Daily News Editorial, November 9, 2006
These little piggies went to City Hall - where they took one look at the big fat municipal budget and grabbed whatever they could get when no one was looking.
Yes, your City Council at work, happily earmarking $50 million a year for friendly organizations under cover of darkness. Officially, they have been unwilling to put their names to the so-called member items by which lawmakers buy political support while, maybe, contributing to worthy causes.
The Council's insistence on secrecy about disbursements of these public monies is patently illegal. In a case involving the bigger piggies of the state Legislature, a state Supreme Court justice recently ruled that taxpayers have every right to know who's spending their dollars. So, after kicking and screaming, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno agreed to open the books for inspection.
Here, though, Council Speaker Christine Quinn has been, well, more pig-headed. With some prodding from these quarters, Quinn and her colleagues yesterday proudly declared that they would list the sponsor of each member item. But not now. Not just yet. Starting in July, when the time comes to vote on another budget. Those who might be curious as to who dipped into the till for what and for whom in the past would just have to be satisfied with a great big, "Get lost, sucker."
Somehow, this didn't seem right - particularly not at a time when the Council is getting set to vote itself a retroactive 25% pay raise. So we placed a call to the speaker's office to convey our concerns, politely, if we do say so ourselves. A very nice aide told us it would be really, really hard for the Council staff to identify which piggies got roast beef and which piggies got none. But that sounded lame, so she promised that Quinn would try really
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