It’s election year again so expect to see your legislator handing out checks, you know those huge 5 foot long checks with their signature on it. The signature should be NY Taxpayers, not theirs.
The corruption factor starts at the very top with the leader of each house holding these funds over the heads of our representatives, if you vote the way I tell you to vote you can get some of this cash for your district. Vote against me and you get none and then good luck getting re-elected. Vote against me and you will get no money for your campaign either.
This needs to be abolished not reformed and the only way I see it happening is to break down the power structure in Albany. And that will only happen if and when our legislator has the guts to vote them out and vote to change the system. How can anyone fix the problems when the benefit from it at our expense? they can’t and won’t, we have to get rid of the entrenched incumbent and replace them with new blood.
New York’s Slush Addiction – New York Times
Politicians in New York City and Albany really enjoy giving away the public’s money and making it seem like their own largess. As the latest news out of the New York City Council attests, these grants are, at best, a political trick intended to buy voter loyalty. At worst, they have led to outright theft.
It is time to end these slush funds in the State Capitol and in City Hall. Instead, all projects should be financed through the regular budgeting process. That is the only way to ensure more transparency and that the public’s and not the politicians’ interests are served.
The amount of money tucked away for — completely legal — political favors in New York is astounding. The latest state budget includes $200 million in so-called member items to be parceled out by Gov. David Paterson, State Senate Leader Joseph Bruno and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver. There is another $350 million for capital projects, money that is also spread around the state by these three men. It is a corrupt system designed to do one thing: keep these politicians in their jobs.
The city’s pool of walking-around money is another $50 million. Sometimes that money goes to good causes. But it is far too easy and tempting for politicians to use the cash for political gain. Who dares work against that member awarding your group $5,000?
The system is also far too vulnerable to abuse. Aides to one Brooklyn lawmaker, Kendall Stewart, are accused of embezzling at least $145,000 of this money, and investigators are looking into almost $1 million steered to a Bronx group by Councilman Larry Seabrook. The group appears to do very little and has not even managed to file all its tax returns.
Hiram Monserrate, a councilman from Queens, has directed $400,000 to a group called Libre that even its manager calls a “mess.” Its problems were not caused by stealing, the manager told The Times, but because administrators “didn’t know what to do with paper.”
Instead of junking the whole system, some officials are working to reform the process. Attorney General Andrew Cuomo now requires anyone receiving regular member items to sign a form swearing that the money will be used for a public purpose. His office has an excellent Web site — sunlightny.com — tracking most of the state grants. In New York City, the council speaker, Christine Quinn, has been pushing for more transparency and review for city accounts.
We fear that New York’s slush addiction has gotten far past the point of such reforms. It is time to do away with all these discretionary pools of taxpayer money. The temptations and the abuses are too great.
