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Meet Bridget Fleming

Bridget was elected to the Suffolk County Legislature for the Second Legislative District in 2015. She serves as Chair of the Ways and Means Committee, co-Chair of the Health Committee, and as a member of the Public Works, EPA and Public Safety Committees. Her primary policy focuses are on protecting and preserving our natural environment (particularly water quality), public health, and responsible economic development.

Bridget was a leader in the working group that drafted the first Sanitary Code Revisions in 30 years that allowed nitrogen removing systems to replace outdated on-site septic systems that leach nitrogen to groundwater and surface water, leading to brown tides, fish kills and diminished shellfish and fin fish harvests. In the County Legislature, Bridget has secured more than $10 million in clean water and infrastructure funding for her district. A leading voice against cuts to public bus service, she successfully advocated for an additional $2 in state transportation support and established the Public Transportation Working Group in response to the elimination of 8 bus routes in October 2016. The broad-based group meets bimonthly to make recommendations for an adequate bus service plan.

Bridget has also focused on securing funding for the planned Tick Surveillance and Management Program, a joint effort by the Departments of Health and Public Works to manage the tick population and reduce the devastating public health threat of tick borne illness, and she secured $100,000 for equipment in the Health Department lab and an additional scientist position. She spearheaded a program for data collection and wetlands management to reduce chemical spraying to control mosquitoes at Accabonac Harbor. She has conducted Narcan trainings to prevent opiate overdose, as well as fraud prevention programs for seniors throughout the district.

Bridget is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Hunter College’s Special Honor Curriculum, and received her J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law, where she received the highly-respected Kramer Award for service to the community. Bridget worked for almost a decade as an Assistant District Attorney in the office of legendary District Attorney Robert Morgenthau in Manhattan, where she served as a member of a Trial Bureau and the Sex Crimes Prosecution Unit, and later as the chief of a unit devoted to attacking fraud in public programs. After leaving the D.A.’s office in 2001, she headed up training for lawyers volunteering to help victims of the 9/11 attacks.

Bridget was first voted into public office when she was elected to the Southampton Town Board in a Special Election in March 2010 and won reelection in 2011 for a four-year term. On the Town Board, Bridget kept good jobs on the East End by authoring a law that requires utility companies to remove dangerous and unsightly utility poles, and sponsored a local law that allows volunteer firefighters and ambulance personnel to join the New York State Health Insurance Plan. She worked to create and enhance economic opportunities throughout the town, like youth training in sustainable building trades and fresh produce retailing, landmark legislation to protect working farms, and real action on much-needed affordable housing development. In 2009, Bridget received Sustainable Long Island’s “Getting it Done Award” for her success in establishing a youth-run farmer’s market in a neighborhood that otherwise had no access to fresh produce.

A resident of Noyac in Southampton since 2001, Bridget lives with her husband Bob, a general contractor, their seventeen-year old son Jai, who attends public school on the East End, and Dune, the family dog.