The practice of stashing funds in the city budget through allotments to phantom organizations goes back at least a decade, The Post has learned. An investigation of budget documents shows phantom groups first appearing in fiscal year 1998, when $150,000 was allocated to "Elder Statesmen" - a name identified by City Council Speaker Christine Quinn as phony.
HAUNTED BY PHANTOMS
In interviews with a dozen current and former council and mayoral staffers, The Post was told that the practice - which it revealed has hidden as much as $17 million since 2001 and which has brought on federal and city investigations - began in the Giuliani administration, when Peter Vallone Sr. was council speaker.
In Vallone's last budget, for fiscal year 2002, there were five phony groups. In [Gifford] Miller's, there were 16.
As coffers swelled, the amount of money funneled to fake groups also grew, with annual sums reaching the millions.
4 comments:
This scandal goes deeper than the iceberg that sunk the Titanic!
I hope that "Parkside" is soon discovered playing their part somewhere beneath the waterline.
Can you see Evan Stavisky coming up for air all brown faced and flustered?
Another by-product of term limits. The power of incumbancy and lesser amounts of money was enough to keep getting someone elected before term limits. Now, no longer is the power of incumbancy enough, has to be lots of available cash to create the additional support needed for the next job they all spend their 8 years in the Council aiming toward.
Does the Commissar actually want us to believe that he never knew of this criminal act? He entered office as a Republican, succeeding a Republican mayor. And he thinks we will believe that Giuliani never informed him of the money?
The Commissar was in on it from the start, and even set up his own slush fund.
Never forget that they stole and continue to steal OUR money. That's OUR grocery, mortgage, rent, tuition, clothing, movie and gas money they're stealing.
If any incumbent is on the ballot on election day, vote for the opponent.
No opponent (the no-compete pact)? Vote a write-in.
Not far enough; Go back to SADOWSKY.
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