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Welcome back. The towns of Oyster Bay and North Hempstead are laying the foundation to make it easier for Long Islanders to build their dream. Oyster Bay officials announced the new online permit system, giving homeowners, business owners, and contractors the ability to apply for a variety of building permits without having to go to town hall. You can now apply for over 20 permits online. North Hempstead is doing much of the same with its own program, 2 years in the making, actually. They're going to use new software now to digitize all town records and host community meet and greets. The town says those meet and greets are beginning this spring. Joining us now to talk more about this is the CEO of the Long Island Builders Institute, Mike Florio. Good to see you, Mike. Thanks for being here. Hey, Rich, happy to be here. Thanks for having me. So let's talk about this. I mean, one of the number one complaints we hear from people is how difficult it is to build anything on Long Island to upgrade your own property. Is this a game changer? Unfortunately it is a game changer. It would seem that it should be. Something very simple, but this is something that we've advocated for for a long time, uh, you know, the old system of, of paper and pen and having to fill out an application and show up at a town hall and submit that application, then it goes into the ether. No one knows where it is. No one knows when you're gonna see it with this system it's good for the homeowner, the contractor, and for the town and. Their employees because you know what, it brings accountability, you know, so if you submit your documents and you're missing something, it spits it back at you and says, no, no, you need to submit that um if you once you put it in, you see and can track it along the way. I've actually personally experienced it in the town of Huntington recently on a project that I'm doing for my, my own home and I had one of the, you know, reviewers. Uh, messaged me right away and we were able to, you know, deal with an issue right then in real time and it kept the process moving so we've been advocating for towns and municipalities to look at adopting this technology that's out there. It's, you know, you don't have to create your own system. It's off the shelf software you just take and implement, um, but it is, it is a game changer and, uh, I'm, you know, I was happy to be a part of the North Hempstead and Oyster Bay unveiling theirs. We've seen the town of Islip, uh, do this, Huntington and. Hempstead we're really the first on the island to adopt this, and we're hearing other towns and municipalities across the island looking to look at this software as well. So that helps with one of the major challenges people face. Another one is the cost, as you well know. we saw costs spike during the pandemic when there were shortages. Now there's the issue of tariffs and how they may impact building costs. What's your take on that? Is it too early to tell, or are you already getting a sense? We're already getting a sense, uh, I've heard from suppliers who are looking at. Change their, uh, you know, the cost structure already they're increasing their prices unfortunately that's gonna get passed down to the homeowner and uh you know we look at the the home building industry here you know I would say we have a housing crisis not just on Long Island but you know in in the state and in the country in general, uh, and particularly Long Island I'm, you know, I'm sure everyone reads the paper and they see the median house price just keeps rising, rising, rising. We're in an era now of higher interest. Rates we're not at the 3 and 2% uh rates we saw for a long long period of time now we're at 6 7% so you have a group of people who are kind of locked into their home and they're like, well, I'm stuck. I can't move at 3% and they're staying and that's limiting the supply then we're not building enough as we need to so you have, uh, you know, we need all types of housing senior housing, you know, affordable housing for young people, um. All types, you know, apartments, multi-family, uh, single-family townhouses, the whole, the whole, you know, ball of wax there, um. But we're not seeing the cost come down. We have higher interest rates now, and now this tariff is gonna add, you know, lumber. We get most of our lumber from Canada. We get most of our gypsum and sheetrock from Mexico. We get, you know, steel and appliances and stuff from, from, uh, Asia that, you know, that's the problem and it's just gonna be passed on so the cost of housing construction is gonna continue to rise until we do something else and, and to your point earlier, it's a real challenge right now for so many people, uh. Long Island, just let's say they're in their first home. they wanna upgrade. Where is it? How much is it? Can you afford it? Do you decide to stay in place and build up or build out? And now when you add the prices and the costs on top of that, people are stuck as you said, and we went, we listen, we went through COVID, right? And that kind of changed the way we live, so more people are staying home. So there was a, a boom in the remodeling industry at that period of time where people look to add outdoor. Spaces, the fire pits, you know, the pool, um, they added work from home spaces, offices and stuff like that again you had the era of low interest rates. Now with everything else coming on and the costs keep going up, it's harder for people to even do that so you're kind of stuck in your rate, but you know now you're looking at at, you know, 6 or 7% interest it's just harder for people to do things and that affects the industry. Something else that is impacting the industry is insurance premiums and we know there. Action in Albany right now to address that it's another factor that can impact costs again we talk about that trickle down um what is your sense on that legislation in Albany and, and do you think it will move forward? So the legislation would actually make it a felony to enter a construction site and stage an injury. So there's a thing in New York called the scaffold law and most people think, oh this is a New York City issue because you think of the high scaffolding on the buildings it's. Not, it's, it covers, it's a 100 year old law and, and we're the only state in the country that has this and it covers any gra gravity related injury. So if you fall off a ladder or you fall off a, you know, a 60 story scaffolding, it covers all that. Now it's always billed as a worker safety issue and listen, most of the people we deal with, you know, worker safety is paramount. No one wants to see someone get injured on a job site, but what's happening now is because it imposes a 100%. liability on the contractor or the owner. So if I'm a worker, I can come into a construction site and let's say I don't follow the safety regulations that we put in place or I come on drunk or high or something like that and I fall off a ladder and I get hurt, that owner or contractor is 100% liable. So what happens is most of the insurance companies just do a payout. I just had a, a contractor, uh, call me the other day furious because I can't believe this. They had a guy and a job site on video, basically laid down and faked his injury and he got paid $150,000. Um, you know, so this law would make it a felony. It's not necessarily, you know, it's more of a deterrent hopefully that people don't want to do this in the future, but this cost again, another thing that gets passed down and we all pay more and this is not just this is schools, hospitals, if you're building a bridge, there's been studies that show when we have a bridge between New York and New Jersey, the New York side is hundreds of millions of dollars more because the insurance is so much higher. I talked to attorneys who. They've seen a spike in these sorts of incidents as well, so we'll see how that plays out in Albany. We know you'll be watching as well. Mike, thanks for being here. Rich, thanks for having me. pleasure to be here. All right. Still to come here on Power and Politics, the number of older New Yorkers targeted in online scams only seems to be going up. We're gonna take a closer look at another plan in Albany. This one designed to protect potential victims. You're watching Power and Politics on News 12 Long Island. We are back right after this.

