NY Assembly Avoids Trump State Park Name Issue

HUDSON VALLEY, NY — The New York State Senate wanted to find out if it's legal to change the name of Donald J. Trump State Park in Westchester and Putnam counties, but the state Assembly didn't take up the matter before its session ended Thursday.

In 2006, Trump donated 436 acres of land to the state after he was unable to build a golf course there. The donation of the land, which the former president had bought for $2 million and valued at $100 million for tax write-off purposes, was announced at a fancy catered event described in The Journal News.

The land in Yorktown and Putnam Valley never became a park, but it got named as if it had, with signs along the Taconic and at entrances.

About five years ago, Democratic lawmakers began fulminating about the situation. In 2017, Assemblymember Nily Rozic of Queens proposed renaming the Yorktown part of the park after Heather D. Heyer, the woman killed by a driver during the Charlottesville white supremacy protest.

While some politicians exchanged barbs over it, one assemblywoman — Sandra Galef (D, Ossining) — suggested simply removing the signs on the Taconic, since the park doesn't really exist.

All along, Trump has said that he opposes renaming the property. At one point he threatened to sue to get the land back because the state wasn't using it as a park (he hadn't given any money for its upkeep and it was a victim of budget cuts during the Great Recession) but that went nowhere.

However, while the contract he signed giving away the land is unconditional, his lawyer wrote a letter which the state acknowledged, stipulating that the name be prominently displayed, the Gannett Albany Bureau reported.

In the session just ended, state senators passed legislation asking the state Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation to research the legality of a name change.

Co-sponsor Sen. Pete Harckham told Patch his major concern with the park, most of which is in his district, was to secure funding that adequately creates and maintains the proposed trail system and makes it a real amenity for the community. "The name of the park has become a flash point and divides the community. I favor a process to come up with a new name that is a unifying influence."

Another co-sponsor was state Sen. Elijah Reichlin-Melnick (D, Rockland/Ossining) who told Patch, "Donald Trump was the worst president in American history. He promoted bigotry, exploded the national debt, weakened our position in the world, and his mismanagement of the COVID pandemic cost tens of thousands of lives. Most seriously of all, he led an unprecedented attempt to overturn an election and continues to attack the foundations of our democratic system. He is the only President to be impeached twice, and but for the cowardice of Senate Republicans would have been the first President to be removed from office. Removing his name from a New York State Park is the absolute least we can do to begin addressing his poisonous legacy."

Rozic co-sponsored the bill on the Assembly side, to no avail.

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