Sunday, April 25, 2010

Smith shoving state cash into ex-cons' pockets

From the Daily News:

State Senate President Malcolm Smith is pushing to give $500,000 in taxpayer cash to a barely existent Queens nonprofit run by two convicted drug dealers.

Smith, a Queens Democrat, selected the King of Kings Foundation - run by ex-cons Lance and Todd Feurtado - to receive one of a handful of grants under his $4 million anti-gang program called Operation SNUG.

The funding is on top of a $25,000 grant Smith sought for the duo in 2008 and the $290,000 in federal funds Queens Rep. Gregory Meeks is steering to them - proposed payouts first revealed by the Daily News in February.

All of the grants are pending.

Meeks and Smith are protégés of Queens pastor the Rev. Floyd Flake, who has previously praised the King of Kings' anti-violence and community work in a video.

Smith's move to provide the money comes as the state is grappling with a $9.2 billion budget gap and considering drastic cuts to education and health care spending.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Is that Tony Semenario At the extreme right almost out of the frame??!!

Anonymous said...

Funny, how in most of Queens we are starving for money for cultural and civic non-profits while those bums in Albany steer buckets of money to tweeder programs.

We need a listing by charaty for every politican and we need those who are underfunded to start to raise hell.

Its our money, God damn it, not theirs!

Anonymous said...

Tick,tick,tick..........