The City Council will increase its budget by $5.1 million, as Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito plans to hire more staff to oversee investigations and draft legislation, a source briefed on the changes told Capital.
The increase comes as part of the $56.6 city budget for FY2015, which the Council will vote to adopt on Thursday, according to the source.
Members, who typically receive between $292,000 and $332,000 each year for both staff and office expenses, will also get a boost to their individual accounts, the source said.
Budgets will be equalized so that every member receives the same amount.
Former Speaker Christine Quinn often trimmed or kept flat the council's operating budget, as she prepared a run for mayor in 2013.
Overall, Quinn increased the operating budget from $49 million in Fiscal Year 2006, when the full-time headcount totaled 316, to $51.5 million in Fiscal Year 2014. (The most recent available headcount is 281 for Fiscal Year 2013, when the budget was $51.6 million, records show.)
A spokesman for Mark-Viverito declined comment.
Some of the additional staff hired with the extra funds will be designated to help draft legislation, a process that would get an overhaul under the proposed "rules reform" Mark-Viverito has endorsed.
5 comments:
Yet more $$ for councilmembers to dole out at their own discretions, thus assuring their re-elections.
Can we just kick her the hell out? She's such a puke artist!
Can't a case be made that she was illegally elected via an intimidation camplaign by DeSleazio?
Is this a surprise? This is what the citizens voted for: More government and therefore more more out of the citizens pockets and into the government.
The citizens have voted and they must be punished.
Anon no. 2:
No, and so what else is new?
To the victor go the spoils. Won't change until there are no spoils for them to dole out or there is far more real scrutiny and accountability for what they dole out.
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