs through BOCES or cooperatively with themselves.  But consolidating school districts doesn't really solve problems.

 In your opinion, what's the biggest issue in your community now?

Capobianco: The biggest issue not getting any notice is ground water.

The biggest issue that is getting all the air time is the economy.  We can do nothing to balance the budget, get fair funding for Long Island schools and property tax relief until the economy rebounds.  In the meantime we're all going to have to tighten our belts and start to pull together to grow this state again.  That's why I am calling for a complete freeze on state spending and a freeze on taxes.  We can't afford any new expenses or programs until we are truly out of this recession.   I hate to say this, but it is too easy to drive along the Route 110 corridor in the morning, and that's not because of mass transit, it's because there are fewer people working.  I don't care what the economists say, we're not feeling any kind of recovery yet.

Conte: For the whole district, the cost of paying for government which is the real property tax issue. They're at the breaking point. They see government continuing to spend and they don't have any more money.