Gimme Shelter

To many New Yorkers, Governor Hugh Carey looked a little undemocratic last week. Philip J. D'Arrigo, a Westchester County dentist, paid $48,000 last year for an acre of land adjacent to Carey's summer home on Shelter Island at the end of Long Island. Said D'Arrigo, 47: "I hope to hang up my drill in 15 years, live out there and go fishing." But when the dentist began constructing his 2 1/2-story dream house 165 ft. away from Carey's, the state police certified that it posed a security hazard to the Governor. D'Arrigo refused a state offer of $107,000 for the plot, but he offered to lease the land to the state until Carey left office. New York officials turned down that proposal and moved to confiscate D'Arrigo's property under the power of eminent domain.

D'Arrigo fought back loudly and struck a nerve. Carey humbly said, "I regret if my position as Governor has been a burden to my neighbors"--and ordered the state to leave D'Arrigo's property alone. Back in Manhattan, Carey presumably lifted his spirits by planning to move himself--and two state police guards --into a new $500,000 duplex apartment on Park Avenue, more spacious than his current digs in a midtown hotel.

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