The Press: Something Rotten in Islip

Something seemed to be getting too hot for comfort in the town government of Islip, N.Y.; inside of a year, 14 high-ranking officials quietly resigned. So Newsday, the Long Island daily, started to poke into the matter. The more it poked, the more it found. After three months’ digging, the paper finally unearthed the kind of conflict-of-interest scandal that every editor dreams of.

In a series of articles that began last September, the paper told how six prominent Long Island Republicans and many lesser fry had been using public office to make a killing from Islip’s surging land boom. Their favorite stunt was to buy residential land around Islip, rezone it for business, and then sell at a handsome profit. It was a coordinated effort. In one instance, the paper discovered, Town Attorney Walter Con-Ion, who was later appointed a state tax commissioner, drew up a resolution relaxing zoning restrictions on land he had bought in partnership with a Long Island hoodlum. Town Councilman Donald Kuss then introduced the resolution before the town board and pushed it through. Conlon’s company made a $64,000 profit; Kuss was paid $9,000 for his services.

Sleazy Money. The Suffolk County water authority, Newsday reported, had prohibited industrial development of vacant land in central Islip for fear that waste products would pollute the water supply. But when Water Authority Member (and Islip Republican Party Leader) Edward McGowan’s firm bought the land, the authority changed its mind and approved its rezoning for manufacturing. McGowan sold the tract for a $167,000 profit. The scandal reached even to Newsday’s doorstep. Its Suffolk editor, Kirk Price, who died last March, made $33,000 by a sale of land that he had bought for $50. He was assisted by the ubiquitous Kuss, who saw to it that a four-lane highway was routed past the property to enhance its value, and who arranged for a buyer. Said Newsday: “This is no longer a question of one, two or a dozen men making money in the sleaziest way possible. It is now a question of public confidence in government.”

That confidence had been shaken was proved in November, when a Democratic administration was elected in Islip for the first time in 32 years, by a 2-1 margin. Republicans were overturned in two neighboring towns as well. Last month Conlon was indicted on charges of bribery and resigned from his state tax job. Kuss was also indicted on the same charges; McGowan and several other Republicans have been ousted from both county and party jobs. There was some grumbling that Publisher Bill Moyers, late of the White House, had launched the investigation to embarrass Republican Governor Nelson Rockefeller, a possible opponent of President Johnson next year. But Newsday’s owner, Captain Harry F. Guggenheim, is a staunch Republican. And more disclosures are still to come. “I think we’ve got enough stuff to keep us going through 1968,” says Editor Bill Mcllwain. “There’s some awfully fertile ground out there.”