STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — Local elected officials want to know what it would look like if Staten Island took a borough-sized bite out of the Big Apple.
Borough President Vito Fossella is leading the latest secession charge, saying his office will fund a new study to put together information on what an independent city of Staten Island would look like, and he’s gotten his local government counterparts onboard.
“I think it’s time that the people of Staten Island get a fair assessment of whether it makes sense to pursue secession,” he said during a Tuesday interview. “We have agreed to fund the study for secession, and give the people of Staten Island an honest assessment of what secession would look like.”
Each of the Island’s elected officials, Democrat and Republican, has said they support the study looking into an independent Staten Island, but have had varying degrees of enthusiasm about the prospect of actually seceding.
Borough President Vito Fossella voices his opposition to the migrant housing in the former St. John Villa in Arrochar on Monday, August 28, 2023. (Staten Island Advance/Jason Paderon)
For example, City Councilman Joseph Borelli (R-South Shore), who has his own secession bill in the Council, said he supports the idea “100%,” but his counterpart, Councilwoman Kamillah Hanks (D-North Shore), said she supports the study for reasons apart from actually seceding.
“While I do not support secession, I believe a study to help us further understand the resources given to Staten Island, as well as it’s economic viability and positive impact in terms of revenue on the city as a whole, would be valuable,” she said.
Her Democratic counterparts also weren’t gung-ho about the larger idea of secession. State Sen. Jessica Scarcella-Spanton (D-North Shore/South Brooklyn) said she supports the study, but is hesitant about secession. Assemblyman Charles Fall (D-North Shore/Brooklyn/Manhattan) said he supports the study, but declined to comment further.
“While I have reservations regarding secession, I support a study looking at the impact to Staten Islanders’ jobs, property taxes, and services,” Scarcella-Spanton said. “I deeply understand that this movement derives from a frustration among fellow Staten Islanders — we are incredibly valuable to New York City as a whole and deserve more than we get.”
Assemblymen Michael Reilly (R-South Shore) and Michael Tannousis (R-East Shore/South Brooklyn), said they support Fossella’s endeavor to determine what would be best for the Island based on the facts laid out in the study.
“Secession transcends partisan politics — that’s why I am proud to stand united with my fellow Staten Islanders to support the borough president’s secession study,” Reilly said. “It is imperative that we know all the facts and have all the data related to a potential Staten Island secession from New York City, so that we can make an informed decision — but what we know for certain already is that Staten Island has been short-changed for far too long and it must stop.”
“While we battle the City of New York at every turn, it is difficult to ignore the attractiveness of secession. I fully support a study that will explore its feasibility,” Tannousis said. “I look forward to analyzing the results of the study and exploring whether secession will increase the quality of life of our constituents.”
Different levels of enthusiasm aside, Fossella said he sees the new study as the most significant step in the Staten Island secession movement since a 1993 referendum that saw 65% of the Island vote to secede in a local referendum.
The Wednesday, Nov. 3, 1993 front page of the Staten Island Advance shows the results of Staten Island's secession vote. (File)
Ultimately, former Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan) crushed that push when he decided the issue would need a home-rule message supporting secession from the City Council and refused to move state legislation needed through his chamber.
“I think the people most affected are the people who should decide the secession issue. I believe the people most affected are the residents of the City of New York,” Silver said in 1994 shortly before becoming acting speaker after his predecessor, former Speaker Saul Weprin (D-Queens), suffered a stroke.
Silver’s block of the secession legislation, which passed the State Senate guided by former State Sen. John Marchi (R-Staten Island), even saw a court challenge, but the judge in that case decided he could not interfere in legislative matters.
STUDY ‘NOT NEEDED’
During a Wednesday phone interview, State Sen. Andrew Lanza (R-South Shore), Marchi’s successor, said he supports Fossella’s study, but that it’s not needed to move forward with secession.
Lanza has carried secession legislation in his chamber since shortly after he took office in 2007, and said the State Legislature moving forward with it would allow Staten Island to break away from the city under the New York Constitution.
