Newsday (Nassau Edition) from Hempstead, New York • 51

ROBERT JOHNSON Publisher and President ANTHONY INSOLIA Editor and Senior Vice President RVTVAV HTII ffAtorrfBititnAl ANTHONY MARRO Executive Editor and Vice President ROBERT BRANDT Managing Editor HOWARD SCHNEIDER Managing Editor EDITORIALS Is Congress Serious About Welfare Reform? weeks ago Even President Ronald Reagan has been talking about turning the states loose to innovate better welfare programs without of course giving them more money than they get now But it was Sen Daniel Moynihan (D-NY) who really laid out the case against the present system The senator delivered a devastating attack on the program most people are thinking of ported in a world where mothers are poor because they are unsupported by their divorced husbands or because they are he said program that was designed to pay mothers to stay at home with their children cannot succeed when we now observe most mothers going out to plan for replacing AFDC rests on three foundations more financial support Could welfare reform become the great achievement of the 100th Congress as federal tax revision was of the 99th? count on it Rewriting the tax code was simple compared to untangling the wel-fere conundrum But give up completely on reform either So many people are fed up with the present welfare system often for diametrically opposite reasons that Congress might at least make a significant beginning The opening rhetorical salvos were fired when they talk about welfare: Aid to Families from absent fathers more paid work by wel with Dependent Children program that fare mothers and public jobs for those who fail to find private employment Gov Mario Task Force on Poverty and Welfare laid some usefiil groundwork for the ongoing debate in a report last December It too emphasized child support to the point of suggesting withholding money from wages to prevent nonpayment It called for education and training if necessary to make welfare parents employable The debate will undoubtedly go forward at the national conference this week in Washington The conference chairman Arkansas Democrat Bill Clinton predicted last week that it would back system that is first and foremost a jobs program supported by an inhome assistance And he said thia system might cost $2 billion a year more than the present welfare system That sounds more realistic than any suggestion that welfare reform can be done on the cheap If it could the politicians would have done it long ago But Moynihan him put the emphasis where it belongs: on adequate financial support for children who are in no way responsible for their economic condition If the 100th Congress remembers that maybe it will make a difference Building New Sources to Meet Power Needs Electricity generated by the Grumman Corp as a by-product will cost a little more than the current that flows from the Long Island Lighting Co But Long Island should still welcome cogeneration plants like the one Grumman has just announced Cogeneration makes for optimum use of energy and helps postpone construction of large and expensive central power plants A garbage incinerator that produces electricity becomes a cogenerator In case a gas-fired plant will produce steam for heating and manufacturing at the same time generating power for the own operations The surplus will be sold to LILCO for distribution to its customers Grumman has recently been getting its electricity from the State Power Fitzpatrick nuclear plant upstate Generating that power locally will reduce the load on limited connections to the mainland a critical matter If the Shoreham nuclear plant remains closed and power use on Long Island continues to grow as fast as it has in the past few years The capacity of plant will be about 50 megawatts The company expects to need no more than 36 megawatts of that The rest should be available to system depending on down time for maintenance or other reasons Grumman even be risking its own capital since the gas-fired plant will be built and owned by a consortium headed by General Electric Go With the business from Grumman and 6 cents per kilowatt hour from LILCO the consortium evidently figures it can turn a profit on the $50-million project and Grumman expects to save millions Brookhaven National Laboratory which also gets electricity from the State Power Authority has announced plans for another cogeneration project and Nassau County is looking into the feasibility of a cogeneration plant at Mitchel Field Unfortunately there are relatively few opportunities of this kind on Long Island because business and industry are so widely dispersed But cogeneration should be encouraged wherever feasible For the next few years this island is going to need all the power it can get NEWSOAY MONDAY FEBRUARY 23 1987 Affairs of S-T-A-T-E in Oyster Bay and Albany convoys of them smell sweeter by tinkering with nomenclature There is something in a name and why we sympathize with Assemb Lewis Ye-voli (D-Old Bethpage) who is outraged at the use of the acronym The State Tax Department may actually ask the legislature to pass a law forbidding such deceit in a tax bill The legislature really have to deal with this If it was a joke the humor has worn off The town should change the acronym before Albany has to legislate it out of existence Taking the notion that the pen is mightier than the sword one step ftirther Oyster tax bills are now attempting to demonstrate that the acronym is mightier than the word With its only landfill closed the town was forced last year to pay the extra cost of hauling garbage to Pennsylvania The added charge was dubbed the Sanitation Transfer And Transport Expense tax For an of its gracelesssness and bulk that terminology was purposeftiL It permitted the tax bills to describe a wholly local levy as the S-T-A-T-E Reftise Disposal District tax Through the Tnngir- of the acronym Oyster Republican town board was able to transmogrify a local tax into a levy that seems to have been imposed by a Democratic state administration Gertrude Stein once said rose is a rose is a and Will Shakespeare wrote that it would smeH as sweet by any other name Garbage trucks certainly roses but they do smell and the Oyster Bay town board has given the lie to Shakespeare by demonstrating that possible to make.