Reform is the buzz word hovering over the New York state legislature. Playing a vital role in any kind of reform movement will be how the state deals with member items – funds distributed by state senators and members of the Assembly for local projects in their districts. Through this series, the Norwood News will examine how member items are distributed by local lawmakers, how these funds assist local organizations, and what happens when they are distributed improperly.

In this first installment, we explain the recent history of member items and discuss how the system may or may not be changing in Albany.

Part 1: Show us the Money
Disclosure of Pork Gains Momentum 

For the first time in eight years, the New York state legislature – by all accounts one of the most dysfunctional lawmaking bodies in the country – has made public how it spends $200 million dollars in funds distributed by lawmakers for local projects, otherwise known as pork-barrel projects or member items.

Lawmakers use member items to fund vital local projects and programs such as little leagues, senior services, graffiti removal, cultural parades, even dances at your local community center.

But those member items have also infamously funded obscure ventures like fixing the roof of a hunting club near Albany and building a cheese museum in upstate Rome. In other instances, member items have snaked their way back into the pockets of the very representative who gave them out.

Since 1998, that $200 million was distributed by lawmakers without oversight from the public, media or any kind of budget review process, making it a system ripe for abuse. Where hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars was spent remained Albany’s little secret.

But in late October, a judge ordered both houses of the state legislature to disclose its member items immediately, following a lawsuit filed by the Albany Times-Union.

The decision, coupled with an outcry over corruption scandals involving member items (including the indictment of Bronx State Senator Efrain Gonzalez) and the arrival of a new Democratic governor, appears to have spurred a reform movement in Albany. How far the reforms will go remains to be seen.

The Darkest Corner
Up until 1998, member items were listed in the state budget, but without individual lawmakers’ names attached to them. Though the public and media didn’t know who sponsored the allocations, at least they knew where the money was going.

That changed for the worse in 1998 when Republican Gov. George Pataki vetoed all of Democratic Assembly Majority Leader Sheldon Silver’s member items. Furious, Silver eventually pounded out a back room deal with Pataki and Republican Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno.

According to the terms outlined in the deal, which was put into practice without debate in the legislature, a $200 million lump sum would be placed into the budget for member items. Each majority leader would receive $85 million and the governor would get $30 million to divvy up as they desired. The member items would not be listed to protect them from the governor’s veto and, at the same time, public scrutiny.

In a larger sense, $200 million is peanuts when you consider that the state budget runs into the tens of billions. But over the past year, the secrecy surrounding member item allocations had become a symbol of legislative problems.

“It’s become a symptom of what’s wrong with Albany in a broader way,” said Bob Port, senior political editor of the Times-Union. “It’s a drop in the bucket, relatively speaking, but it’s a very important drop because it is money that’s being spent without any accountability and the potential for abuse is so much greater.”

Liam Arbetman, a research associate for Common Cause, a public interest group that advocates for better government in New York and nationally, echoed Port’s assessment.

“It was clear these funds weren’t going to projects of merit or to the community,” Arbetman said, adding later, “It was the darkest corner of state spending.”

Abusing the System
State Senator Efrain Gonzalez, who has represented the northwest Bronx for the past 16 years (after taking over for his boss and mentor, Israel Ruiz, who went to prison for lying on a bank loan), became the local symbol of member item abuse in October when he was indicted on federal mail fraud charges.

In December, those charges expanded and the senator now faces allegations that he pocketed for personal use half a million dollars in member item money. According to the indictment, Gonzalez began funneling member items to himself through a variety of non-profits in 1999, soon after member items were hidden from the public eye.

During an interview over the summer, Gonzalez refused to divulge how he spent his member items. A Democrat with close ties to Republicans, Gonzalez received more member item money – some $250,000 a year – than most Senate Democrats.

Port says equal distribution of member item funds is another flaw in the system. The minority parties in both houses receive less than 20 percent of the total pot, he said. After a preliminary analysis of the member items listed for the 2006-2007 budget, the Times-Union found no “formula” to how they are distributed. But it appears, Port said, that “the more powerful the person, the more money they get.”

