David Yassky for New York City Comptroller

April 6, 2008

Errol Louis of the Daily News calls David a "budget hawk"

By Errol Louis Published: April 6, 2008

It seems there is no limit to how much of the public's money politicians will steal, waste and abuse if we don't keep a close and skeptical eye on them. The piggies have been busy lately, and it's going to cost us plenty.

What we know so far about the budget scandal engulfing the City Council is that the Council has, since 2001, allocated $17 million by giving grants to nonexistent organizations. Quinn's been in charge there since 2006, and her pork pool — the term she uses is "reserve funds" — was then diverted to pet projects favored by the speaker and/or her staff.

Quinn says she banned the shady bookkeeping and alerted federal prosecutors last fall after realizing the staff had ignored her order to stop the practice. That's a step in the right direction — but the possibility of fraud isn't the only scandal.

The deeper problem is the mentality at City Hall that allowed the pork trough to operate unnoticed for years. It stems from the feeling by many pols — at all levels of government — that the public's money is theirs to spend on whatever strikes their fancy: gifts to friends and family members, pork to pay off political allies, even pay raises to stick in their own pockets.

That air of entitlement is enshrined in the city budget, which hides the political gifts bestowed by Council members in an obscure, hard-to-interpret document known as Schedule C, which lists millions in government payments to all sorts of civic, religious, recreational and educational organizations.

Making it even harder for anyone to ferret out shenanigans, the Council created at least 15 fake groups including "American Association of Concerned Veterans," "Immigration Improvement Project of New York," and my personal favorite, "Coalition for Informed Individuals."

Obviously, the membership roster of that fake group was a big, fat zero.

The outrageous swindle worked because the Council so routinely makes even legitimate spending all but impossible to decipher. Schedule C provides no information about exactly what the receiving organizations are going to do with all their taxpayer cash.

Countless senior citizen groups get money "for space and equipment" — good luck trying to find out how much space or equipment your tax dollars are buying, or why. The obvious answer — that pols steer money to their favorite groups to build good will and ensure their re-election — is universally known but rarely discussed openly at City Hall.

And that is how government spending gets out of control. Even senior Council members say they have no idea exactly how much money they or their colleagues have jammed into the budget; Quinn and her staff control who gets what, and opposing the speaker on any matter can result in less for a member.

Councilman David Yassky of Brooklyn, a budget hawk, assigns staff and interns to translate Schedule C into a spreadsheet showing how much money different members have targeted, and where. He's one of a few members — Tony Avella of Queens is another — who understand how serious government waste has become.

To be fair, the Council is neither the worst nor sole culprit when it comes to budget blunders.

In Albany, the bloated central staffs of the Assembly and Senate include hundreds of employees whose titles, pay grade, purpose and performance are a mystery to the taxpayers who support their salaries and pensions. And Albany's disclosure of the discretionary member items controlled by legislators is even more obscure and mysterious than the City Council's.

At the federal level, the Congressional Budget Office recently studied 95 military contractors and found that every one had gone substantially over budget, costing the public a mind-boggling $295 billion.

It goes without saying that in these troubled economic times — foreclosures, job losses and government deficits are all soaring — we cannot afford to see tax money frittered away.

It's too soon to know whether the Council scandal will doom Quinn's chances of becoming mayor next year, but it's not too soon for the public to wake up and demand that all pols, regardless of party or ideology, act less like pigs and more like hawks when it comes to our money.