Trump directive could cause severe understaffing for LI school bus drivers cover art

Trump directive could cause severe understaffing for LI school bus drivers

Trump directive could cause severe understaffing for LI school bus drivers

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 Long Island’s school bus industry, already suffering from a driver shortage, will lose hundreds more drivers because of a Trump administration directive preventing immigrants with temporary residency from obtaining, or renewing, commercial driver’s licenses, officials said. Alfonso A. Castillo and Darwin Yanes report in NEWSDAY that the recent announcement by the NYS Department of Motor Vehicles that its commercial driver’s license program for temporary residents is "indefinitely paused, including renewals," could have a cascading impact across Long Island. Bus companies said it will put decades-long bus drivers out of work and, in a worst-case scenario, push school districts to delay bell times so that buses could serve multiple schools with a depleted roster of operators."It’s tough right now. It’s just going to get a little tougher," said Thomas Smith, chief operating officer of Suffolk Transportation Services, the county’s largest school bus provider, which stands to lose about 150 of its 1,600 drivers because of the licensing change. "It’s sad. These are great people doing great work for the community."The DMV’s move came in response to changes made late last year by the federal government barring most immigrants with temporary visas from obtaining commercial driver’s licenses, even while in the United States legally.The change followed a Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration audit saying that New York, and other large cities led by Democrats, were regularly renewing immigrant drivers' commercial licenses even after their temporary statuses expired. Federal officials ordered New York to immediately revoke every license illegally issued to "foreign drivers" and discontinue its immigrant CDL program, or they'd lose federal highway funding.DMV officials said every applicant's legal status is verified and that they followed federal regulations, but have suggested they have no choice but to comply with the federal order.The Trump administration has sought to target so-called "non-domiciled" CDL programs following a series of high-profile truck crashes involving immigrant drivers. President Donald Trump brought up the issue at his recent State of the Union address, calling on Congress to bar "any state from granting commercial licenses to illegal aliens."Leaders of Nassau and Suffolk superintendent organizations said they are closely monitoring the situation but stressed that student safety and transportation are top priorities for districts.***Attorneys for pop star Justin Timberlake secured a temporary restraining order yesterday to block the release of police body camera footage of the actor-musician's 2024 drunken driving arrest, court records show. Robert Brodsky reports in NEWSDAY that the order by Suffolk County Supreme Court Justice Joseph Farneti gives the Village of Sag Harbor until April 9 to submit documentation detailing why it should be permitted to release footage from the former *NSYNC frontman's traffic stop and arrest on June 18, 2024, as part of a Freedom of Information Law request by members of the media.In the interim, the village cannot release the footage without a court order, Farneti said.On Monday Timberlake, citing privacy concerns, filed suit against the Village of Sag Harbor, its police department and police Chief Robert Drake seeking a court order to block the footage's expected release.Release of this footage, according to Timberlake attorney Michael Del Piano, "would cause severe and irreparable harm to petitioner's personal and professional reputation, subject petitioner to public ridicule and harassment, and serve no legitimate public interest in understanding the operations of government. Disclosure of this footage would constitute an unwarranted invasion of petitioner’s personal privacy."Meanwhile, on Tuesday, Jed Painter, general counsel to Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney, weighed in on the dispute, asking Farneti to uphold a 2024 protective order issued in Sag Harbor Village Justice Court that prevented the public release of any footage from Timberlake's arrest.“Our interest is limited to the important institutional and public policy considerations implicated by the potential erosion of judicial protective orders,” Painter said. “We take no position on the privacy interests asserted by the petitioner. Rather, we focus upon the order underlying the criminal case that is presently before the court, and which has never been rescinded.”The eight hours of footage, attorneys said, contain the initial traffic stop, the officer's questioning of Timberlake, field sobriety tests and the pop star's subsequent arrest.On Sept. 13, 2024, Sag Harbor Village Justice Carl Irace sentenced Timberlake to 25 hours of community service for the nonprofit of his choice and ordered him to pay a $500 fine, along with a $260 surcharge. Irace also ordered him to issue a public safety announcement.***Graduating high school students who live in the ...
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