Just like here in Erie County, we can no longer afford pork until our financial house is in order. Same goes for Albany, the wonderful gift giving of our tax dollars must be stopped. It is being used to buy votes and support from businesses, groups and individuals, it’s tainted money and must come to a screeching halt.

Democrat & Chronicle: Essays
Citizens must get handle on pork lawmakers dish out

Much has been made lately of the secrecy and inequities behind those wonderful projects that your state lawmakers help to finance though pork-barrel spending known as “member items.”

Let’s hope all the publicity leads to the best thing we can do — get rid of them. Despite the fact they often fund worthy projects, they contribute far more to the continuing dysfunction of our state than they do to our well-being.

There are three major reasons to say goodbye to member items:

# There are better ways to budget for worthy projects.

# Member items serve only to reinforce the control of the legislative leaders over legislators.

# Member items distract legislators from doing what they ought to be doing.

As an example of how funds should be allocated, look at transportation programs. They, too, get distorted by “earmarks,” but that’s not how they were originally designed.

First of all, a decision is made on how much total money to devote to transportation. This amount then is divided into specific need areas —– bridges, major highways, local highways and mass transit, for example. Funds for each of these areas are then allocated to projects based on each project’s ranking on a priority scale. The legislator’s decision is restricted to policy: How important is transportation vs. parks, for example. The decision on transportation projects is left to professionals with citizen input.

The point is to keep the legislator focused on the overall welfare of the state while the details are dealt with by others in a far better position to deal with them. This process could and should be used for all of the projects funded by member items. Let them all compete with funding going to the most worthy.

Funding projects this way dilutes the legislative leaders’ power to control who gets how much for member items. It also eliminates the gross inequity of minority party members coming up with crumbs while majority members resemble Santa Claus.

Loyalty-based funding is also an open invitation to abuse as we recently saw when state Sen. Efrain Gonzalez Jr., D-Bronx, was charged with funneling more than $400,000 in member item money to his own personal use. Any process done in secret with little or no oversight is nothing more than a temptation to engage in this kind of mischief. This is one reason your legislator pays far more attention to the leadership than to you, the citizen.

Lastly, if your legislator’s time is not taken up with the minutiae of picking and choosing from among the member items, he or she might have the time to attend to the serious problems of the state. New York state has lost some $40 million in federal aid because the Legislature couldn’t decide on buying new voting machines by the deadline. We continue to waste additional millions on Medicaid because the Legislature fails to address its defects. Money has been wasted on appeals because the Legislature fails to abide by a court order to resolve the school funding issue — and more minds are wasted because their educational needs go unmet.

All of this is just one more reason why state government reform along the lines of NYU’s Brennan Center for Justice recommendations is still critical. Without a thorough change in the way we conduct public business, we will continue to wind up in the same dysfunctional place.

Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno has suggested doing away with member items. Gov.-elect Eliot Spitzer has said he won’t approve any member items that are not included transparently in the state budget. Two out of “three men in the room” (missing only Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver) ain’t bad. We can help. Make reform happen by letting your voice be heard.

Jaschik, of Brighton, is an executive committee member of Citizens for Better Government in New York.