FEDS TO HUNT MUCK IN ALBANY PIG TROUGH
By KATI CORNELL, NY POST
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December 12, 2006 -- The feds are vowing to look into state lawmakers' practice of doling out cash for pork-barrel projects from a $200 million slush fund, U.S. Attorney Michael Garcia told The Post yesterday.

"The federal government has a responsibility here," Garcia told The Post's editorial board. "When we smell something, we'll follow it."

The closer scrutiny - with an eye toward possible prosecutions, Garcia said - comes on the heels of a lawsuit by media organizations that forced Senate and Assembly leaders to disclose detailed data about so-called "member item" grants.

The grants are part of the routine pork-barrel annual spending - a process that takes place largely behind closed doors and with little oversight.

The Legislature has recently appropriated $200 million in member items annually, with $85 million going to the Assembly, $85 million to the Senate and $30 million to Gov. Pataki.

"You have this pool of nearly $200 million a year. Where there is that type of stream of money, it's going to create opportunities [for corruption]," Garcia said.

Garcia, a Manhattan U.S. Attorney for approximately 11/2 years, has vowed to make combating public corruption a top priority.

Garcia declined to comment on which individual lawmakers are potential targets, but said investigators are sifting through the newly available data.

"You have got to look in your back yard. We start looking close to home and I think that's the correct way to do things," Garcia said, adding that following the money trail gives his office a long reach.

"New York is a banking center, the center for all types of businesses, so with jurisdiction we're not limited," he said.

In launching a probe, prosecutors are faced with the task of sorting out criminal activity from legal, if ethically questionable, grants.

"Until I know differently, I assume the vast majority of public servants are looking to serve the public," Garcia said. "I'm sure there are a lot of great projects on that list."

Review of member-item expenditures show Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver doled out almost $7.5 million in pork-barrel cash this year alone.

Records show Silver directed six grants totaling $1 million to a charity and its affiliates headed by the husband of Silver's chief of staff, Judy Rapfogel.

Silver has also sent grants to at least two groups represented by a lobbyist who used to be a top aide.

Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno directed $500,000 in state funding to a private company linked to a businessman who is under investigation for providing him with free air travel.

Garcia stopped short of calling corruption in Albany an endemic problem, but said, "We've seen some problems. It certainly raises issues that you want to work harder."

The prosecutor cited the recent arrest of Queens Assemblyman Brian McLaughlin, who was charged with racketeering in October for allegedly lining his pockets with more than $2 million in illegal cash.

In August, the feds nabbed Bronx state Sen. Efrain Gonzalez Jr. for allegedly using a charity he founded as his personal piggy bank.

kati.cornell@nypost.com

December 8, 2006
10 Republicans Dominate Senate’s Pet Projects, With Bruno’s $6.4 Million Topping List
By DANNY HAKIM
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ALBANY, Dec. 7 — The Senate majority leader, Joseph L. Bruno, and nine other Republican senators have spent nearly a third of the roughly $150 million the Republican-controlled State Senate has set aside for pet projects in the last two years, according to records released Thursday.

That leaves many of the other 62 senators scrapping for leftovers in the pork barrel, highlighting the inequity in how such funds are distributed around the state and particularly to districts represented by Democrats. But civic groups have criticized both parties because the Democrats, who control the State Assembly, have dominated spending on local initiatives in that chamber.

Every year, lawmakers set aside about $200 million in a pot of money known as the Community Projects Fund-007 — $30 million for the governor and about $85 million each for the Assembly and Senate. The legislative leaders allocate that money to thousands of pet projects ranging from Little Leagues to civic associations to veterans groups at the request of lawmakers. More senior, loyal or politically endangered members receive larger allocations.

The projects, known as member items, were only selectively disclosed until a court challenge by The Times Union of Albany forced the Legislature to begin releasing detailed records in recent weeks. Governor-elect Eliot Spitzer has promised to require that each of the member items be described in the budget, as was once standard practice.

In the Senate, Mr. Bruno, as expected, led the pork pack, accounting for $5.7 million last year alone and $6.4 million over the last two years. Mr. Bruno and other senators, however, still have millions of dollars left to spend in the current fiscal year, which ends March 31, 2007.

Mr. Bruno spread taxpayer dollars to all corners of his Albany-area district. He gave $250,000 to the Center for Economic Growth, a regional economic development organization on whose board Mr. Bruno sits. He gave $190,000 to Troy for a mechanical street sweeper and $5,000 to a local Elks Lodge to pay for a defibrillator and the training to use it.

He provided $100,000 to the New York State Theater Institute, which already receives more annual state operating aid than any other theater in New York State — and whose office is named for Mr. Bruno. He sent financing to 10 Little League or baseball clubs, as well as seven softball, Pop Warner football and hockey teams, including $50,000 to provide lighting for several ball fields in Saratoga County. A post for Italian American war veterans received $32,000 for work on their kitchen.

