Amateur Hour

Starting to settle in to the world of land use on Long Island, I stumbled across a story from the hamlet of Fort Salonga, the more affluent section of the school district in which I spent my formative years. Nestled along the northern coast of the island, about halfway out (meaning halfway from "the City," and halfway from "the Hamptons"), the Town of Smithtown Board of Appeals recently denied the Angel's Gate animal hospice an existing-use variance to continue its operation in a private home. Prior to this decision, the Town had rezoned the home, along with the area around the subject residence, in an attempt to push Angel's Gate out of business. The hospice, owned by Susan Marino and Vic LaBruna, are not taking the news like a scared kitty. Designed to offer terminally-ill animals the ability to live out their lives to term, as opposed to suffering the fate of euthanasia, Angel's Gate has garnered an unlikely advocate in its corner. LeBoeuf, Lamb, Greene & MacRae, the gigantic international law firm, has come to the rescue. Filing a lawsuit in March, LeBoeuf has taken up Angel's Gate's cause, as a pro bono case, performing the legal work all on its own dime.

Let's start with this: I would never question the value of LeBoeuf's mission, an honorable task to preserve a seemingly noble enterprise. But honestly, how the heck did this happen? According to Newsday, Long Island's newspaper (which obviously understood the noteworthy quality of the story by printing essentially the same article two days in a row), LeBoeuf undertakes animal rights causes as part of its pro bono platform. Sure, animal rights is an important cause in several circles, but is this the best use of LeBoeuf's ample resources? As one of the most powerful collections of legal minds in the world, where's the support for political types seeking asylum, or wrongly accused inmates sitting on death row? Instead, they throw their very expensive attorneys into a relatively straightforward land use case? According to LeBoeuf's website, they count three of their 700-plus attorneys as working in the arena of land use, and neither of the three appear to devote all of their time in this area. I'm certainly not looking to get LeBoeuf on my bad side, but isn't it a little disingenuous to take on "noble" causes in realms where they barely devote their "real" time? Is land use typically not "quality" enough work to require a department larger than three people? Or is it that in the eyes of LeBoeuf, land use is considered on par with ambulance chasing?

Maybe it's that LeBoeuf has come to realize that land use encompasses the "big issues" of America. Just as Kelo highlighted the point almost two years ago, to ignore land use is to ignore what's going on around you. If it takes an animal hospice to show the LeBoeufs of the world that land use ponders the fundamental legal questions impacting people on a daily basis, well so be it. Sure, they prefer to be involved on the big deals happening in the world of real estate. Such Long Island mega projects as the entertainment and hotel concept in Calverton, out on the east end, appear to be more the speed of the big law firms. But maybe this matter of an animal hospice will open the eyes to more people out there that land use boards around the country shape the way we live day after day after day. If the first thing you hear in the morning is a brood of sick felines wailing on the other side of the fence, it becomes quite important who is in control of determining how to make it stop. Likewise, if your livelihood is to conduct a home business, and a board is threatening your way of life, land use plays a large role in your day-to-day existence. Bringing more novices into the fold of this strange world only furthers the process of demystifying the land use arena, and ultimately strengthens the quality of the decision making for the people impacted.