Steve Levy

Eliot Spitzer is not an easy guy to disagree with (just ask James Tedisco, Joe Bruno and Michael Bloomberg). But it must be even harder when you’re a Democrat who disagrees with Spitzer, especially when you differ with him over his major initiative to allow illegal immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses.

Yesterday, I chatted with one such Democrat, Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy, who said, “From Mayor Bloomberg to a number of people around the state and the nation feel that the sanctity of a license should not be watered down. There's a feeling that's what this might do. This is one issue where we disagree. I would say on 99 of 100, we're together trying to reform this state.”

I asked him about that press conference of a group of the plan's supporters at which one official called Levy a “little Bull Connor.”

Levy corrected me, saying it wasn‘t a group of elected official who invoked that name. “No. It was one guy. Adriano Espaillat.”

More after the jump.  read more »

Advocates of Eliot Spitzer's executive order to allow non-legal residents to obtain driver's licenses have just turned up the volume.

At a press conference just now on the City Hall steps, Assemblyman Adriano Espaillat compared one vocal critic, Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy, to a “little Bull Connor.”

Espaillat went on to say that there is nothing to fear from the people who will be affected by the change in the law. “I don’t think we need to be concerned about a Mexican going to Home Depot to get some materials to do your lawn,” he said.

City Councilman Miguel Martinez said Michael Bloomberg was opposing the plan for slightly less sinister reasons: national ambition.

“This is about what is right for the mayor politically and his national agenda,” Martinez said. “Just like a former mayor who used to champion issues of immigrants for the city of New York and said that the doors were open, for all immigrants, is now saying it is not."

Here’s something that rarely happens in the New York State Assembly: a bill by a Democratic member was pulled off the floor late yesterday because it didn’t have enough votes to pass.

The bill was sponsored by Robert Sweeney of Suffolk County (kneeling) and would have allowed the county to raise its sales tax by 1 percent. That’s a major initiative the county executive there, Steve Levy, hoped to get approved.

But Levy has enacted what his critics in the Assembly say are anti-immigrant policies, specifically targeting day laborers and undocumented residents.

Phil Ramos of Suffolk County (seated) helped lead black and Latino Assembly members in a protest vote against Levy via Sweeney’s bill. By my count, 72 members had voted against the measure by the time the bill was pulled off the floor, so, technically, no vote will have been recorded.

In essence, the revolt left supporters of the bill, including the Assembly Speaker and Majority Leader, outnumbered.

Marge Markey, a Democrat from Queens, was heard telling a colleague, “This is as exciting as it gets.”  read more »