If the sea of about 84,000 spectators at INVESCO Field at Mile High seemed like a lot to you last night, imagine how many arenas we could fill with a much less cheery crowd here in New York. About half a million workers across the state were stuck on the unemployment rolls as of July, according to a new report by the Fiscal Policy Institute.

Calling the joblessness problem “the other crisis in Albany,” the labor-friendly think tank reported yesterday:

The New York State unemployment rate was 5.2 percent in July, up from a low-point of 4.3 percent in 2006. Higher still is the rate of underemployment (8.1 percent in 2007, the latest data available), which includes people who are so discouraged that they have stopped looking for work, and workers who would like to work full time but can only find a part-time job.

FPI’s analysis also found that New York workers' median hourly wage has been relatively stagnant since 2003, and dipped over the past year. Modest job growth did occur between 2003 and 2007, according to the report, but was “largely driven by debt and an unprecedented housing market bubble.”

Though Long Island is known as one of the state’s bastions of affluence, it ranked high among counties in terms of rising unemployment. From the first half of 2007 to the first half of 2008, average unemployment in Suffolk grew from about 29,900 to 36,700 (a 22.6 percent jump), and in Nassau from roughly 24,900 to 30,200 (21 percent). New York's overall average unemployment grew by around 13 percent; job losses have clustered in the finance, construction and retail sectors.

The trends signal a troubling change, but not a hopeless one, FPI says. The report urges Albany lawmakers to respond by reforming the state's unemployment insurance system (which currently doles out about $300 per week on average), to help families ride out the economic slump while softening the impact of eroding wages.

The Long Island Rail Road is in the midst of a program to replace manual signal switches, like the one this man in the photo is operating. This photo was taken in the train tower on the east side of Jamaica Station. Railroad engineers must actually move the levers to switch a train onto a given track. The LIRR is replacing manual switches with computers.

LIRR Photo

Word that Plum Island was on Aafia Siddiqui's list of alleged possible terror targets got the editorial board talking about the island and its Animal Disease Center this morning. More specifically, we talked about the news that the center will probably be closed if a higher-risk-level facility is built elsewhere.

As the editorial board of a Long Island paper, we could take two approaches to this story. One is a purely parochial one: Preserve the research center, preserve the 220 jobs there, protect our turf. But we have to ask ourselves, is doing this kind of research the best use for this land?

Today's editorial about the chutzpah of the Setauket Fire District, whose commissioners are trying to build a new administrative building even after a similar plan was rejected by voters in March, provides another opportunity to beat the drum about special district election reform.

Here it is August, and the date is as yet unknown for the election of fire district commissioners. We do know that it will be in December, on one of those jam-packed days between Thanksgiving and Christmas, when folks might just have a few other dates on their calendars to keep them busy.

There's a fine line between taking an interest in people's safety and making money from tragedy. This summer, the tally of people drowned off Long Island and city beaches -- along with a high number of pool deaths -- has prompted swim instructors to post on Craigslist and send advertisements by e-mail.

"Don't you think it's time to finally learn how to swim this summer?" asks a Craigslist poster named Jen on the Long Island "childcare" page. This post went up Aug. 4, after a particularly bad weekend during which seven people drowned in the ocean.

One company, Saf-T-Swim, sent helpful information to subscribers about rip tides, which were a concern in Long Beach. One e-mail blast carried the subject line, "Long Island Drownings." The content was all very tasteful, but the subtext was unmistakable: If you don't know how to swim, you should stop by for lessons.

One of the Long Island pool drownings involved a nanny who jumped in to save the 3-year-old in her charge. Should she really have been working in a home with a backyard pool if she couldn't swim?

What do you think? Is it irresponsible, somehow, to never learn to swim? Are parents obliged to see that their children -- and the caregivers watching them -- have the basic skills?

You know, it just shouldn’t be this hard. Long Island should be the best place in the world to build a museum for our favorite Rough Rider, Teddy Roosevelt. But alas, we’re talking about Oyster Bay here, and the museum has been controversial from the start. One of the sticking points: The site picked by the Theodore Roosevelt Association is where local firefighters perform their drills.

While the association, which has already scaled back the museum’s footprint, had said it would preserve the paved strip at Firemen’s Field for the maneuvers, new plans absorb that space, pushing the firefighters out.

To his credit, Supervisor John Venditto has said the new proposal is fine, “very impressive” even, and a good fit with the hamlet — so long as a suitable replacement site for the firefighters can be found. How hard can that be?