He also contributed to well over a dozen firefighting squads, to charities that feed the poor, to legal aid societies and to groups that provide support for people with serious diseases, including multiple sclerosis.

Behind Mr. Bruno on the list of top Senate spenders was his friend and ally, Senator Owen H. Johnson of Long Island, who spent $6 million in member item dollars over the last two years, and whose largest single project was $219,000 to fix up an American Legion post in his district.

Senator Dean G. Skelos, another powerful Long Island Republican whom many see as Mr. Bruno’s heir apparent, spent $5.1 million, the third most of any senator.

Over all, the Senate has spent roughly $150 million over the last two years on such projects, leaving it with about $20 million more to spend in the current fiscal year.

“It’s an awful, awful system,” said Blair Horner, legislative director of the New York Public Interest Research Group. “The process shouldn’t be based on seniority and political power, it should be based on population size and need.”

The revelations come as the state faces a multibillion-dollar deficit and taxes that many groups say are among the highest in the nation. Cash member items are also only one of several ways lawmakers funnel money to pet projects.

John McArdle, a spokesman for the Senate Republicans, said both houses received equal amounts of money. “Members of the majority do have a greater say than those of the minority in terms of the directions of those monies,” he said. “But all 212 legislators play a significant role in the $115 billion that goes out the door every year.” He also said that the member item pool represented a small fraction of the overall budget.

One of Mr. Bruno’s member items made public in recent weeks has come under scrutiny. He has steered $500,000 to Evident Technologies, a company whose former co-chairman, Jared Abbruzzese, is being investigated by the State Lobbying Commission for providing private flights to Mr. Bruno at no cost. Mr. Abbruzzese has also been a donor to Senate Republican Committee and is one of the backers of Empire Racing, which is bidding to take over the state’s thoroughbred racing franchise, a decision Mr. Bruno will be instrumental in making.

Mr. Bruno’s use of member item money to help Evident Technologies was reported by The Associated Press on Wednesday.

Mr. McArdle said the Senate was encouraged to make the Evident investment by a top official at a nanotechnology center run by the State University of New York, “as part of the effort to attract high tech, emerging companies.”

Last week, Mr. Bruno joked about revelations that Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, a Democrat, was spending more than $7 million a year on member items. Mr. Silver’s money, however, was sometimes directed to statewide programs instead of to his district, in what Mr. Silver’s aides described as an attempt to offset budget cuts by Gov. George E. Pataki.

Mr. Bruno did provide some support for programs outside his district, but to a lesser extent.

“Yeah, I was surprised as heck, wow, Shelly, $7 million up there in his district,” Mr. Bruno said last week. “Do you realize how I’ve been shorted around here?”

Amanda Cox contributed reporting.

December 3, 2006
Dose of Reality in Details of Spending on Pet Projects
By DANNY HAKIM and MARGOT WILLIAMS
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ALBANY, Dec. 2 — State taxpayer dollars are at work building a yurt in Suffolk County and a cage for mountain lions in Watertown and allowing lawmakers to shower money on groups affiliated with their campaign contributors. Over the past two weeks, the New York State Legislature grudgingly made public the details of its pork-barrel spending projects known as member items, a hodgepodge of causes worthy and sometimes weird.

The disclosures, prompted by a court order, provide the most comprehensive picture yet of the previously secretive world of these grants. They reveal millions of dollars spent by the Democratic-led Assembly to offset cuts to the state’s budget made by Gov. George E. Pataki, and the Republican-controlled Senate’s more singular focus on financing pet projects in their districts.

Though they are only one source of funds for such projects available to the governor and the Legislature, they show how the legislative leaders exert control over their members through the power of the purse — and how inequitably money is divvied among those members.

The $200 million worth of member items — $85 million each for the Assembly and the Senate, and $30 million for the governor — comes from something called Community Projects-007, essentially a large blank check that the Legislature and governor set aside during negotiations over the rapidly expanding budget.

“It’s a perfect reflection of the level of fiscal discipline in Albany,” said E. J. McMahon, executive director of the Empire Center for New York State Policy, an arm of the Manhattan Institute. “The Legislature as a whole is not careful about how they spend taxpayer money.”

The Assembly has already spent about $52 million of its $85 million allotment. So far, roughly $1.2 million of that has gone to Republicans, who will hold only 42 of the 150 Assembly seats by January. That disparity has partially been offset by Mr. Pataki, who this year gave $6 million to Assembly Republicans — still leaving the Democrats in the Assembly with about seven times as much money, or about three times more per member.

