Long Island business group warns of shutdown toll | Long Island Business News

The business advocacy group that represents Long Island’s largest owners of real estate are warning the region’s representatives that the federal government shutdown has begun to cause “enormous economic damage.” 

The Association for a Better Long Island (ABLI), whose members include owners of some $15 billion in properties, sounded the alarm in an open letter sent Thursday to Long Island’s four-member congressional delegation. 

“A federal government shutdown is not a harmless administrative pause,” said Kyle Strober, ABLI’s executive director. “It is an active drain on our region’s economic health.” 

The ABLI letter outlined the impacts that the shutdown, which began on Oct. 1, is already causing or will shortly be triggering in several sectors of the economy.  

Among those are the strain on small businesses due to the anticipated reduction in consumer spending caused by economic uncertainty; the uncertainty for the 31,000 federal employees that reside on Long Island, with some facing furlough and potentially permanent job loss; and delayed capital and investment, as the processing of Small Business Administration (SBA) loans and loan guarantees are on hold, starving businesses of operating capital, “stifling job creation and paralyzing growth initiatives across Nassau and Suffolk counties.” 

In addition, ABLI cited the decline in tax revenue that a prolonged shutdown would cause by generating “a climate of financial uncertainty” leading to less consumer spending.  Not only concerning for small businesses, a drop in spending is also a problem for local municipalities, the letter reads, as sales tax revenue accounts for 41 percent of total revenue in Nassau and 45 percent in Suffolk. 

ABLI says a further worry is infrastructure and development uncertainty, since Long Island depends heavily on federal grants and programs for essential infrastructure improvements, including transit, clean energy projects, and environmental remediation. The federal shutdown freezes the review, approval and reimbursement of these funds, which leads to project delays and can short-circuit long-term economic development plans. 

“The current situation demonstrates that every American—regardless of socio-economic status, political ideology, or the size of their business—is impacted by a federal government shutdown,” Strober writes in the letter. “It compromises the financial security of workers, weakens the viability of large and small businesses, and undermines the public trust in governing institutions. We recognize the complexities involved in reaching a consensus, but the cost of continued inaction is simply too high for the Long Island economy to bear. We urge you to work diligently to end the shutdown. Your efforts demonstrate your continued prioritization of the economic well-being of our region.”