Palumbo touts housing, public safety in bid for fourth state Senate term

Republican state Sen. Anthony Palumbo seeks a fourth term on Nov. 3, arguing that his ability to work across party lines has helped him advance East End priorities on housing, preservation and public safety.

He faces Democrat Chris Murray in the race for New York’s 1st Senate District, which covers the towns of Riverhead, Southold, East Hampton, Southampton and Shelter Island, along with the northern portion of Brookhaven Town.

Housing is the most important issue facing the East End, Mr. Palumbo said, as high prices increasingly threaten the ability of workers and young families to remain in the region.

“The North Fork is becoming a little bit more like the South Fork, where we have people who are writing checks for second homes, not mortgages,” he said. “We need to strike a balance for sure, but I think affordable housing is the reason why we muscled through that housing fund. I think this is the most important issue right now.”

Mr. Palumbo pointed to the Community Housing Fund, which he sponsored in the state Senate, and Southold’s still-developing first-time-homebuyer program as examples of the local approach he favors. The proposal could provide qualifying buyers with down-payment assistance of up to 18% of a home’s purchase price.

“I think we need to get something out the door, see how it works and make changes,” Mr. Palumbo said. “Our affordable housing numbers are abysmal in Southold.”

Mr. Palumbo said more than 80 of his bills have become law during his six years in the Senate, a record he attributes in part to working with lawmakers across the aisle despite serving in the Republican minority.

“Government can be a good thing” when officials act like adults rather than fight like children, he said.

Among the measures he highlighted was a 2014 law, passed while he served in the Assembly, that created a first-time-homebuyer exemption from Southold’s 2% Community Preservation Fund real-estate transfer tax.

However, new housing should not come at the expense of environmental protections, he added. Mr. Palumbo opposed recent changes intended to streamline the state environmental-review process for housing projects, arguing that preservation and workforce housing can coexist.

He said the push for more housing must also account for water infrastructure, pointing to water-quality concerns in areas such as Orient and the long-running Navy cleanup at the former Grumman site in Calverton.

On immigration enforcement, Mr. Palumbo said he had not read OLA of Eastern Long Island’s full public-safety proposal, but was familiar with its general approach. The group has urged Southold to adopt a policy governing how town police interact with federal immigration authorities during enforcement activity in North Fork hamlets.

Mr. Palumbo said he opposes the proposal’s approach to noncooperation, arguing that local and federal law enforcement should be able to coordinate in limited circumstances. At the same time, he said local police should not be deputized to enforce federal immigration law and called it “unfortunate” when federal operations sweep up longtime residents who are not actively being sought.

“I don’t think it’s smart to implement their policy, I don’t think it’s appropriate,” Mr. Palumbo said. “We have our own law enforcement to do their own jobs, and that’s that. But when it’s about crowd control, when you have people who are actively protesting and getting violent … that’s where local law enforcement needs to intervene to the extent with crowd control.”

Mr. Palumbo also pointed to deer overpopulation as a persistent East End problem. In 2023, he sponsored legislation signed into law creating a deer-management pilot program in Southold. The law requires the state Department of Environmental Conservation to assess the program’s effectiveness.

He said he would support a bounty-style program that would pay hunters $25 for each tagged deer delivered to a butcher for distribution to food banks.

“They cause tons of property damage and, on occasion, personal injury,” he said. “Lyme disease, babesiosis, you name it — those are hugely a concern. I think we need to do more.”

Mr. Palumbo first won election to the state Assembly in 2013 and to the Senate in 2020. He previously worked as a Suffolk County assistant district attorney before opening a private law practice on the North Fork. He lives in New Suffolk.

“This is our home,” Mr. Palumbo said. “This is where we’d like to continue to live, and it’s really rewarding to be able to make a difference and have a real effect on people’s lives.”