CAPITOL Legislators take home millions in pork funding BY MICHAEL GORMLEY The Associated Press
Lawmakers are showering $147 million in pork-barrel spending on 10,000 programs, agencies and charities back home this election year. The grants that lawmakers prefer to call member items or Community Project Funds are doled out based on the political clout of a lawmaker. The result is taxpayers statewide pay to support gun clubs and abortion-rights groups as well as clubs and charities — whose funding never gets a public vote — in addition to the health and social service programs that depend on the annual funds. For example, members of the Assembly’s Democratic majority get more grant money to disperse than the Republicans and the more veteran Assembly members get more than less senior Democrats. The same advantage is true for more veteran Republicans in the Senate’s GOP majority. The projects were posted Friday on the Internet at www.assembly. state.ny.us and http://www.senate.state. ny.us Democratic Gov. David Paterson also has $30 million in pork spending. Paterson hasn’t yet decided where his discretionary spending will go, said budget spokesman Jeffrey Gordon. Paterson’s grants also will be made public. The traditional pork-barrel spending was spared from the reductions that faced most other areas of the state budget adopted last month. The $121.6 billion budget filled a $5.2 billion deficit. A newspaper’s lawsuit and calls for reform by voters and goodgovernment groups forced public disclosure of the data on the grants — including which lawmaker requested the spending. Good-government groups have long criticized the practice as a way for incumbents to buy votes, contributing to a better than 90 percent re-election rate despite the public’s low regard for the Legislature as a whole. Political leaders in the conference may also direct more pork to lawmakers facing tough re-election contests. “The most glaring unfairness of the whole system is that it’s doled out based on political considerations, not by population or something that’s fair,” said Blair Horner of the New York Public Interest Research Group. “The second thing is to just dump it like this isn’t fair to the public at all,” he said. He said the data could be provided in a database that the public could immediately search and sort. “They are just trying to make it harder for people to know what they are doing,” Horner said. Lawmakers consider the grants a way to fund critical programs, often in health and education, by those who know best where the money is needed. “Individual legislators have a real awareness of the needs of their communities," Silver said. “It is important that funds flow to programs like meals on wheels and services for domestic violence victims.” The Legislature’s grants include cash for American Legion halls, such as $25,000 for an American Legion Post in Glens Falls provided through Senate Republican leader Joseph Bruno. Bruno, of Rensselaer County, directed more than 140 grants worth nearly $5 million to his district and around the state. They include $95,000 to build a town pool in East Greenbush, $50,000 for the Rensselaer County Jail and $75,000 for the Epilepsy Foundation of Northeastern New York based in Albany. He also sent $50,000 to the Hendrick Hudson Fish & Game Club in Wynantskill and $30,000 to the Mechanicville Fire Department. Silver spent more than $10 million on his own — not including the money he directed with other members of his conference. Silver directed $705,000 to the United Jewish Council of the East side and $368,000 to various schools.
Like little fairies they go around 'buying' votes and then sprinking their fairy dust all over.....so like magic papa government smurf gets the credit.....and more of our money without actual value except for our time worked.....and the state continues to hire and hire and hire......it's a giant fat dude with alot of hot air........
...you are a product of your environment, your environment is a product of your priorities, your priorities are a product of you......
The replacement of morality and conscience with law produces a deadly paradox.
STOP BEING GOOD DEMOCRATS---STOP BEING GOOD REPUBLICANS--START BEING GOOD AMERICANS
Carl Strock THE VIEW FROM HERE How do they decide on the pork servings?
The funny thing about so-called pork-barrel spending by our state legislators is not so much what the money is spent on as how they decide to spend on one thing rather than another. I’m sure we can all agree that $12,000 for an “ornamental clock for streetscape improvement” in the Bay Ridge area of Brooklyn is a worthy investment of our tax money, to take just one example from the current list of pork projects, but how did an ornamental clock get chosen over other streetscape enhancements, like maybe a birdbath, and how did Bay Ridge get chosen over other neighborhoods? We’ll never know, because our legislators do not hold hearings on these matters, and they do not debate them in public. We find out about them only when they are a fait accompli, if I may be allowed a foreign expression, and come to think of it, I may not. I detect in the Legislature a certain misgiving about things foreign, or at least that’s how I interpret the $3,000 allocation to Staten Island for “services for victims of crimes committed by illegal aliens.” Imagine such an allocation. “I just got bonked over the head.” “Sorry, the guy has a student visa. You don’t qualify.” Or, “Sorry, the guy’s a citizen.” Isn’t that a curious designation for public money? What else do I find on the pork list? Well, there’s $5,000 to provide refreshments and awards at the 10th annual poetry festival for seniors in Staten Island. Also with a cultural theme, there’s $8,000 “to provide musical instruments and lesson books for youth” at the Lewis Music School in Hempstead, Long Island, and $5,000 for a chamber music seminar and photography program for high school students in Lake Placid. Further on the senior citizen front, there’s $5,000 for “dance therapy” for the seniors of Long Beach and another $35,000 “to encourage socialization” at the Ridgewood Older Adult Center, in Queens, both of which I applaud. I think for old people to rub shoulders and kick up their heels can only be a benefi t to the state, as long as they don’t try to do both at the same time and throw themselves out of joint — though if that happens I suppose they could always repair to a poetry festival and recite couplets to each other. On the athletic front, there’s $5,000 to purchase equipment for the Lindenhurst Wrestling Club, and another $5,000 toward new turf for the Auburn football fi eld. Combining athletics with concern for veterans, there is $2,500 allocated to the Adaptive Sports Foundation, in Brooklyn, for “snow skiing experience for military service members recently returned from the global war on terrorism with permanently disabling injuries,” which may be my favorite, just for sheer creativity. I imagine permanently disabled soldiers coming out of Iraq or Afghanistan, skiing in Brooklyn, and I reflect if it weren’t for our state legislators, such a thing wouldn’t be possible. By way of museums we have $10,000 for a proposed Washington County Farm Museum and $10,000 to support continued accessibility to the American Maple Museum, in Croghan, near Watertown. And then for utter vagueness we have the impressive sum of $300,000 to the Hispanic Federation of New York “to support and strengthen the viability of various not-for-proft member agencies throughout New York City and New York State with training, proposed development and service delivery.” It all adds up to $147 million, and all I wonder is how the winners get chosen. Carl Strock can be reached at 395-3085 or by e-mail at carlstrock@dailygazette.com.