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Welcome back to Power and Politics. In our Taxing Long Island series, we are taking a closer look at the staggering number of scams targeting older New Yorkers in an attempt to add new safeguards to protect victims. I wasn't really scared until the guy said, I'm 10 minutes away. Gene Ebert of Seaford knows what it's like to be scammed. Well, almost. You may remember Gene in 2022, the then 73-year-old flipped the script on would-be scammers by appearing to fall for their scheme. But when the bad guys arrived to her home to collect cash, the cops were waiting. You turned the tables on them. Yeah, I'm saying the same things to them, you know, I'm making them believe that I fell for this. Gan spotted the scam on the spot, but so many others continue to fall victim to fraud. Fraudsters know where the money is. It's with older adults. An FBI report says. In 2023, people over the age of 60 in Nassau County lost nearly $22 million in fraud schemes, an average of almost $68,000 per victim. In Suffolk, more than $16 million was stolen by fraud, costing victims an average of nearly $48,000. And statewide, New Yorkers over the age of 60 reported being scammed. Out of more than $203 million in 2023 alone, that number just keeps on rising. Bernard Basilla from AARP New York says the advocacy group is working with Governor Hokle to compel banks to take a more active role in combating scams, especially when seniors withdraw large sums of money seemingly out of the blue. She has included language. In this year's budget that would uh give banks a lot more training and bank tellers if they suspect fraudulent activity they can actually report it, put money on hold. Meanwhile Jean says sadly seniors just cannot rely on the kindness of strangers. A lot of old people don't realize how evil people can be. I think you know this this is evil. When we reached out to the New York Bankers Association about that legislation. A spokesperson tells us that banks have already developed first in the nation best practices for reporting suspected cases of financial exploitation and went on to say, quote, While bank personnel are vigilant on behalf of their customers, we all have a role to play in helping. Loved ones avoid falling prey to these evolving threats. Every week we are tackling the issues that bother you most and help you look for solutions to what's making life on Long Island so taxing. Watch News 12 on Tuesdays and Thursdays starting at 5 a.m. on our morning show for more of our taxing Long Island series. That's all the time we have this week here on Power and Politics. We'll see you again for another edition of the program. I'm Rich Brae. Have a great rest of your day.

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Former Rep. Peter King and Mike Florio, the CEO of the Long Island Builders Institute, join the show this week. 

Power & Politics: How Trump’s tariffs will affect Long Island; 1:1 with former Rep. Peter King

Former Rep. Peter King and Mike Florio, the CEO of the Long Island Builders Institute, join the show this week.

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