Serving Roslyn, Roslyn Heights and Old Westbury
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Friday, June 19, 2015
Vol. 3, No. 25
SCOTTO CALLS EAST WILLISTON SEES RISE ART GUILD PICKS FOR DA DEBATES IN COLLEGE ACCEPTANCES EXHIBIT WINNERS PAGE 6
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IDA says job growth data was wrong
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M I D N I G H T I N PA R I S
Economic development agency to submit revised numbers: chief BY B I LL SAN ANTONIO The head of Nassau County’s Industrial Development Agency on Tuesday said he plans to resubmit job growth data from 2013 to the state comptroller’s office, citing inaccuracies in figures published in a statewide audit last month. “When I do have it, I will submit it to the state comptroller,” said Joseph Kearney, the Nassau IDA’s executive director. “I don’t have any more to say about this. There’s nothing more to be said about this.” According to the state comptroller’s May 18 report, the Nassau IDA in 2013 netted fewer jobs (1,835) than agencies in neighboring Suffolk (14,080) and Westchester (7,982) counties, despite granting more ($43,325,571) in net tax exemptions — tax exemptions minus payments in lieu of taxes — on its 278 projects. In an interview with Newsday
last week, Kearney argued the Nassau IDA’s statistics that year were an “anomaly” due to a filing error in which he said 6,000 jobs the agency was credited with creating or retaining were removed from a ledger. He told Blank Slate Media Tuesday that some of the data, which the state’s 109 industrial development agencies self-report to Albany, may have also been mishandled by the state comptroller’s office in compiling the report. “What happens when [the data] gets up there, I don’t know,” Kearney said. “If there were inaccuracies to the data, they will be corrected.” When asked whether he thought data the IDA submitted to Albany for the state comptroller’s office’s 2013 report was inaccurate, Kearney replied: “I wouldn’t be resubmitting things if I didn’t think there were inaccuracies, would I?” Continued on Page 62
Photo by Gina Motisi
Emerita Schwartz dances with her husband Hank Saturday during the Nassau County Museum of Art’s annual Museum Ball. Read the story and see more photos on pages 46-47.
Heights native’s films to screen in L.I. film festival BY B I LL SAN ANTONIO When screenwriter Michael Makowsky first began taking trips from his hometown Roslyn Heights to Los Angeles, he found himself on the War-
ner Bros. studio tour three days in a row. It was the same tour each day, passing the same sets and seeing the same production assistants scurry past on bicycles, but he went so often he’s even maintained a friendship with
his tour guide for the last decade. “It was just so cool to be eating in the commissary with people working on the lot and seeing the post-production process and hearing about Continued on Page 50
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