The Assembly’s biggest fish, by far, is Speaker Sheldon Silver, who sponsored projects worth $7.2 million. That is more than 100 times as much as many of his Democratic members distributed. Much of the money went to organizations affiliated with the Jewish and Chinese communities, two important groups in his Lower East Side district.

“We’re all elected officials,” said Assemblyman James N. Tedisco, the leader of the 42 Assembly Republicans. “There should be equality. That member item money should go equally to every single district.”

That said, Mr. Tedisco, like Mr. Silver, is taking a large slice of his conference’s pot for himself —roughly $900,000 in member items, more than many Democratic Assembly members get and certainly more than other Republican Assembly members.

Eileen Larrabee, a spokeswoman for Mr. Silver, said that two-thirds of the spending by Assembly Democrats has been used for statewide initiatives that often counter budget cuts pushed by the Republicans. That includes nearly $5 million to restore Medicaid cuts. The Assembly minority, she said, referring to Mr. Pataki’s contribution, “has access to executive funds that members of the majority as a rule do not.”

“In addition,” she said, “we provide funding in many cases on a statewide or citywide basis, initiatives that benefit districts and areas throughout the state, whether it be for higher education, social services or health care.”

Some of the more unusual projects include the $10,000 secured by Assemblyman Darrel J. Aubertine, a northern New York Democrat, for a mountain lion’s cage at a state zoo.

Assemblyman Steve Englebright, a Suffolk County Democrat, gave $2,000 to build a yurt for a global village project at an extension of Cornell University. A yurt, a round, sturdier version of a tent, is used in Central Asia. More common are grants for Little Leagues, firehouses and a range of advocacy groups.

Precise figures for the Senate were not available because it has not released all of its member item data yet, though disparities among parties and members are widely known to exist there as well.

Both chambers released lists of thousands of projects, a move prompted by a successful legal challenge brought by The Times Union of Albany. But the data initially was released on cumbersome computer files that were encrypted and unsearchable.

Last week, the Assembly re-released its data for the last four years in a searchable form. On Friday, John McArdle, a spokesman for the Senate Republicans, said the Senate would soon do the same.

So far, Senate Majority Leader Joseph L. Bruno has disclosed less than $800,000 in member items this year — a fraction of his funding in previous years and small potatoes for a king of legislative pork, whose name is attached to a minor league baseball stadium, whose plaque hangs in a local Y.M.C.A. and whose bust is featured at Albany International Airport.

Asked about his member items, the senator quickly and jokingly deflected attention to his Democratic counterpart, Mr. Silver.

“Yeah, I was surprised as heck, wow, Shelly, $7 million up there in his district; do you realize how I’ve been shorted around here?” he said, as a group of fellow Republican senators appearing with him began to laugh.

Delving into specific projects can offer insight into how the process sometimes works.

Take Senator Martin J. Golden, a Brooklyn Republican, who has secured $140,000 in recent years for HeartShare Human Services of New York, a Brooklyn nonprofit group that provides services for people with developmental disabilities. Top executives of HeartShare are donors to Mr. Golden’s campaign, a fact highlighted last week by the Albany Project, a pork-tracking Web site.

Those executives are also well compensated. HeartShare’s president and chief executive, William R. Guarinello, who makes more than $400,000 a year in total compensation, according to recent tax filings, has contributed, along with his wife, $16,000 to Mr. Golden’s campaign in the past. His brother Joseph, who has also been a contributor to Senator Golden, is a vice president who makes more than $130,000 a year in total compensation.

“HeartShare Human Services is very reputable and the largest provider of social services in the Senator’s district, and we will continue to support them,” said John Quaglione, a spokesman for Mr. Golden.

Tricia Fleming, a spokeswoman for HeartShare, said the compensation of her organization’s president, Mr. Guarinello, was “reviewed annually by our board and countless external auditors.”

Mr. Silver and other Assembly Democrats have provided nearly $1 million this year to the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty and its affiliated organizations, a group whose chief executive, William Rapfogel, is the husband of Mr. Silver’s chief of staff, Judy Rapfogel, a connection highlighted by The Times Union last week.

“There was funding going to this organization before Willy Rapfogel became executive director and Shelly became speaker,” said Charles Carrier, a spokesman for Mr. Silver. “A lot of Assembly members besides Shelly support our assistance to them.”

Senator Michael F. Nozzolio, an upstate Republican, secured $100,000 for Kionix, a company based in the Utica area that is developing devices that detect avian flu. All three top executives have contributed to Mr. Nozzolio’s campaign, according to state records.

Mr. Nozzolio said the company was also funded by the Pataki administration and had been weighing whether to locate a new division in his district or in Asia. Campaign contributions were “not relevant,” he said.

