Some Long Island Political Basics

Most of us grow up or live for years on Long Island without a clear understanding of the geographic and political reality of the community in which we live.

Caught in the shadow of New York City and the larger tri-state metropolitan area, most people, Long Island natives included, have a distorted sense of our elongated home town.

In this edition of LIPS, we want to talk a little bit about some of the myths and the reality of just what Long Island is and then in future editions we’ll enter the sometimes convoluted area of the island’s political system. Long Island is a jigsaw pattern of conflicting political boundaries. Many of which we think we know, are myths. Many others are correct but only when seen from a certain perspective. viewed from another angle, they all but disappear. We could say Long Island is made up of two counties or we can say it is made up of four. Both would be right.

Long Island, the geographic entity, consists of four counties: Kings, Queens, Nassau and Suffolk. Since Kings and Queens are part of New York City, people usually mean Nassau and Suffolk when referring to L.I. To show you how confusing this can get, let’s go back to New York City for a minute.

Who ever heard of Kings County? Most people would say "Brooklyn", the home of the Dodgers. (Before they moved to L.A.) Well Brooklyn is a borough, a portion of New York City. The county is called Kings, and when used in conjunction with Nassau, and Suffolk or Albany or Westchester, for that matter, Kings is correct. Counties are political divisions of the State of New York, Boroughs AKA boro, are political divisions of the City of New York.

While we are on the subject of New York City, it is made up of five counties: Kings, Queens, The Bronx (its proper name is "The Bronx" not "Bronx") Richmond and New York. Where’s Manhattan? Why that’s New York. Where’s Richmond? On Staten Island. Who’s on first?

As proof, we offer you a list of the boros of the City of New York: Brooklyn, Queens, The Bronx, Manhattan and Staten Island. But we are here today to talk about Long Island. For most purposes, Long Island is made up of two counties, Nassau and Suffolk.

Nassau, which lies adjacent to Queens, is made up of one city, Glen Cove, three towns, Hempstead, North Hempstead and Oyster Bay and a number of much smaller villages. At last count there were 64 incorporated villages in Nassau. We say, last count, since from time to time these things change. Things are more stable in Suffolk. Here we have ten towns and a far smaller group of villages.

Suffolk in turn is generally divided between the larger western towns and the smaller East End Towns (frequently and incorrectly called "The Hamptons".) There are also 31 incorporated villages sprinkled throughout the ten Suffolk Towns.

Let’s get one thing straight right now. You frequently hear people refer to Suffolk as having 10 townships. That’s incorrect. New York State makes provision for the creation of towns but there’s no such thing as a township in New York State. The term is frequently but incorrectly used. In fact, we have heard town supervisors say "township" when they meant town and they weren’t run out of office for the gaff.

The five western towns are: Babylon, Brookhaven, Huntington, Islip and Smithtown. The Five East End Towns are: East Hampton, Riverhead, Shelter Island, Southold and Southampton.

Riverhead is the county seat. It is located at the mouth of the Peconic River, not its headwaters, as you would suspect. To confuse things further, the Suffolk County offices and jail and most of its courts are not located in Riverhead, the county seat but across the river in Southampton.

Taken together, East Hampton (always two words) and Southampton (one word) make up the world famous "Hamptons." If someone were to ask you "What about North Hampton and Westhampton, where are they?"

They are both located in Southampton and so is Westhampton Beach, which is a separate, incorporated village.

So, Westhampton Beach is a village and so is East Hampton Village (which is separate and distinct from East Hampton Town) The Village of Southampton is also correct, but in case you were wondering, neither Riverhead nor Southold qualify as villages. Nor does Montauk, although some maps refer to it as "Montauk Village."

Since we’ve reached Montauk Point, presumably the easternmost point on Long Island this is a good place to stop.

We’ll deal with how to go east from Montauk and remain in Suffolk County and a whole lot of other little know facts about the politics and geography of Long Island in our next installment of LIPS.

You’ll see that when we get to politics, things really get confused. If you have questions or comments on anything written here contact: readmylips@imran.com