City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito promised a fairer distribution of discretionary funds than in the days of predecessor Christine Quinn — but the largest piece of the pie still went to her and her friends.
Mark-Viverito’s new plan baselined each member’s district at $ 400,000, yet she still nearly doubled funding to projects sponsored by allies such as Antonio Reynoso (D-Brooklyn) and Majority Leader Jimmy Van Bramer (D-Queens) through a pot of money that she alone controls.
She also earmarked the biggest slice of her $ 16.1 million kitty, which is known as the Speaker’s List, to fund $ 2.6 million worth of her own pet projects.
This included funding for LGBT, youth, immigrant and women’s initiatives — largely in her East Harlem district.
Mark-Viverito also directed nearly $ 200,000 in improvements to a retail market known as “La Marqueta,” at Park Avenue and East 115th Street.
The remainder of the Speaker’s List money went to initiatives sponsored either by council members or by caucuses — such as LGBT, Black, Latino and Asian, or borough-based delegations.
Funding for a Queens district led by Councilman Ruben Wills, who was busted last month for allegedly stealing more than $ 30,000 in taxpayer money, was distributed by the speaker and Queens-delegation head Mark Weprin.
“I’m proud of the reforms the council has made to make the FY 2015 budget the most inclusive budget in the council’s history,” Mark-Viverito said.
The discretionary funding system has come under fire in recent years by good-government groups, and more recently by Mayor de Blasio.
He said he would prefer to abolish the purveying of pork, but he did not cut the funding from the coming year’s budget.
In 2012, a Citizens Union report slammed the process of disbursing so-called “member items” as being too political in nature.
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