“The jobs are going to be in New York,” he said, “as opposed to Hong Kong or Korea.”

The picture so far remains a partial one, since there are many other avenues for pork besides member items. For instance, the state has also borrowed $1.7 billion since 1997 for pork projects, according to a recent study by the Center for Governmental Research, a nonprofit policy organization.

Assembly Democrats met this week in Manhattan, and members said they were not surprised that Mr. Silver got much more money — but to see the dollars actually tallied up did open some eyes.

“Seeing the actual numbers puts a spotlight on how vast the difference is, but there’s always been knowledge of it,” said one Democratic assemblyman, speaking on condition of anonymity because he did not want to cross Mr. Silver.

The gap between what majority and minority members receive is no small matter in the political calculus of Albany.

Member item grants are among the most tangible things legislators deliver home, and lawmakers not surprisingly make the most of them in press releases and news conferences. So the ability of the majorities to starve minority members is one reason there has been no change in control of the Assembly or Senate in decades, many analysts agree.

“It’s clearly not a fair process,” said Rachel Leon, executive director of Common Cause New York, a civic group. “It’s one of the reasons we have such an entrenched system in Albany, because the leaders use the member items to keep the members behaving.”

Matthew Ericson contributed reporting.

November 22, 2006, 1:34 pm
Holiday Menu: Pork
By Danny Hakim

Want to find out how Albany legislators spend their pork? Good luck. The State Senate finally released its full list of pork-barrell projects from two and three years ago. But the list is so long for the most recent year available — more than 3,200 pages — that the computer in the Empire Zone’s Albany branch can barely open it. There is also no index, and each page is scanned so that the list is not searchable.

If you hadn’t guessed, legislators probably don’t want you to read about how it spends roughly $200 million annually on various pork projects, which is probably why they dropped it on reporters on the afternoon before Thanksgiving. And as recalcitrant as the Republican-controlled Senate has been, Assembly Democrats have disclosed even less.
Both chambers were sued by The Albany Times Union, which is demanding full and prompt disclosure of each of the projects, which are known as member items.
A State Supreme Court judge ruled in the paper’s favor last month. The legislature is now mulling an appeal. Most of what the Senate is releasing today has been revealed in the past by Freedom of Information Act requests, including taxpayer-financed cheese museums and private hunting clubs.
The Lion's Share

April 9, 2006
Looking Under the Budget Flaps
Finally, the secrets lodged in New York's massive, $100 billion state budgets are being dragged into the daylight.

Two organizations, using the state's Freedom of Information Law, have managed to get the details on how as much as $1 billion a year has been spent on pet projects approved by Albany's top leaders: Gov. George Pataki; Joseph Bruno, the Senate majority leader; and Sheldon Silver, the Assembly speaker.

Most of these 'member items' are not spelled out anywhere in the budget; instead, they appear as lump sums to be divided later in secret by the three leaders. To discover the identity of these items is to understand why lawmakers have tried so hard to keep their piggy bank so secret.

Here are some of the howlers, as described last week by Michael Cooper of The Times. A private hunting club in Mr. Bruno's district got a $50,000 allocation to repair the roof. A baseball field in the Long Island district represented by Senator Dean Skelos, the Republican deputy majority leader, received $250,000 for renovations. There is money for Elks lodges, automobile associations and businesses like Steuben Foods Inc. in Jamaica, which has been allocated $750,000 to expand its Buffalo plant. An airport in western New York run by an organization called the Christian Airmen got $300,000.

Some recipients can obviously use the money: museums, centers for the elderly, community groups. But satisfying real needs is not the object here. The object is to please lawmakers who do the leaders' bidding and who like to cut ribbons to show that they have achieved something in Albany.

You hear all kinds of excuses for why nobody needs to know immediately what this $200 million pot or that $80 million pot consists of. Democrats say that if they reveal where their money is going -- all to good causes, they insist -- then Mr. Pataki will veto these items, just as he did in 1998, leaving only the Republican items intact.

And to be fair, after years of criticism about the secrecy surrounding these money pools, a few items were actually identified this year -- $20 million for a cellulose refinery, for example, and $150 million to be divided between the Mets and the Yankees. But this only prompted more questions. 'Do our constituents get shares in those companies?' Senator Liz Krueger of Manhattan asked during the Senate debate. 'Do we get shares in any patents?'

Ms. Krueger, the Senate Democrats and civic groups are campaigning to unseal those parts of the new state budget that remain secret. It's a worthy campaign.

The two organizations that have posted the allocations on the Web are the Center for Governmental Research, a nonprofit group in Rochester, at www.cgr.org, and the Empire Center for New York State Policy, a research organization for the conservative Manhattan Institute. The budget data is available at www.empirecenter.org. This raw data should have been made public long ago.

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