I really hate to see the Feds get involved but we are at a point where we have no choice. Albany cannot monitor itself and they cannot contain themselves from spending our money as they do. As far as I’m concerned it is close to the time when we need a control board for them.

I agree that Washington needs to clean up their own house but if we have the ear of one of them, at least allow them to have a look.

Feds to take a look at choice cuts in the Albany pork barrel

Information about the Albany pork barrel that a newspaper lawsuit made public - leading to an avalanche of damning editorials - has drawn the attention of federal authorities. We should all let out a hardy “Finally!” Michael Garcia, U.S. attorney for New York’s Southern District, has told his investigators to take a look at the grants of money that Albany legislators and their leaders dole out for pet projects, including, of course, millions of dollars earmarked for the Lower Hudson Valley. “The federal government has a responsibility here,” Garcia told The Associated Press: “When we smell something, we’ll follow it.”

Albany leaders routinely set aside some $200 million annually to spend as they see fit, with $85 million each going to Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, D-Manhattan, and Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, R-Brunswick, for members’ and their own projects. The governor gets to spend a separate $30 million. Handing out money to their respective members has helped Silver keep the Assembly in line since he became speaker in 1994, and ditto for Bruno in the Senate since he took over in 1995. It is a corrosive use of taxpayer money and power.
Look to the top

Garcia’s comments came as state Sen. Efrain Gonzalez Jr., D-Bronx, faced new corruption charges - he pleaded not guilty in August to raiding a not-for-profit’s coffers to pay for baseball tickets, college tuition and other personal expenses - for allegedly conspiring to steal $423,000 in taxpayer money. The new charges last week relate directly to the same Albany pork barrel.

The grants Garcia wants probed, called “member items,” were posted on legislative Web sites as a result of a lawsuit by The Times Union of Albany. Garcia’s interest in the posting was initially reported by The New York Post. “You have this pool of nearly $200 million a year,” Garcia said. “Where there is that type of stream of money, it’s going to create opportunities” for corruption. No . . . kidding.

Forget the members’ grants to the Little League and Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame; Garcia should begin looking at the top, meaning Bruno and Silver. For, example, Bruno not only doles out money to his loyal members, but ostensibly for himself as well. He directed $500,000 to Evident Technologies Inc., a for-profit company in his district that is run by a man who is not only under investigation by the state Lobbying Commission for providing Bruno with free private flights, but is also a backer of a firm bidding to take over the state’s thoroughbred racing franchise. How badly does that smell?
Targets of a different sort

Bruno’s Assembly counterpart, Silver, has spread out about $7 million to local groups in his lower Manhattan district since he’s been in office. This year, Silver secured $1 million for a charity run by a friend whose wife is Silver’s chief of staff. Smell anything?

Silver, you’ll remember, had an earlier dust-up in 2002 over a stay for him and his wife at the Paris Las Vegas Hotel, where they were charged $109 a night for a suite often reserved for high-rollers at $1,500 a night. Caesars Entertainment, which put up the couple, was at the time lobbying for a partnership in a Catskills casino. Caesars wound up paying a $25,000 fine to the Lobbying Commission for violating the law against giving gifts to lawmakers valued at more than $75. Caesars got off cheap; the maximum fine was $125,000.

Since the commission has jurisdiction over lobbyists but not legislators, nothing happened to Silver. He wasn’t a target. Perhaps Garcia will make him, and Bruno, one.