Collaboration, not more bureaucracy ....

"....that includes Empire State Development, which does try to help the Island, but also has to look out for other parts of the state (such as Westchester, where OSI is going); the two county industrial development agencies, and town IDAs that do cooperate, but also compete. Our answer: We need a new structure - preferably a single regional voice.

Getting there won't be easy. The towns that have IDAs won't want to give them up. Nor will the counties. And creating a regional entity would require Albany action, which is as hopeless as it is oxymoronic."

The first step in creating a "regional entity" or a collaborative structure which has the same effect as a regional entity, is the creation of a dynamic "meta-zoning map" or land use map of Long Island and the normalization of the data and analysis we all use.

As it stands today, we are simply not prepared to take advantage of opportunities that may be available to us.

We do not need another level of bureaucracy. We need a dynamic system of collaboration that allows us the freedom to work collaboratively and rapidly.

Certainly changes in the law and new or amended legislation would make it easier to move quickly. Perhaps this is another reason a constitutional convention may be in order.

The One Long Island series of inter-related concepts is an attempt to build such a system.