Pork or not? Member items getting new scrutiny
June 9, 2008
Assemb. Steven Englebright, a Democrat, is giving $410,000 in state taxpayer money to a Setauket art gallery.
Republican State Sen. Kenneth LaValle has promised the town of Brookhaven $100,000 to build a skating rink in Shoreham.
And Democratic Assemb. Phil Ramos has come up with $3,000 for a kids’ program at Lumberjack Lou’s Community Boxing of Bay Shore.
Let New York’s governor warn that tax revenues have “fallen off a cliff” and steep budget deficits lie ahead. Long Island’s lawmakers say that’s all the more reason for them to use the $25 million in discretionary local grants they are awarding this year, commonly known as member items.
Some call it pork
Good-government groups may call them political pork, but back home in the district, they’re a thousand points of light.
“We appreciate our representative Joe Saladino putting it in for us,” said Sal Passaretti, president of the Massapequa AARP Chapter 4727, which has been awarded $1,000 by the Massapequa Republican. It uses it to pay for a monthly newsletter to a couple of hundred members. Without the grant, Passaretti said, “It’d be a struggle.”
Long challenged by reformers as poorly vetted pet projects of sometimes dubious value, New York’s member items have been coming under more scrutiny than ever before. Attorney General Andrew Cuomo last year began requiring grant recipients to file certifications attesting to their organization’s good legal standing, that the money will serve a “public purpose,” and disclosing any conflicts of interest.
He plans to detail the findings of his first year’s review in the coming weeks.
But observers say Cuomo’s review probably can’t address one of the core criticisms of the member-item system: If these grants serve such vital community needs, as lawmakers say, why are they given out on a partisan basis?
That lament went up once again last month when leaders of the Senate and Assembly announced about $148 million in member-item grants. Since Democrats control the Assembly, their members got to give out an average of $541,102, more than four times as much as the $121,875 given out by Republicans, an analysis by the New York Public Interest Research Group found. Republicans in charge of the Senate, meanwhile, allocate themselves an average of $2.3 million, compared to their Democratic brethrens’ $296,252.
“The fact that there are such great disparities literally makes these member items an incumbency protection plan,” said Barbara Bartoletti, legislative director for the state League of Women Voters.
An election-year boon
“They spread them especially in an election year to seniors and the most vulnerable … That’s why we feel that once these programs prove their worth, they need to be lined into the state budget,” she said.
As usual, Long Island’s predominantly Republican Senate delegation enjoys an outsized share of that body’s $86 million spending this year - $19.8 million, almost a quarter of the overall Senate allotment.
Also as usual, this year no Long Island lawmaker will give out as much as Sen. Dean Skelos (R-Rockville Centre), the Senate’s second-ranking member. Skelos has seen his funding for member items rise more than 69 percent this election year, to $3.74 million.
Skelos’ extra-large helping
That extra funding is allowing Skelos to serve up $100,000 to each of 10 public school systems in his district, with smaller grants to another eight. Among youth athletic clubs, he’s the sports authority, handing out $2,500 or more to each of 47 teams, ranging from the Baldwin Bombers youth football league to the Valley Stream Green Hornets.
His biggest grant this year is a $250,000 gift to the Lawrence Public Schools, to help build a wireless campus.
“I think it [member items] is a positive in terms of enhancing quality of life, and it’s more appropriate for the elected official in the district than somebody in Albany who perhaps doesn’t know where Lynbrook is,” Skelos said.
Source: Newsday Read the complete story here
Related Articles
- Charities waiting for $318M
- A Little Extra for Legislators to Hand Out
- New Funds Could Update Ferry Terminals
- New York’s pork barrel not equally shared
- Senate Pork Top 10
Comment on this article
