Former congressman asks town board to hire him to work on EPCAL issues

Former congressman George Hochbrueckner addressed the Town Board last week offering his help to sell land in the Enterprise Park in Calverton. 

Hochbrueckner, a lobbyist, served as represented New York’s First Congressional District from 1987 to 1995 and before that as a New York State Assemblyman. He passed the legislation that gifted the EPCAL site to Riverhead Town for economic development. He was also hired as a consultant for Riverhead in 2013 by former supervisor Sean Walter. Hochbreuckner said he was able to break the deadlock between the State Department of Environmental Conservation and the town, with an agreement on what areas of the site should be off-limits to development and what is developable. 

He said he is “available with the same affiliations and relationships” that allowed him “to solve the original problem … in 2013” and would allow him “to help resolve the town’s issues with the DEC today.”

“I regard it as even much more complicated because of the DEC, Suffolk County Water Authority and the courts now being involved too,” Hochbrueckner said.

After writing to the supervisor and council members in April and May without response, the former congressman tried to address the board at its June 10 work session after the town board met with representatives of Triple Five, which is in a $40 million contract to purchase 1,600 acres of vacant land at EPCAL from the town. The supervisor would not allow Hochbrueckner to meet with the board that day, because he wasn’t on the agenda. The former congressman was told to come to the June 5 regular meeting and address the board from the podium.

Part way through his remarks last Tuesday, he was interrupted by Reeves Park resident Mike Foley. “This sounds more like a job interview than anything else. If you want to lobby your services, do it on your own time,” Foley said from the audience.

Members of the town board were in partial agreement with Foley. Supervisor Yvette Aguiar said she has reservations about having Hochbrueckner work for the town, since he has also lobbied for Luminati Aerospace, the company owned by Daniel Preston, a partial owner of CAT, from 2015 to 2018. She said it would be a conflict of interest.

“I understand that you are a lobbyist. We’ve spent quite a bit of time speaking to you and you wanted to have a contract,” Aguiar said. “And with all due respect, we do have issues here, but they’re not solvable issues at the current time.” 

The town is currently fighting battles on all fronts to sell the land at EPCAL. The DEC has imposed requirements on its issuance of two regulatory permits that the town is unable to meet and the town sued to set aside a DEC determination about public water supply to the site. The DEC has required the town to get permission from the Suffolk County Water Authority to have the Riverhead Water District provide water to the site, but the water authority rejected the town’s demand that the authority drop its claim to the site.