The more things change…
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- June
- 8
The Senate today is going to pass a resolution determining how $85 million in discretionary money – known as member-item spending or pork barrel – is to be spent.
As in past years, members of the majority party are to get most of it – about $77 million, with the minority getting the crumbs, amounting to about $8 million.
The difference this year, though, is that the majority party is now the Democrats, and the minority is the Republicans. And the Democrats promised things would be different when they took over after last fall’s elections.
“Is this a giant leap forward? No,’’ said Austin Shafran, a spokesman for Senate Majrity Leader Malcolm Smith, D-Queens, who pointed towards a new system to make it easier to track who’s getting the money as progress. He said the system will be fairer in future years.
“How do you defend the indefensible? You can’t,’’ said Blair Horner of the New York Public Interest Research Group, a watchdog agency. “This is still the spoils system. To the victor go the spoils.’‘
This entry was posted
on Monday, June 8th, 2009 at 1:40 pm by Jay Gallagher.
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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. 
