Trump directive could cause severe understaffing for LI school bus drivers

Long Island’s school bus industry, already suffering from a driver shortage, will lose hundreds more drivers because of a Trump administration directive preventing immigrants with temporary residency from obtaining, or renewing, commercial driver’s licenses, officials said. Alfonso A. Castillo and Darwin Yanes report in NEWSDAY that the recent announcement by the NYS Department of Motor Vehicles that its commercial driver’s license program for temporary residents is "indefinitely paused, including renewals," could have a cascading impact across Long Island. Bus companies said it will put decades-long bus drivers out of work and, in a worst-case scenario, push school districts to delay bell times so that buses could serve multiple schools with a depleted roster of operators."It’s tough right now. It’s just going to get a little tougher," said Thomas Smith, chief operating officer of Suffolk Transportation Services, the county’s largest school bus provider, which stands to lose about 150 of its 1,600 drivers because of the licensing change. "It’s sad. These are great people doing great work for the community."The DMV’s move came in response to changes made late last year by the federal government barring most immigrants with temporary visas from obtaining commercial driver’s licenses, even while in the United States legally.The change followed a Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration audit saying that New York, and other large cities led by Democrats, were regularly renewing immigrant drivers' commercial licenses even after their temporary statuses expired. Federal officials ordered New York to immediately revoke every license illegally issued to "foreign drivers" and discontinue its immigrant CDL program, or they'd lose federal highway funding.DMV officials said every applicant's legal status is verified and that they followed federal regulations, but have suggested they have no choice but to comply with the federal order.The Trump administration has sought to target so-called "non-domiciled" CDL programs following a series of high-profile truck crashes involving immigrant drivers. President Donald Trump brought up the issue at his recent State of the Union address, calling on Congress to bar "any state from granting commercial licenses to illegal aliens."Leaders of Nassau and Suffolk superintendent organizations said they are closely monitoring the situation but stressed that student safety and transportation are top priorities for districts.***Attorneys for pop star Justin Timberlake secured a temporary restraining order yesterday to block the release of police body camera footage of the actor-musician's 2024 drunken driving arrest, court records show. Robert Brodsky reports in NEWSDAY that the order by Suffolk County Supreme Court Justice Joseph Farneti gives the Village of Sag Harbor until April 9 to submit documentation detailing why it should be permitted to release footage from the former *NSYNC frontman's traffic stop and arrest on June 18, 2024, as part of a Freedom of Information Law request by members of the media.In the interim, the village cannot release the footage without a court order, Farneti said.On Monday Timberlake, citing privacy concerns, filed suit against the Village of Sag Harbor, its police department and police Chief Robert Drake seeking a court order to block the footage's expected release.Release of this footage, according to Timberlake attorney Michael Del Piano, "would cause severe and irreparable harm to petitioner's personal and professional reputation, subject petitioner to public ridicule and harassment, and serve no legitimate public interest in understanding the operations of government. Disclosure of this footage would constitute an unwarranted invasion of petitioner’s personal privacy."Meanwhile, on Tuesday, Jed Painter, general counsel to Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney, weighed in on the dispute, asking Farneti to uphold a 2024 protective order issued in Sag Harbor Village Justice Court that prevented the public release of any footage from Timberlake's arrest.“Our interest is limited to the important institutional and public policy considerations implicated by the potential erosion of judicial protective orders,” Painter said. “We take no position on the privacy interests asserted by the petitioner. Rather, we focus upon the order underlying the criminal case that is presently before the court, and which has never been rescinded.”The eight hours of footage, attorneys said, contain the initial traffic stop, the officer's questioning of Timberlake, field sobriety tests and the pop star's subsequent arrest.On Sept. 13, 2024, Sag Harbor Village Justice Carl Irace sentenced Timberlake to 25 hours of community service for the nonprofit of his choice and ordered him to pay a $500 fine, along with a $260 surcharge. Irace also ordered him to issue a public safety announcement.***Graduating high school students who live in the Southampton or Tuckahoe school district are invited to apply for the 2026 Milton Enstine Memorial Library Scholarship. Applicants are asked to submit an essay describing the Rogers Memorial Library of the future. The writer is expected to address the role of the Rogers Memorial Library not only generally, but also specifically in his or her own life.Over the years, students have received scholarships ranging from $500 to $2,000 each. Funding for the scholarships comes from corporate and private donors in the community, the Friends of Rogers Memorial Library, and the Rogers Memorial Library Foundation.Application deadline is March 13.For more information and an application, students at Southampton High School should contact the school’s Counseling Office at 631-591-4610.Students graduating from other public or private high schools may come into the Library’s Administration Office or download an application here. If you require any further information, you may contact R.M.L. at 631-283-0774 ext. 500.***Billionaire Stefan Soloviev has proposed a 148-acre conservation subdivision along Oregon Road in Mattituck and Cutchogue.Nicole Wagner reports in THE SUFFOLK TIMES that he’s the latest deep-pocketed land owner looking to change the North Fork landscape.The project, filed by Soloviev-owned Crossroads Atlantic LLC on Feb. 27 under the title “Cole Harbor Conservation Subdivision,” would add 13 beachfront homes along the Long Island Sound while preserving 87 acres of farmland.The proposal comes on the heels of another Soloviev bid — the 372-acre “Colusa Conservation Subdivision” across Cutchogue and Peconic that would create 47 new residential lots — along with last month’s record-setting $23.5 million sale of shoreline property in East Marion to Apollo Global Management CEO Marc Rowan, the priciest land deal in North Fork history.The latest Soloviev plans include 13 beachfront residential lots along the Long Island Sound ranging from 0.83 acres to 3.17 acres, one 87-acre conservation lot and one 0.42-acre beach access lot, according to planning documents. A road would extend northwest from Oregon Road through the conservation lot to serve the residential lots at the shore line.Roughly 124 acres of the property are already used for agricultural purposes, according to planning documents. There are no moderate income family dwellings proposed in the application. The Soloviev Group has also proposed a separate 372-acre conservation subdivision across Cutchogue and Peconic that would create 47 new residential lots while preserving 267 acres of surrounding farmland.The Cole Harbor plans have been in the works since April 30, 2025, when developers met with the Planning Board for a presubmission conference and Land Preservation Committee. Conservation subdivisions, which preserve a majority of acreage while allowing development on a portion of the land, were codified by the Southold Town Board in 2006 with the goal of preserving agricultural lands while protecting landowners’ equity.Crossroads Atlantic LLC, founded in 1999, operates on 400,000 acres producing crops across Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Texas and New York. As of September 2019, Mr. Soloviev owned more than 1,100 acres of land on the North Fork.A separate $23.5 million, 103-acre land sale along the Long Island Sound shore in East Marion — including 69 acres of land protected by Peconic Land Trust easements — was recently finalized by Marc Rowan, who has an estimated net worth of more than $10 billion. Plans for the East Marion land have not been publicized.***Suffolk County's leadership has said repeatedly that police are not cooperating with federal immigration agents who are carrying out the Trump administration's deportation campaign.So, the sight of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in three Suffolk County Police Department precincts in recent months has triggered an outcry in the Latino community, even as the department seeks to reassure them its policy has not changed.Bart Jones and Michael O'Keeffe report in NEWSDAY that the issue came to a head on Sunday when activists filmed at least a dozen ICE agents in the parking lot of the 2nd Precinct in Huntington. It was the third time in three months they have seen ICE there, they said. The ICE vehicles were spotted seven months after the federal government ended a consent decree aimed at improving the department's ties with the Latino community and after police officials say they have made efforts to reach out. Now the...