Anybody with a paved strip suitable for firematic activities, please come forward...

The government's responsibility to keep kids safe is simple in theory, but, as Long Island communities are now learning, more complicated in practice.

The case of Leatrice Brewer, a New Cassel mother accused of murdering her three children, seems to have possibly driven an influx in activity by child welfare agencies. The first half of the year saw a nearly 30 percent jump in the removals of children from their homes on Long Island. The trend runs counter to statewide statistics, and yet coincides with the political fallout over the Brewer case and evidence of deficiencies in the local child protective services system.

It's hard to tell if the system is racing to catch up with a growing problem or responding impulsively to public pressure. Child abuse tragedies like the Brewer case touch on a continual debate over the ethics of foster care. When should children be taken from their parents, and could it do more harm than good?

Nassau County Comptroller Howard Weitzman who relishes his job of exposing fraud and the waste of taxpayer dollars may have gotten a little too enthusiastic two weeks ago.

At a Hofstra forum entitled "Fraud Knows No Bounds" Weitzman touted a new technique his auditors were using which looked at "outliers," people who were collecting too much sick time or using too many vacation days or using too much gas. And to juice up the story he mentioned a county employee who had allegedly used a government gas card to pump $17,000 worth of gasoline in one year.

Afterwards, Newsday reporter William Murphy followed-up with Weitzman to get more details and the comptroller said situation actually was even worse. Newsday's story reported that the unnamed employee had used 17,000 gallons of gas making the possible fraud at least $51,000.

The little thresher shark who showed up in Zach's Bay last week is actually good news in a way.

To begin with, these animals, which typically have tails as long as their bodies, are not aggressive or interesting in munching on homo sapiens. As the photo that ran in the paper shows, this was a baby thresher, not at all threatening when you look at a lifeguard grasping the shark by its long tail, an image that looked a bit like someone walking a dog on a leash.

What we don't know about the thresher is almost as important as what we do. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service does not list any of the thresher species as either threatened or endangered. At the moment, not enough is really known about the threshers.

The impending arrival of hurricane season is a handy reminder that preparedeness is everybody's business.

As our editorial today about Long Island MacArthur Airport says, failure to think ahead about potential disasters is a more than potentially disastrous attitude. That's why the Town of Islip is smart to work toward expanding fuel-storage capacity at the airport. In an emergency, a lot of rescue workers and materials would fly into MacArthur. But right now, there's not enough fuel stored there to make sure they could fly out again.

The expansion of fuel storage at the airport isn't the only recent sign that officials are at least thinking ahead. Earlier this month, the Federal Emergency Management Agency--yes, the same FEMA that performed so abysmally after Hurricane Katrina--did the right thing for Long Island. It took some nudging from our politicians, but FEMA is finally getting around to returning hurricane emergency supplies to Long Island. The agency brought in emergency supplies two years ago, but took them away after the season ended and didn't return them last year. The idea behind that decision was to create consolidated stockpiles in larger regions. But our officials squawked, and FEMA relented.

July Saturdays have to rank as about the worst time to have a beach closure. Make it the Saturday of the July 4 holiday weekend -- and then make it Jones Beach of all beaches -- and you've got a major summer bummer on your hands. But officials made the right call when they closed the beach Saturday afternoon, after more than 80 unexploded fireworks shells were found on shore. A few more shells were found on Sunday.

As it has for the past seven years, Bay Fireworks of Farmingdale put on the big July 4 spectacular, the night before the shells -- which were labeled with the company name -- washed up. The company president doesn't seem to know how this "anomaly" could have happened. Fair enough, we guess, for now. But Bay Fireworks says it will be bidding next year to renew its contract, and before the Parks Department accepts that bid or any other, it should seek answers and protocols to avoid more July 5 beach closures in the future.

The year of the long knives continues in Brookhaven. At Tuesday's town board meeting, the new Republican majority is expected to fire the planning commissioner, David Woods.

Woods was one of the appointees who came to town government after Brian X. Foley, a Democrat, was elected supervisor and took office at the start of 2006. Now he is about to go the way of the other top Foley-appointed commissioners.

Is he getting canned because the Republicans have a top-of-the-line replacement waiting in the wings? Not so much. In fact, they haven't even started the search process yet. That seems like an odd way to conduct business in a department as crucial as planning.

