Albany, NY - So That's Where Our Tax Dollars Went!
Albany, NY - State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver gave out almost $7.5 million in pork-barrel cash this year, records show.
That makes the Manhattan Democrat tops in the Legislature, which doled out a total of $170 million in the so-called "member item" grants at the discretion of individual legislators without public debate or vote.
Silver's grants included:
* $14,000 to the Council for a Cleaner Chinatown and $35,000 for the Chinatown YMCA.
* Grants totaling $543,000 to the United Jewish Council of the East Side.
* $200,000 to the Metropolitan New York Coordinating Council on Jewish Poverty.
* $265,000 for the Center for Battered Women's Legal Services.
"A lot of things we use the fund for are items that we haven't been able to get done through the budget," a Silver spokeswoman said.
posted by VOS IZ NEIAS @ 11/29/2006 02:22:00 PM
4 Comments:
At 3:33 PM,
Anonymous said…
a slimy chilul hashem.
My CH meter is ringing off the hook.
Raised our taxes, auto insurance rates, surcharges and other fees. Why?
so this orthodox jew could take and serve PORK. Big PORK man.
Get the hell out of office, Shelly.
We need honest politicians, not you.
WIth all the PORK you deal in, good thing you are not in the hashgacha business!
At 3:58 PM,
Anonymous said…
Reluctant Revelations by State Legislature
ALBANY, Nov. 28 — After more than a quarter of a century, the Jackson Heights Community Development Corporation, a Queens-based social services organization, is going out of business.
Nonetheless, thanks to the work of Assemblyman Ivan C. Lafayette, the State Legislature is still giving the group $40,000 of taxpayer funds this year to help retire its debts.
“I can’t tell you with all honestly that that’s a great use of state money or not, but I think they’re trying to let a group that’s done a lot of good things go out with dignity,” said Malcolm Press, the president of the group’s board.
The grant was just one of thousands of pet projects costing $170 million this year that the State Legislature began reluctantly making public this week under order from a state judge. Budget watchdog groups have long derided such local initiatives — called member items — as pork barrel spending that is secretly added to the budget without public debate or adequate vetting.
“It’s like personal philanthropy with other people’s money,” said Edmund J. McMahon, executive director of the Empire Center for New York State Policy, an affiliate of the Manhattan Institute, a nonprofit conservative policy group. “If this was so wonderful, why aren’t they doing it out in the open?”
Some of the larger projects in the budget for the current fiscal year include $219,000 to repair an American Legion post in Lindenhurst, secured by Senator Owen H. Johnson of Babylon, a Republican, and $945,000 from Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, a Democrat of Manhattan, for Ohel Children’s Home and Family Services and its sister organizations, a group of Jewish charities.
Senator Charles J. Fuschillo Jr., a Long Island Republican, gave $100,000 to a Nassau County firefighting museum for a diorama explaining household fire safety.
Mr. Silver, the Assembly’s most powerful member, gave out about $7.2 million of the more than $50 million detailed in a list released by the Assembly this week. Many of his grants went to Jewish and Chinese organizations that are crucial political constituencies in his Lower East Side district.
Eileen Larrabee, a spokeswoman for Mr. Silver, said that most of the Assembly’s funds were used to offset budget cuts made by Gov. George E. Pataki. She said that the $40,000 for the Jackson Heights Community Development Corporation would be reviewed by state agencies.
Senator John J. Marchi, a Staten Island Republican who is retiring this year after a half-century in the Senate, obtained at least $625,000 for the College of Staten Island on his way out the door. His efforts have not gone unnoticed; the college is dedicating a hall in his on Wednesday and plans to hold a conference “exploring his political legacy.”
Much of the spending the Senate disclosed today went to retiring members, including Mr. Marchi.
Senator David A. Paterson, the outgoing leader of the Senate Democrats and the lieutenant governor-elect, secured at least $350,000 in the latest round of disclosures from the Senate, including $150,000 for the renovation of a dialysis center at North General Hospital in Harlem.
The legislative disclosures by the majority party in each chamber have come only under duress, following a lawsuit filed by the Hearst Corporation, the publisher of The Times Union of Albany. And despite a court order to make details of the spending public, both houses of the Legislature released the information in formats difficult to analyze by computer.
In the afternoon of the day before Thanksgiving, the State Senate posted lists of member items from two and three years ago on a Web site, but many reporters could not open the files. On Monday at 5 p.m., the Assembly made public its most recent four years of member items, but in computer files that were configured so they could not be searched using conventional computer software.
And on Tuesday at 4:30 p.m., the State Senate released a partial list of member item spending for the current fiscal year, again in a format that could not be searched. The list did not include a single item from the Senate majority leader, Joseph L. Bruno, who controls the chamber’s purse strings and is widely thought to dole out more member items than any other senator.
Mark Hansen, a spokesman for the Senate Republicans, said he expected that the Senate would disclose more information in one or two weeks, though it was not clear when there would be full disclosure of the items allocated by Mr. Bruno.
Still, there were enough facts for a partial picture of how taxpayer money is spent on such projects.
An analysis of the Assembly’s items shows that the lawmakers plowed millions into an array of youth sports leagues, ethnic charities and veterans groups.
The largest single grant was nearly $5 million to restore cuts to Medicaid programs. Millions of dollars were also given to groups that provide legal aid to the poor. More than $1 million was used to offset cuts in programs for needy families.
The Assembly also gave more than $137,000 to Little League baseball groups and other youth sports, with a Little League in Cornwall, N.Y., getting the biggest individual contribution, $10,000, secured by Assemblywoman Nancy Calhoun, a Republican who represents parts of Orange and Rockland Counties.
One thing the filings have made clear is that the Senate is clearly the place for Little League teams to lobby; Senator Thomas P. Morahan, an Orange County Republican, obtained $21,500 for a team in West Nyack.
Reading over what has been released so far makes clear one of the most immutable rules of politics: “To the leadership go the spoils,” as Blair Horner, legislative director of the New York Public Interest Research Group, put it. Not that he thought that was the way it should be. “Members items should be based on population,” he said, “not clout.”
At 5:23 PM,
Anonymous said…
WAY TO GO SHELLY
WAY TO GO
At 11:24 AM,
Anonymous said…
To 3:33 you obviously are blind or have no brains at all. Did you looka at the article and see who the Speaker gives money too. Are you so jealous about the fact that he is a big player in politics. come on, what about this article gives a moron like you the right to speak Loshon Hara about another Jew, about someone who has done so much for the Jewish Community in New York state.
There is a reason that Hashem puts some people in power and that's to help out his children Klal Yisroel, that's what the Speaker is doing, any yid that has a problem with that really needs to reevaluate his motives.
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