Greenpoint

Here’s how Joe Lentol helps get movies made in NYC

Assemblymember Wants to Do the Same for Music

August 13, 2015 By Paula Katinas Brooklyn Daily Eagle
Joseph Lentol is now one of the more senior members of the New York State Assembly. He was first elected to his North Brooklyn seat in 1972. Photo courtesy of Assemblymember Lentol’s Office
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If Assemblymember Joseph Lentol was a baseball player, then you would have to say that he hit a home run in his first at-bat in the major leagues. When he originally arrived in the Assembly, he shook off any freshman fears he might have had and managed to get the first bill he ever sponsored passed. This is a rare occurrence in Albany.

The year was 1973. Lentol, a Democrat representing Williamsburg, had won election to his assembly seat in November of 1972 by the skin of his teeth, beating Republican Vincent Abate by a mere 400 votes. “It was one of the closest general elections ever held in Brooklyn,” Lentol told the Brooklyn Eagle. Abate “was a popular guy,” Lentol recalled.

Adding to the pressure, Lentol was a Democrat in a legislative chamber in which Republicans held the majority of seats.

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But Lentol smartly knew how to work across the aisle with a senior Republican colleague and got his bill passed.

Republican Assemblymember Dominick DiCarlo, who represented Dyker Heights and Bensonhurst, was the powerful chairman of the Assembly Codes Committee and helped push through Lentol’s bill to change the penal code. “Dom liked that I wasn’t a Liberal,” Lentol said.

Lentol, who had worked as an assistant district attorney in Brooklyn before running for the assembly, noticed a deficiency in the state’s criminal code when it came to robberies. “It left out rifles and shotguns. That was considered a second degree robbery,” he said. In other words, if a suspect committed a robbery with a handgun, it was considered a first degree offense. But if the crime was committed with a rifle or a shotgun, the charge was second degree robbery.

Lentol drafted a bill to add rifles and shotguns to the list of weapons considered first degree robbery offenses and showed it to DiCarlo. “Dom loved the bill and he let it out of committee,” Lentol said. The freshman lawmaker got his first ever bill passed.

Lentol recently sat down with the Brooklyn Eagle over lunch at the world famous Peter Lugar Steak House and talked over a medium rare steak about his life as a legislator.

More than four decades have passed since that legislative rookie home run, and he is still getting important legislation passed.

One of the bills he is most proud of involves movie and film production.

Lentol’s legislation gives tax credits to move and television companies filming in New York state. “That was my baby,” he said.

Tax credits are important, he said, because they bring thousands of jobs to the state, jobs that would be lost if film crews had to go elsewhere to make movies and television shows.

Making movies doesn’t just involve movie stars. There are hundreds of crew members working on the sets, costumes and the lighting. The tax credit also pumps millions of dollars into the state, he said.

Lentol visited Steiner Studios in Brooklyn after the tax credit bill was signed into law. One woman who was a member of a production crew for a television show told him the new law enabled her to make a living here in New York. Before, she had to travel around from city to city to get work on production crews. “All I wanted was to be home with my family,” she told Lentol, before giving him a big hug.

Lentol wants to do the same for the music industry.

He worked on legislation that would have provided a tax credit for music production companies.

His bill, the Empire State Music Production Tax Credit, was put in late last year.

Lentol worked with a coalition called NY is Music on the legislation.

In this year’s state budget, a narrower program, not what Lentol had introduced earlier, was put in under the state’s Excelsior Program, a job creation program.

People in the music industry with whom Lentol had worked to craft his legislation contacted his office and expressed concern that bill wouldn’t work under the Excelsior program. The music industry is not like the tech industry where people are employed year round. By contrast, music industry work on short-term projects. Additionally, the program Lentol envisioned included tax credit for a multitude of costs associated with music production such as studio rental fees.

Lentol and his staff got to work amending his original bill to clarify some aspects of the Excelsior Program.

The music tax credit bill passed the Assembly, but not the Senate.

Lentol said he will keep pushing.

Lentol is now one of the more senior members of an Assembly in which Democrats are in the majority. He has sponsored and passed numerous pieces of legislation over the years and currently serves as the leader of the Assembly’s Brooklyn delegation.

But a little bit of the freshman minority member remains in him, he admitted.

Serving those two years in the minority (1972-1974) taught him to be more understanding of minority members, he said. “I believe in treating everyone with respect,” he said.

Members come to him like he’s a father confessor and ask him for advice, he said.

Lentol sees his role as leader of Brooklyn delegation as one who is trying “to keep a focus on what is important for Brooklyn.”

He comes from a family of elected officials and public servants. Both his grandfather and his father served in the New York state Legislature. His father, Edward S. Lentol, who had served in the legislature from 1949 to 1972, later went on to become a New York State Supreme Court justice. The family is Italian. His ancestors came from Saviano, a town north of Naples.

Lentol was born and raised in North Brooklyn. When he was five years old, his dad took him from the family home on South Second Street in Williamsburg to a rally where he got to shake hands with President Harry Truman.

Lentol also developed a love of music early on. He is a baritone who even today will sometimes surprise his colleagues by singing at a function.

Edward Lentol once held the Assembly seat his son ran for in 1972 and encouraged his son to go into politics.

But it almost didn’t happen.

Joseph Lentol, who was known throughout Williamsburg as “Ed’s kid,” wasn’t sure politics was for him. He knew he would have big shoes to fill. “My father was one of the greatest orators in the history of Albany,” he said with pride. Sadly, his dad died of kidney disease at age 71.

Lentol went to the University of Baltimore and went to graduate school at the University of Dayton in Ohio, studying law.

He got a job as an assistant district attorney (ADA) in Brooklyn. He liked being an ADA. He worked in the investigations bureau and got to see “every possible case you could imagine,” he said. One of the cases he investigated involved a torso being found on a Brooklyn street in early 1970. He interviewed witnesses.

Lentol was an ADA for only two years.

When the Assembly seat opened up, Lentol had to be convinced to run for it. After a close race, he won, and after getting his first bill passed, he was on his way.

In the next election in 1974, Lentol beat Abate by 7,000 votes. Lentol served only one term in the minority. In 1974, Democrats won the majority of seats in the Assembly “and we haven’t looked back since,” he said.

Lentol’s district, the 50th Assembly District, cuts a wide swath through North Brooklyn, taking in Williamsburg, Greenpoint and parts of Fort Greene.

Williamsburg has grown in recent years to become one of the trendiest communities in the entire country. It’s a neighborhood filled with bookstores, coffee bars, performance spaces and art galleries. “Who would have expected it?” Lentol said.

Williamsburg’s renaissance began when artists moved into the loft buildings that had work space. And then trend following yuppies came because the artists lived there.  “The artists come and the yuppies follow,” he said.

History buffs, take note. There are still pockets of the old Williamsburg around. “The south side of Williamsburg is still like the old days,” Lentol said.

Under Lentol’s tenure, the Brooklyn Navy Yard, which is in his district, is booming. “It was a hell hole years ago. No one wanted to do business there. Mayor Koch started an effort to revitalize the Navy Yard,” he said.

The Navy Yard was falling apart in the 1980s. “But Koch appointed good people. Brinks was an anchor tenant and then others came in,” he said.

Subsequent mayors also realized the importance of revitalizing the Navy Yard, according to Lentol. Rudy Giuliani supported it, Michael Bloomberg, too. “It got progressively better. And I have to give credit to Bloomberg. He gave it a lot of money,” he said.


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