| Sheldon Silver is the Assembly's King of Pork. According to the New York Post he's doled out $7.5 million bucks this year.
From the Post with typically Post-esque headline:
SHELLY OINKS STRAIGHT TO THE TOP WITH $7.5M IN PORK
State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver gave out almost $7.5 million in pork-barrel cash this year, records show.
That makes the Manhattan Democrat tops in the Legislature, which doled out a total of $170 million in the so-called "member item" grants at the discretion of individual legislators without public debate or vote. The system favors majority parties. Silver alone gets more than is provided to all 27 Democrats combined in the Senate, where the GOP holds an eight-seat majority, records show.
"If there has to be a member-item system, it should be done on the basis of fairness," said Blair Horner of the New York Public Interest Research Group. "These are taxpayer dollars."
Silver's grants included:
* $14,000 to the Council for a Cleaner Chinatown and $35,000 for the Chinatown YMCA.
* Grants totaling $543,000 to the United Jewish Council of the East Side.
* $200,000 to the Metropolitan New York Coordinating Council on Jewish Poverty.
* $265,000 for the Center for Battered Women's Legal Services. "A lot of things we use the fund for are items that we haven't been able to get done through the budget," a Silver spokeswoman said. |
