Pork is better for clogging arteries than clearing them, which is why City Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer’s plan to ease service outages on the 7 train with member-item grease is fraught, to say the least.
Van Bramer (D-Queens) offered to pay for 11 weekends of express shuttle buses between Long Island City and Grand Central while the MTA does renovations to signals in the tunnels underneath the East River.
But he wasn’t volunteering to cover the $250,000 tab himself; he wanted to use part of the council’s $49 million member-item slush fund, a pot of money that’s been a breeding-ground for corruption:
* Councilman Miguel Martinez (D-Manhattan) resigned in 2009 and was sentenced to five years in prison for stealing $100,000 in pork for an arts center and a charity where his own sister was a board member.
* Councilman Larry Seabrook (D-Queens) steered $1.2 million to nonprofits he controlled — and $600,000 ended up in the pockets of his relatives and mistress. After a hung jury failed to convict him last year, he’s awaiting a second federal trial.
* Councilwoman Maria del Carmen Arroyo (D-Bronx) steered money to a nonprofit run by her nephew, who stole $200,000, some of which went to the Assembly campaign of Arroyo’s daughter.
This is not to accuse Van Bramer of graft. He told us he proposed the bus service because “my constituents have asked for [it] year after year after year.” Fair enough.
But member items corrupt everything they touch, even when pols aren’t on the take. That is, they allow council members to buy loyalty and votes in their districts, keeping a stranglehold on office . . . year after year after year.
Meanwhile, disruptions on the 7 train are expected every winter for the next four years, and the MTA will be pressed to balance straphangers’ justified demands with the challenge of working in the Steinway Tube, the 7 train’s century-old tunnel.
And the system will endure other disruptions, too. That may present big inconveniences for riders, but it sure as heck beats not fixing the system (as New Yorkers painfully learned during the 1970s).
Let’s face it: There’s no such thing as a free ride; Van Bramer’s offer would come from taxpayers’ pockets.
Meanwhile, Council Speaker Chris Quinn just awarded the indicted Seabrook another $350,000 in pork. One thing is clear: Member items are an illness, not a cure — and it’s past time to abolish them forever.
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