Deep South Radio

As groups prepare for another year without member items, appeals, reforms and desperate hope underway

Maybe a few years ago legislators would have been approving earmarks for a third cheese museum in the state, to add to the ones in Rome and the town of Cuba they have funded in the past.

Not this year.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo followed David Paterson’s lead in promising to veto all earmarks and member items, once again putting the state’s $200 million spoils system on hold.

This news is as bad for small organizations, like the annual Queens Soap Box Derby (grant amount, 2009-10: $4,000) or the Doll and Toy Museum of New York ($2,000), as it is for bigger organizations, like the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty, a vast social services group ($1,225,000), and the Bushwick-Ridgewood Senior Citizens Council, the housing advocacy organization started by Assembly Member Vito Lopez ($1,245,250).

Those groups will survive, thanks to grants from local governments and their own fundraising. But other groups, like the Public Utility Law Project, which helped poor New Yorkers fight overcharging for utilities, folded last year without the help of member items. And this year, the nonprofit legal organization Prisoners Legal Services will virtually cease to exist, without the $2.3 million grant it typically receives from the state government.

Even Paterson refused to defund the group last year, which provides legal counseling to the state’s prisoners, replacing its funding out of his own discretionary pot. But this year, without a budget line item, the nonprofit will lay off 18 of its 29 lawyers, who make $40,000 per year and field more than 16,000 inmate requests annually.

The loss of PLS would leave a “huge vacuum” in the social services structure of the state, said executive director Karen Murtagh-Monks.

“It is imperative for New York to continue down the path of having an organization such as PLS, because all we have to do is go back and look at what something like Attica cost,” Murtagh-Monks said, referring to the 1971 riots that led to the group’s formation.

Until 1995, PLS was part of the executive budget. That year, George Pataki defunded it. Every year since, a conference of Assembly members sponsored funding for the group. Supporters, though, say that its funding should not be included among other member items that generally provide cash for school funds, arts organizations and Little League associations.

The group is lobbying the governor to restore its funding, with a bipartisan coalition of backers including Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, Senate Finance Committee Chair John DeFrancisco, ex-GOP State Sen. John Dunne, and directors of the New York Civil Liberties Union and New York State Defenders Association.

But the attention PLS is getting is an exception.

Most earmarks go to smaller groups that may struggle without the added cash. Benign but less urgent causes, such as the Plainedge High School Robotics Club (earmark amount: $500) will find a way to soldier on without the grant funding they received in 2009. The club’s 45 members are planning clothing and school supplies drives and a fundraiser at the local Chili’s restaurant to make up the difference.

“We used every penny of that five hundred dollars,” said former club president Patrick Graziosi.

The moratorium on member items has not stopped some reformers from pushing for changes to the system.

The process is still too easy to exploit, say some legislators and good-government groups. A list of politicians who have gone to jail or faced indictment on charges related to possible misuse of member items is long: Brian McLaughlin, who stole from a little league association, Efrain Gonzalez, Vinnie Leibell, Anthony Seminerio and Pedro Espada, Jr.,  are just the most recent.

Two bills in the Assembly would reform the process. One, sponsored by GOP Assembly Member Jim Tedisco, would require equity in member item distribution and create a review commission to ensure the quality of grants.

“Are there some of these member-items that are worthy? I think to a certain extent, they’re all worthy,” said Tedisco. “The items themselves are based simply on requests and the power of those leaders and your relationship with them.”

Member items have traditionally been a way for new legislators to solidify relationships with constituents too, and a way to drum up support before elections. Leaders allocate more in a given year to legislators who face a questionable re-election. And a bill to reform that process would likely meet some resistance from the party leaders, Tedisco said.

“We have a lot of support for this reform,” he said, “but nobody has more support than the leaders.”

Another bill, co-sponsored by Assembly Member Sandy Galef and State Sen. José Serrano, would require legislators to disclose grants that could be seen as a conflict of interest, because of a personal and separate relationship with the organization receiving funding. Galef, who has never taken member items, thinks they should be abolished altogether.

“We’re cutting education, healthcare, state programs. I don’t know how you can do discretionary funding at the same time,” Galef said.

One possible salvation for the member items and the groups that are hungering for them this year: a budget impasse that might prompt Cuomo to agree to some discretionary spending in an effort to get moving again.

“Does he need them to get legislators to support the budget?” Galef wondered. “I don’t know—we’ll see.”