The pork-barrel spending better known as legislative member items has reappeared in a budget bill that New York State legislators are expected to vote on this week.
Member items, re-appropriated in the Aid to Localities budget bill now aging on legislators’ desks, are grants which individual legislators steer to their preferred projects. The funding was omitted from Governor Cuomo’s executive budget in January— but as E.J. McMahon wrote here in January, the past four budgets have seen member items make last-minute returns.
And now, it seems, that old pork is back yet again.
In order for any member items to be paid out, the state must first appropriate funds for them. The state’s updated financial plan, released in February, anticipated $87 million in unspent member items would be disbursed in FY2015 — but as McMahon’s post pointed out, Cuomo also has assumed something similar in every proposed budget since 2011, only to allow pork re-appropriations as part of the final budget.
A quick look at the agreed-upon local assistance bill turns up at least 188 entries for the “Community Projects Fund,” the section from which member items have been paid in the past; the original bill proposed by the governor in January had none. As usual, it’s unclear how much actual spending will take place.
Past member items can be examined on SeeThroughNY, the Empire Center’s transparency website.
Below: a page from the Aid to Localities bill showing some of the reappropriated member items.
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