What's worse, all the continuing partisan back-and-forth is beginning to make Brookhaven a town where a highly qualified professional would have little interest in moving. So the search for a replacement for Woods is likely to be difficult. Meanwhile, the department will be limping along without a permanent commissioner.

The Brookhaven Republicans like to talk these days about "streamlining" government. Whatever else it may mean, the definition of streamlining seems to include replacing someone with no one, and for no apparent reason other than that they can.

Special taxing districts apparently feel so under-siege that they have hired a pair of lobbyists, and set up a Web site, to protect their interests.

The newly formed Special District Association of New York State is being led by Arthur "Jerry" Kremer, president. Kremer is a former member of the Assembly, who chaired its Ways and Means Committee and now works as a registered lobbyist. Rich Bivone, president of the Nassau Council of Chambers of Commerce, is serving as the vice president of the new association.

[Update: Jerry Kremer says he and Rich Bivone are not being paid for their work currently, but they hope to be eventually.]

Here is what their Web site has to say:

Dear Special District Official:

These are challenging times for special districts throughout New York State. Prosecutors, high elected state officials and overly energetic politicians, are jockeying for promotion by singling out the operations of special districts in an attempt to paint them as greedy, mismanaged and out of control.

We'll admit it from the start: This post is as much about the image as it is about the news. No one should be surprised that environmental groups are happy that the Broadwater proposal for a floating liquefied natural gas terminal in Long Island Sound is now dead in the water. No one should even be surprised that they're having a victory party on July 11 in Wading River, not all that far from the site where the terminal would have floated in the middle of the Sound.

What's a bit surprising is the image that went out with the invitation. It's a bit reminiscent of the sinking of the Titanic or the Battle of Midway. Very epic stuff. We thought you'd like to see it, whatever your views on Broadwater.

Image by Julie Clark: Positive Image, for L.I. Pine Barrens Society, courtesy of Citizens Campaign for the Environment

And speaking of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and driving less, it's great news that MacArthur Airport has designated a cell-phone lot, where folks meeting air passengers can park their cars gratis, and wait for a call from their arrivees. The lot is an environmentally friendly and efficient courtesy that plenty other airports around the country are offering, too, preventing the endless circling, waiting for a plane to land and friends or family members to emerge.

If only it were so simple at the other area airports. LaGuardia doesn't have a cell phone lot yet. JFK claims to have one -- I even saw the sign for it at a recent pick-up expedition. But has anyone ever actually found it? I hear it's somewhere near the Belt, but I wasted just as much gas looking for it as I ultimately did driving around in circles, after I finally gave up.

Up until now, the Town of Babylon has been focusing heavily on making sure that new homes get built to use as little energy as possible -- through adapting a green building code, for example, and taking steps to build a demonstration "zero energy" home in Wyandanch.

Now Supervisor Steve Bellone wants the town to get into the business of helping residents of existing homes to make their dwellings more energy-efficient. This $2 million initiative can't get started until the town amends its code to allow the program to use the solid waste management fund for this purpose. Once that's done, Babylon will make low-interest, 12-year loans for energy-saving improvements.

The more our towns work on changing their ordinances to make homes and workplaces greener, the better we'll be able to afford rising energy costs.

Photo: asaphouse.com

The struggle continues over which set of police officers will patrol some major roads in Suffolk County. Now it's in court, where the Suffolk Police Benevolent Association says the county did not honor seniority rules in figuring out which Suffolk highway patrol officers will no longer have that desirable gig. But County Executive Steve Levy can probably finesse that issue easily enough, simply by changing the names of the designated officers.

Then the question becomes: How much more should Levy push the confrontation? The answer is that he should tone done the rhetoric a tad and focus all his energy on negotiating with Gov. David Paterson's office for much fairer compensation from the state for the work both Suffolk and Nassau do in patrolling roads that the State Police should patrol. The state is no longer offering to put state troopers on the roads, but it does appear open to the dollar discussion.

Four lawyers are seeking class-action status to protect the pension credits they earned while working as consultants to schools. But the rules about who qualifies as an employee -- and therefore has a right to a pension -- are pretty simple. Especially if you went to law school.

The law states that individuals are independent contractors if they are free from control and direction in their performance; if the service is performed outside the usual course of the employer's business; and if the individual is engaged in an independently established occupation or business of the same nature as the service.

Decisiveness is not Brookhaven Supervisor Brian X. Foley's strongest character trait. But even for Foley, the decision about making a State Senate race brings glorious new meaning to the word "agonizing." He didn't finally make up his mind until hours before the Democratic county nominating convention.