In my opinion, following politics for 50 years in Albany and working as an election inspector for the past eight years, I see fewer people showing up at the polls to vote each year. The reason is because of distaste for politicians and lobbyists. I’m asking Gov. Paterson to declare all pork to the Assembly and Senate null and void for five years — until New York gets out of debt. The governor wants to cut programs that are vital to the people who need them. Let the politicians get their (blood) money for pork from the rich merchants and lobbyists who are supporting them. There is nothing in the state constitution related to pork. AL GOLDBERG Albany
CAPITAL REGION Senators bring home bacon for area projects BY LEE COLEMAN Gazette Reporter
The state Senate this week approved $218 million in statewide “job creation investments,” including millions of dollars for private and public projects in the Capital Region. These state budget allocations, commonly referred to as pork-barrel spending, target projects in a lawmaker’s home district. For example, the Saratoga Springs City Center on Broadway is getting $6 million to help with its long-planned $16 million renovation and expansion that is expected to start late this year or early in 2009. At Skidmore College, the state is providing $4 million toward the about $40 million Arthur Zankel Music Center, which is under construction near t h e p r i v a t e Broadway encollege’s North trance, according to Scott Rief, a spokesman for state Senate Majority Leader Joseph L. Bruno, RBrunswick. Rief said the $218 million in New York State Economic Development Assistance Program allocations were approved by the Senate on Tuesday. The spending is part of the state’s 2008-09 capital budget. The state Assembly approved its own package of economic incentive grants earlier this spring. “What’s wrong with this is the public has no way to evaluate what the benefits are,” Elizabeth Lynam of the Citizens Budget Commission told The Associated Press on Wednesday. The commission is described as an independent fiscal watchdog on government spending. “They tend to be for narrow constituent bands, yet they are being funded from taxpayer-paid coffers,” Lynam said in the AP story. Mark Baker, executive director of the Saratoga Springs City Center, said Wednesday that the state money for the city center improvements is well justified. “This area has proven its viability,” Baker said about Saratoga Springs and its ability to attract conventions year-round. The 23,000-square-foot expansion and renovation of the City Center, which was built more than 20 years ago, is needed to keep already booked conventions coming to the city and to book new conventions that require more space, Baker said. Bruno said in a statement that the state money for 97 economic development and job creation projects across the state “continues our successful partnership among the private sector, higher education and state government to help create new jobs and help retain the highlyskilled work force necessary to sustain future economic growth.” Other projects in the region receiving state money from the Senate’s economic development assistance program include: $500,000 for the Albany College of Pharmacy. $500,000 for Albany International Airport Authority’s Honda Jet project. $1 million for Albany Medical Center Hospital. $2 million for infrastructure improvements to routes 4 and 151 in the town of East Greenbush. $1 million to Schenectady’s Ellis Hospital for its consolidation improvements. $3 million for General Electric’s Digital X-Ray Equipment Manufacturing facility in Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s Tech Park in North Greenbush. $6 million for Hudson Valley Community College’s Tec-Smart training and education center for semiconductor manufacturing. $500,000 for the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. $1 million for Saint Mary’s Hospital in Amsterdam for consolidation construction. $1.7 million for the Saratoga Technology and Energy Park in Malta for a silicon carbide semiconductor manufacturing facility. $1.5 million for St. Peter’s Hospital in Albany. $1 million for Washington County’s department of planning and community development for the Battenkill Railroad project. The largest single allocation from the state economic development money is $12.5 million for the Hofstra University medical school building, according to a information from the state Senate Republican majority office.
Main Entry: surplus value Function: noun Date: 1887 : the difference in Marxist theory between the value of work done or of commodities produced by labor and the usually subsistence wages paid by the employer
...you are a product of your environment, your environment is a product of your priorities, your priorities are a product of you......
The replacement of morality and conscience with law produces a deadly paradox.
STOP BEING GOOD DEMOCRATS---STOP BEING GOOD REPUBLICANS--START BEING GOOD AMERICANS
I’m astonished at the amount of “charity” that is spread around by our New York politicians in the form of pork-barrel spending. It appears that the politicians also give scholarships to those who want to learn how to seek grants! My, my, all in the name of buying votes to stay in offi ce. Well, since we taxpayers can’t fight it, we should join it and many of us should seek grants from the same sources to pay down state debt. It might work if enough taxpayers participated since, aside from a few remarks by Gov. Paterson and Assemblyman Tedisco, politicians on their own don’t seem to have any interest in the fiscal state of New York’s economy. They do, however, pay attention to special-interest groups. Maybe we just might be looked upon as one of those groups, if we taxpayers were in the thick of things. What do you say, fed-up taxpayers? Are we going to do anything? If anyone has another idea, please advise. The more we take matters into our own hands, the more control we will have over our taxes. Voting for those who promise to end pork-barrel spending would also be a good place to start. I request that my assemblyman and my senator send me an application for a grant — thank you. CHRISTINE DEMARIA Schenectady
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