The Manhattan Institute's Empire Center for Public Policy has obtained complete lists of legislative and gubernatorial pork-barrel spending--also known as "member items"--for each of the past three years. The documents amount to 1,154 pages, listing 22,980 individual grants totaling just over $479 million. Read More
To promote greater public scrutiny of tax-funded expenditures, the Empire Center for Public Policy has assembled a list of pork-barrel "member items" found in the 2007-08 budget bills passed by the Legislature. Read More
Members of the state Senate Majority spent an average of 62 percent more on their legislative offices than Minority party members during the six months ending March 31, while Assembly Majority members spent 33 percent more than Minority members during the same period, according to a new searchable database of legislative expenditure reports posted today at SeeThroughNY.net. Read More
The Empire Center today marked the first anniversary of its government transparency web site, SeeThroughNY.net, with the posting of $148.3 million in legislative pork barrel member items for 2009-10. The online database, which also includes $148.1 million in member items for 2008-09, is searchable by legislator, locality and recipient. Read More
Office expenditures of individual state Senators and Assembly members for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2009 have been posted in a searchable format on the Empire Center’s government transparency web site, SeeThroughNY.net. Read More
Office expenditures of individual state Senators and Assembly members for the six months ending September 30, 2009, the latest period for which data are available, have been posted in a searchable format on the Empire Center’s government transparency website, SeeThroughNY.net. Read More
Senate Majority Leader Pedro Espada (D-Bronx), spent $880,201 on his legislative office operations and staff in the most recent six-month period reported by the Legislature—nearly $273,000 more than former Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno (R-Brunswick) spent during a comparable period in 2008. Read More
New York’s Legislature should avoid adding any tax increases to the proposed 2011-12 state budget, E.J. McMahon of the Empire Center for Public Policy testified today before the Joint Legislative Fiscal Committees. Read More