Employees at the Holtsville branch of the Internal Revenue Service said staff reductions were ongoing yesterday, as the Trump administration moves to downsize the federal government and terminate 6,000 IRS employees nationwide.Department of Homeland Security officers were dispatched to the only IRS office in Suffolk and patrolled the hallways while IRS employees awaited their official termination via email at their desks, according to an account from one employee to Newsday.Another employee described a scene of chaos, confusion and heartbreak Thursday as scores of employees were laid off and escorted out of the building.Employees, many of them in tears, spent the day walking around and saying goodbye to each other as they absorbed the news.Jennafer Martens, 25, of Centereach said IRS managers confiscated their government badges, computers and other equipment, estimating about 160 employees in her section alone were laid off at the Holtsville IRS branch.Officials with the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance, the agency that handles tax revenue collection for the state, said its operations were not impacted by the layoffs.The agency, which has one main office in Hauppauge, said the processing of state tax returns won't be affected by the federal job cuts.Aaron Fallon, spokesperson for the NYS Labor Department, told NEWSDAY yesterday their Rapid Response Team was "working to identify impacted employees to offer job search assistance.""Federal agencies are not required to file WARN notices with the NYSDOL," Fallon said, referring to the state’s Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, which requires employers with 50 full-time employees or more to file a notice 90 days in advance with the state in the event of a mass layoff or closing.***Riverhead Town is appealing a state Supreme Court ruling that found the town overcharged Suffolk County for sewage treatment at county facilities in Riverside from 2018 to 2021. Tara Smith reports in NEWSDAY that Suffolk County sued Riverhead in 2021, alleging the town sought to “penalize” the county by charging more for sewer services at the county complex that includes the jail, county center and courts. In a ruling last month, state Supreme Court Justice Maureen Liccione sided with the county, writing Riverhead’s sewer rates were “arbitrary and capricious” and had “no rational basis” according to the law.The ruling, which prohibits the town from collecting the fees for the four-year period for now, could put nearly $2 million at stake for Riverhead. In court documents, Riverhead claims the county owes $2.8 million in sewer fees while the county has argued the actual cost of providing the services was $1.1 million.Riverhead Town Attorney Erik Howard said in an email the town was “disappointed” in the decision.“The trial court’s decision did not focus on the unreasonable, unfair and substantial impact imposed upon our sewer district and ratepayers ... to reserve a certain amount of flow for the comparatively massive County Center and Jail property,” Howard wrote.Agreements between Riverhead Town and Suffolk County for wastewater treatment at the county center complex date back to 1969, and the last long term contract expired at the end of 2017. The county had been paying Riverhead an average of $345,966 per year for the services from 2006 to 2017, according to court documents.But when officials failed to iron out a new agreement, and that contract lapsed, Riverhead began setting the annual fees by town board resolution, according to court papers. The town effectively doubled the annual fee, which ranged from $684,171 to $756,343 between 2018 and 2021. “Surely such a dramatic increase would need to be justified,” Justice Liccione wrote in her decision.Riverhead has continued setting sewer rates for the “out of...

Trump administration downsizing lays off hundreds of Long Islanders