Long Island - Government and Politics

Government and Politics

Nassau County and Suffolk County each have their own governments, with a County Executive leading each. Each has a county legislature and countywide-elected officials, such as district attorney, county clerk and county comptroller. The towns in both counties have their own governments as well, with town supervisors and a town council. Nassau County is divided into three towns and two small incorporated cities (Glen Cove and Long Beach). Suffolk County is divided into ten towns.

Brooklyn and Queens, on the other hand, do not have county governments. As boroughs of New York City, both have Borough Presidents, which have been largely ceremonial offices since the shutdown of the New York City Board of Estimate.

Long Island is home to two Native American Indian reservations, Poospatuck Reservation and Shinnecock Reservation. Both Reservations are in Suffolk County. Numerous island place names are Native American in origin.

Read more about this topic:  Long Island

Famous quotes containing the words government and/or politics:

    If government knew how, I should like to see it check, not multiply, the population. When it reaches its true law of action, every man that is born will be hailed as essential.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    There is a place where we are always alone with our own mortality, where we must simply have something greater than ourselves to hold onto—God or history or politics or literature or a belief in the healing power of love, or even righteous anger.... A reason to believe, a way to take the world by the throat and insist that there is more to this life than we have ever imagined.
    Dorothy Allison (b. 1949)