King or rather dictator Silver doles out over 7 million to his friends and here is just a few of them. I would love to follow all the money, problem is there is so much money it would be hard to follow.

Talk about buying votes with our money. This should be illegal but who will stop him, he is king, he is dictator of Albany and is apparantly accountable to no one.

Silver sends $1M to charity, affiliates run by aide’s husband - Newsday.com
ALBANY, N.Y. — Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver directed $1 million in public money to a charity _ and its affiliates _ whose chief executive is an old friend and the husband of Silver’s chief of staff, according to records and interviews.

The grants are part of the legal and routine pork-barrel spending that annually totals $170 million between the Assembly and Senate and is based on closed-door decisions by lawmakers. Much of the money _ more than 60 percent of the Assembly’s share _ goes to established social service nonprofit firms to carry out programs that aren’t covered in the state budget.

But even when the money goes to a good cause, where it flows is often based on political power, not need.

Good-government critics have long criticized the spending as using public money to reward allies and curry favor among voters by funding local civic projects and causes. Silver and his counterpart in the Republican-led Senate, Joseph Bruno, control millions in so-called member items, while some rank-and-filers get only a few thousand dollars for their communities.

The records released last week show that six grants, most under Silver’s name alone and all directed by the Assembly majority, went to the Metropolitan New York Coordinating Council on Jewish Poverty. The six grants requested by Silver included $200,000 for health and social services to the elderly, $125,000 to expand the food pantry, and $155,000 for programs for needy children _ all regardless of the faith of the recipient.

Silver also directed grants to charities with the same business address and project director as the Jewish Poverty charity. Silver sent $115,000 to Machson Mobile for clothing and food for the poor, $91,000 to the Shorefront Council Housing Development Finance Corp., and $160,000 to the Council Management Corp. for social services. Council Management Corp. and Shorefront have the same project director, Herb Friedman, as the council, records showed. Silver sent another $42,000 to the Task Force for Families and Children at Risk, with the same address as the poverty council.

The Jewish poverty council’s federal income tax filing shows Friedman is its chief financial officer, and was paid $150,000 in 2004.

Council and Assembly officials acknowledged the total is about $1 million. In all, Silver doled out $7.5 million in member items this year.