“I support doing it, what the borough president is doing, wholeheartedly,” he said. “To me, it’s a study to prove the viability and sustainability of a self-governed Staten Island. I don’t need that. I know it’s possible.”
He pointed out that the population of Staten Island, about 500,000, people would make it as large or larger than some major cities around the country, like Miami, Oakland and Atlanta.
“If all those places can be cities, Staten Island certainly could be,” he said.
While Borough Hall has yet to finalize the scope of the study, Fossella and some of his colleagues, including General Counsel Daniel Master and Advisor Ed Burke, pointed to a 1993 study from consulting firm Towers Perrin that laid out the financial implication of an independent Staten Island.
That study looked at the cost of essential personnel for things like a new fire department, police department and schools. Master said changing demographics and new strategies around things like policing meant that those numbers would need to be updated.
Assemblyman Sam Pirozzolo (R-Mid-Island) said he supports the borough president’s study, and that a study of his own suggested an independent Staten Island could be economically-viable.
“The first question I will ask you, is do you believe that Staten Island gets more back in services than we pay in taxes? Almost unanimously the answers is no we don’t receive more in services,” he said “Just on that premise alone I feel it is the duty of electeds to pursue the viability.”
MIGRANT CRISIS
On immediate motivations for the break away, Pirozzolo pointed to the city’s ongoing migrant crisis that has seen more than 110,000 people come to the five boroughs since April 2022, more than 60,000 of whom remain in the city’s care.
Mayor Eric Adams’ administration has set up more than 200 emergency shelters around the five boroughs, including several on Staten Island that have drawn ongoing protests.
“The importance of Staten Islanders being able to chart their own destiny by governing themselves has never been more apparent than now,” Councilman David Carr (R-Mid-Island) said. “This study is a critical first step on the path to us understanding how having an independent city of our own would work.”
Fossella, who has been a fixture at those protests, also said the migrant issue played a part in the Island’s latest secession push, but rehashed some of the longstanding reasons some on the Island have sought to leave the nation’s largest city.
Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-Staten Island/South Brooklyn) highlighted some of those issues, particularly what Staten Islanders put into the city’s coffers and what it gets back out.
“Our borough pays the highest effective property tax rate in the city, but is forgotten when it comes to transportation, healthcare and other services,” she said. “With unanimous bipartisan support among the Island’s elected officials, this analysis is the appropriate next step to determine the feasibility of secession and self-governing.”
Those motivations date back decades, but earlier secession movements that gained traction were tied to larger issues that drew the ire of Staten Islanders, like the migrant crisis.
Secession advocates in the 1990s rallied behind the broader government’s refusal to shutdown the Fresh Kills Landfill. Another push in the 1940s was built largely around plans to open the dump on the Island.
That earlier push fell short, and while the latter one did as well, it helped propel former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani into office — an outcome that many claim helped quiet secession cries through a Republican mayor who took a greater interest in Staten Island.
That trend continued under former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, but Fossella, who first took office as a councilman in 1994 shortly after the secession referendum, said the priorities of Island residents had begun to move away from the rest of city about 10 years ago.
“We’re just different, and now, we have, not on the scale of a landfill, but you have the migrant crisis that becomes an example of [the fact that] we have no recourse to solve the problem on our own,” he said. “I think the vast majority of people on Staten Island probably share the sentiment of ‘we didn’t start this problem.’ ‘Why should we have to solve the problem?’”
From a philosophical prospective, secession proponents have their argument. They hope Fossella’s study will give them the facts they need to convince others that an independent Staten Island could be sustainable. But whether or not secession will move forward will likely be left up to elected officials off Staten Island.
Democrats have full control of the City Council, City Hall, the governor’s mansion, and the State Legislature, but Lanza suggested that perhaps more liberal elected officials could be brought to the cause of secession because of their own distaste for Staten Island.
“They say strange bedfellows but for very different reasons, there may be enough political support to get it done,” he said. “We won’t know unless we try.”
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