Speaking of agonizing, that's what life is like for Foley these days as supervisor. He's in a constant cobra-and-mongoose struggle with the new 4-to-3 Republican majority on the Town Board, which takes some of the zest out his job. Besides, everyone knows that he's more of a legislator than an administrator by temperament. So the opportunity to run for the Senate is tempting. He's a known brand name in southern Brookhaven, which Democratic strategists believe could offset the strength there of the incumbent, Sen. Caesar Trunzo (R-Brentwood), especially if this turns out to be a strong Democratic year, as many expect.

On the other side of the argument, there's no indication that two other potential Democratic opponents for Trunzo, Jimmy Dahroug and Legis. Ricardo Montano (D-Central Islip), will gently disappear from the scene without a whimper. So Foley will almost certainly have to win a Democratic primary before facing Trunzo.

And, if he gets as far as the general election, Foley will face a multimillion-dollar onslaught from the Senate Republican leadership and the state Republican Party. Continued control of the Senate is at stake, and the Republicans will go after Foley with everything they have.

Finally, if Foley should win a seat in the Senate, and if Democrats take control there, he'll be greeted as a conquering hero in Albany. But Brookhaven Democrats will have to find someone to run in a special election for supervisor. One strong contender would be Patchogue Mayor Paul Pontieri, who has done an outstanding job of redeveloping his downtown and setting an example for other Long Island communities. But would Pontieri be willing to leave a job where he is really getting something done, in harmony with the village board, to seek one that would put him in frequent conflict with the opposite party--even though he has a good relationship with Councilman Tim Mazzei, the leader of the GOP majority?

When you take a look at all the uncertainties, maybe it isn't so surprising that it took Foley so long to make up his mind.

The creation of a new Sustainable Suburban Neighborhoods Initiative at Hofstra University is a hopeful development for the suburban communities that it will help to green up, such as Roosevelt, to name just one.

It’s also good news for all state legislators who have ever felt the wrath of Larry Levy, our former editorial board colleague, who is now executive director of the National Center for Suburban Studies at Hofstra. This board has always been skeptical of member items, community initiatives, pork, or whatever you want to call the grants that individual legislators give to community groups. It’s not that the groups themselves are unworthy of support, but that there’s no system of real oversight for the grants. And Larry killed a lot of trees over the years criticizing member items, as we all have.

Now Larry Levy is the recipient of a member item, and legislators from Elmont to Montauk can get a hearty laugh out of it.

One of Nassau County Executive Tom Suozzi’s most significant achievements has been the “No Wrong Door” approach to helping human services clients. The idea is to put those services all under one roof, to make them more compassionate for those who receive the services and smarter for those who pay the bills: Nassau taxpayers.

One of the concerns was how much the county’s employees would buy into the new way of doing business. Here’s one recent clue that the workers are accepting the spirit of the enterprise. To help clients whose primary language is not English, the county asked for volunteers to take classes in conversational Spanish.

“Since staff were taking classes on their own time, we weren’t sure we would get a full class of 20,” says Mary Curtis, deputy county executive for health and human services. “The response was overwhelming. Over 200 people responded that they wanted to take the class.” That demand far exceeded the supply, but BOCES was able to offer a second class. The county chose 40 people by lottery to take those first two classes.

From the start, No Wrong Door looked like the right idea. So it’s encouraging to see evidence that it’s moving along well.

The Long Island Eight -- the eight Republican state senators who want to hold their strong voting bloc in the November election -- have chosen several items from the state budget that they will brag about on the campaign trail. STAR property-tax rebate checks for senior citizens will grow. Some $250 million in bricks-and-mortar money is coming to Long Island, much of it headed for higher education at Stony Brook University, Nassau and Suffolk community colleges and a new medical school at Hofstra University.

The Eight also held out for record increases in public school funding. State aid is up 9.8 percent, or $236 million. Of that, $50 million will go to Long Island school districts that the state classifies as "low need." In other words, the districts are well-off.

Is it any surprise, critics ask, that the $50 million is being steered toward places that might be important to the GOP re-election, such as Lawrence, Valley Stream, Rocky Point and Middle Country?

Good thing the Nassau County Legislature, which is always looking for a salary increase, doesn't get paid by the day. They didn't do much of the county's business yesterday, spending much of their session on their very shaky connection between vaccines and autism. What does that have to do with improving the parks, eliminating wasteful spending and making sure that youth programs get funded?