Quinn's Rebates, "Money-Saving" Budget
In all, Quinn's budget proposal had $61 million more in spending than Bloomberg's.
She singled out $12 million being spent on the mayor-appointed Panel for Educational Priorities that could go instead "to programs in the classroom."
Quinn also identified $6.2 million in "potential cuts to Council-funded initiatives," including $70,000 to the Conflicts of Interest Board, $1 million to the Buildings Department, $50,000 to the Community Mayors, Inc., $400,000 to the NYC Council Nursing Scholarship Initiative, $2,225,000 to the Asian American Hepatitis B Project, $908,000 to the New York Junior Tennis League and other programs.
Councilman Alan Gerson, in whose district Quinn was when she made the budget proposal, sounded somewhat uneasy about the rebates. "They're fiscally responsible," he told me, "but the question is are they strategically responsible, or are they strategically the best route to go in order to meet critical needs."
The mayor, reacting later in the day, seemed enthusiastic about at least some elements of Quinn's budget. "One of the things that I was pleased to see in her budget was she did have some money-saving ideas," he said.
-- Azi Paybarah
If Quinn stands on a corner in her district, people will throw condoms AT her.
She has destroyed the neighborhood by being in the pocket of the real estate developers.
Look at all this dirty developer money she has taken:
Benjamin, Alvin $4950
Benjamin, Deborah $4950
Benjamin, Stephen $4950
Curry, Ravenel B $4950
Speyer, Robert Frist $4950
Dermot Clinton $4950
Dickey, William P $4950
Edelman, Martin L $4950
Eure, Joseph B $4950
Fisher, Arnold $4950
Fisher, Steven $4950
Fisher, Winston $4950
Gural, Jeffrey $4950
JBDS NYS PAC $4950
MacArthur, Andrew $4950
Madden, Brian $4950
Orphanides, James M $4950
Salomon, Phillip $4950
Smith, Daniel B $4950
Steiner, David S $4950
Durst, Douglas $2500
Farber, Stephen $2475
wait a minute, how come the largest cuts ($2.2 million) come from an asian american hepatitis B project? Why should the asian american community shoulder the brunt of these cuts? i hope that gerson and liu fight like hell against this or we will all remember in 2009.
70,000 cut to the Conflicts board seems like a good start. Quinn will restore the $$ so that ineffectual bunch will never seriously go after her or one of her members. Remember when Virginia Fields wrote to them about Miller? did they ever respond? Of course not, they were afraid of jeopardizing the money from the Council.
While you're at it, cut DOI's funding as well. Have they ever investigated a current Mayor's friends?
She should also cut the Workforce Development and Immigrant Opportunity Initiatives. They are essentially pork barrel fiefdoms with no oversight or scrutiny.
If she really wanted to spare the service cuts, she could sever the dead weight at the Council that she installed as political patronage hires, mainly the do-nothing Queens contingent. Seems quite a few are barely showing up for work. Welll-known among her inner circle, infighting all the time...
politician taking money from real estate tools? go figure. what's this world coming to. next thing you know they'll be kicking people out of their homes to build basketball arenas.
btw, not all those people are real estate developers. but who needs facts when you have vitriol.
no money to study the levels of flatulence in Quinn's office?
no money to measure the temperature levels coming out of Hoffman's mouth?
If Quinn stands on a corner in her district, people will throw condoms AT her.
She has destroyed the neighborhood by being in the pocket of the real estate developers.
Look at all this dirty developer money she has taken:
Benjamin, Alvin $4950
Benjamin, Deborah $4950
Benjamin, Stephen $4950
Curry, Ravenel B $4950
Speyer, Robert Frist $4950
Dermot Clinton $4950
Dickey, William P $4950
Edelman, Martin L $4950
Eure, Joseph B $4950
Fisher, Arnold $4950
Fisher, Steven $4950
Fisher, Winston $4950
Gural, Jeffrey $4950
JBDS NYS PAC $4950
MacArthur, Andrew $4950
Madden, Brian $4950
Orphanides, James M $4950
Salomon, Phillip $4950
Smith, Daniel B $4950
Steiner, David S $4950
Durst, Douglas $2500
Farber, Stephen $2475
i guess now that bob dreyfuss is gone, it is easier to make cuts to his most generous client, the ny junior tennis league. that's politics.
The problem in Quinn's district is not that she's in the pockets of the developers; it's that the neighborhood has become the place to live. This is a fact of life in every trendy neighborhood. Its called gentrification, and no council member--speaker or not--can stop that. If the administration would start being more community centric, maybe our communities would have a fighting chance.