Federal government shutdown just starting to be felt on Long Island, with more fallout to come

On the first day of the federal shutdown, the immediate impact to Long Island was just starting to be felt.

But there is worry about the uncertainty of what's to come for the Island and beyond as the shutdown — the first since the 35-day closure from December 2018 to January 2019 — stretches on with no end in sight.

On Long Island alone, thousands of federal workers were being kept from their jobs, New York State Attorney General Letitia James warned at a rally Wednesday, outlining the forthcoming catastrophic impacts on the state. There are 31,000 resident federal workers on Long Island.

"Thousands of individuals in this city will be furloughed. Thousands on Long Island," said James, adding, "in upstate New York, in central New York," with cuts affecting "every possible program you can think of."

While the Trump administration promised that certain essential functions would continue — airport security, veterans’ services, 9/11 health care — other key services are on the precipice of indefinite suspension.

Nearly 6,000 low-income Long Island seniors would lose their access to home-delivered food items if the shutdown extends beyond three weeks, according to the head of one of the region’s largest food banks.

The USDA’s Commodity Supplemental Food Program provides Island Harvest in Melville with about 35 healthy food items that are packaged by volunteers and delivered each month to 5,777 seniors with incomes of less than $1,957 per month in Nassau and Suffolk, said Randi Shubin Dresner, president and chief executive of the food bank. Island Harvest is the lone operator of the program on Long Island.

With the lapse in federal funding, the program will run out of food in about three weeks, she said.

"This is a program that impacts some of the most vulnerable members of our society — senior citizens who have built up this community and who have an income of less than $1,957 a month to pay, literally, for all of their expenses," Shubin Dresner said. "And we've been supplementing close to 6,000 of these seniors with this food. And now they will have nothing."

Government-provided health care for veterans of the U.S. military won’t be suspended during the federal shutdown, as Veterans Affairs medical centers, outpatient clinics and veteran centers will remain open, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs said Wednesday.

The agency will also keep processing and delivering benefits, burials will continue at national cemeteries, as will the applications for the processing of death benefits and memorials, press secretary Pete Kasperowicz wrote in an email.

Contact centers, including MyVA411 (800-698-2411) and the Veterans Crisis Line (988) will continue to stay open.

But the shutdown will suspend veterans' career counseling services, the GI Bill hotline, public affairs outreach to veterans, close regional benefits offices and cut off certain other services.

Postal Service operations, funded generally through sales and not tax dollars, won't be impacted by the shutdown, spokesman Paul Smith said by email.

The William Floyd Estate — under the purview of the U.S. National Park Service — was closed to the public Wednesday, its Park Drive entrance gates chained to prevent visitors and cars from entering. The grounds are typically open year-round to the public from 9 a.m. until 4 p.m.

It looked like business as usual at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory a little after 10 a.m., with the parking lot jammed with cars and employees walking around the campus with identification badges slung around their necks.

At Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, a steady stream of vehicles were seen entering and exiting the main gate of the campus late Wednesday morning. The laboratory is primarily funded by the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science and managed by Brookhaven Science Associates, a partnership between Stony Brook University, Battelle Memorial Institute and six core universities, according to its website.

The Sagamore Hill National Historic Site, the sprawling former estate of President Theodore Roosevelt, was quiet but not empty around noon, with a pair of park rangers patrolling the grounds and small groups of people taking to the nature trail.

Dozens of people from international visitors to local school groups visited the Fire Island Lighthouse on Wednesday, which remained open despite the government shutdown. The lighthouse is owned by the National Park Service yet operated by nonprofit The Fire Island Lighthouse Preservation Society.

It is unclear if the lighthouse is to remain open as the shutdown continues. The society and volunteers are taking things day by day.

"Right now we have no concrete guidance on how our nonprofit can operate going forward," society executive director Jonathon Gaare said. "So a lot of unknowns right now. We’re hoping to remain open for the public and the visitors and the school groups that have been all excited all summer to come."

At the gated IRS office in Holtsville, a security guard told Newsday that appointments were being taken on Wednesday and everything was "business as usual."

The IRS will remain open for the first five days of a federal shutdown, according to the U.S. Treasury. Hundreds of employee cars at the Holtsville IRS were seen parked or driving into the parking lot on a crisp Wednesday morning.

No signage regarding the government shutdown appeared by the visitors entrance, which opens for appointments at 8:30 a.m.

Meanwhile, outside the entrance to the U.S. Social Security Administration office on Oak Street in Patchogue, there was no indication as of 8:30 a.m. of any changes due to the shutdown.

But that was all on the first day.

In Washington, Trump press secretary Karoline Leavitt noted that "unfortunately, layoffs are very likely" and "imminent" to result from the shutdown.

Typically federal employees are furloughed until a spending bill is passed, but President Donald Trump and his top budget aide Russell Vought have long signaled they would likely use a shutdown to determine which government agencies and jobs are essential and which could be further downsized.