Where’s the pork?
-
- April
- 11
The Empire Center for New York State Policy, a conservative think tank, just released its analysis of pork-barrel spending included in the $120.9 billion budget. There are about 5,800 so-called member items “scattered throughout the four major budget bills,” the group said in its annual “Albany Oink” report.
The group noted that it has been widely reported that the budget includes $170 million in pork, but the projects it found total $101 million. The money is unevenly distributed between the GOP-led Senate and Democrat-controlled Assembly. (The Senate gave out more.) That could indicate that additional grants will be outlined in a supplemental budget bill, the report said.
This is the first budget in six years that includes individual member items, rather than lump-sum appropriations. However, the Senate and Assembly have not released sponsors of the grants, the purpose of them or their justification, the Empire Center said.
Some of the highlights:
—Nearly 40 youth organizations and Little Leagues received $227,506.
—At least 666 grants totaling $6.5 million were awarded to senior-citizen groups. Veterans groups accounted for at least 151 member items totaling $1.5 million.
This entry was posted
on Wednesday, April 11th, 2007 at 12:40 pm by Cara Matthews.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Print This Post
| 
Email This Post
Jay Gallagher has covered Albany for Gannett News Service since 1984 and has been Albany Bureau chief since 1989. He`s a native of the Boston area and likes to point out that in this millennium, the score is Red Sox 1 championship, the Yankees 0. 
Cara Matthews has been a statehouse correspondent in the Albany Bureau since August 2005. Prior to that, she covered Putnam County government and politics at The Journal News for nearly five years. Before that, she worked at newspapers in Connecticut and covered the state Legislature for one of them. 