The Senate majority leader himself is currently under federal investigation for allegedly funneling member item funds to a for-profit company run by a friend.

Signs of Reform
Few lawmakers have been willing to speak out against the system – probably for fear of being penalized when the member item pie is divvied up. But that may be changing.

State Senator José M. Serrano (D-Manhattan/Bronx), for one, has been candid about his own beneficiaries, even publishing an itemized list on his blog www.r8ny.com/blog/137.

The young senator has also been a vocal supporter of making every lawmaker’s items public. “To use a well-known phrase, ‘Sunlight is the Best Disinfectant,’” Serrano said in a telephone interview last week, “and if we can shine some light on member items then elected officials will be a little more careful about who they give money to.”

Serrano, a former Council member whose father is Bronx Congressman José Serrano, said it was common practice for City Council members to publicize grants they distributed to local organizations. “It was something I was proud of and something the community should know,” he said.

So when he was elected to the Senate in 2004, Serrano was surprised to find this wasn’t routine procedure. “I couldn’t understand why elected officials didn’t want to disclose their items,” he said. “[Disclosure] is a way to show your constituents you’re at the wheel. You’re showing you’re providing economic support to organizations that need it.”

These choices, Serrano said, are often good indications of a politician’s priorities. Serrano, for example, is a strong believer in the arts as an economic engine and as a vehicle for change, something reflected in the groups he has chosen to support.

Last October, when a judge forced Senate and Assembly leaders to reveal each legislator’s items, many good government advocates applauded the decision. Unfortunately, the information “was disclosed in such a fashion that it was impossible for the average person to decipher,” Serrano said.

The search process has been made easier – users can now search an on-line database using “key words” such as a senator’s name (see sidebar).

According to Democrats, however, the Republican majority is still dragging its feet, and in a bitterly fought battle on the Senate floor early last week, they dismissed the Democrats’ 8-point reform package. The package included measures to make the full disclosure of member items standard practice.

“They [the Republicans] pulled every trick in the book to defeat our rules agenda,” Serrano said.

Still, there are signs of progress. Investigating the abuse of member items is on the top of new Democratic Attorney General Andrew Cuomo’s 2007 agenda. He says he will review all suspicious allocations from the 2006-2007 budget, but not delve into previous years.

On Jan. 16, behind closed doors, new Gov. Eliot Spitzer, Bruno, and Silver hashed out an agreement to publish member items in this year’s state budget. This is a step forward, but really just puts the state legislature back to where it was before 1998. The names of sponsoring lawmakers will still not be attached to member items and it remains unclear how much advanced notice the public will have to review them before items are approved for the budget.

Nevertheless, Serrano says, those resisting reform are becoming more marginalized, and with a sympathetic governor, he’s hopeful that Albany and its murky, dysfunctional legislature will continue to change.

In a recent entry on his blog, Serrano wrote, “Transparency works for just about everything but business envelopes and bedroom curtains.”

Mapping the Moolah

Want to see how your local senator chose to distribute their member item money? It’s not exactly easy. Just follow these instructions. Go online to http://www.senate.state.ny.us, then click on “Senate Reports” in the left hand column. Several reports will come up. Member items are listed in the “Community Projects Fund” links going back to the 2003-2004 fiscal year. The only report that is both comprehensive and searchable is the most recent report from 2006-2007. If you click on that, you should be able to type in your senator’s last name after clicking on the binoculars icon (the search button) in the overhead tool bar. For the Assembly members, go to http://assembly.state.ny.us/ and then click on “Legislative Reports” in the left hand column. From there, click on “2006 Ways and Means Committee Reports.” Several reports will come up. You can click on any of the “Legislative Initiatives” from the past four years, including two separate reports 2006-2007. Once you’ve clicked on a year of reports, you can search the documents using the last binocular button we talked about in the previous paragraph. Exhausted? The Albany Times-Union is hoping to make things easier come spring. The Hearst publication is planning to create a Web site where visitors can simply type in their zip code or a lawmaker’s name and find out how member items were distributed in their area.