Gioia Grills Bloomberg Budget Director Like a 'Local Prosecutor'
Councilman Eric Gioia grilled the city’s budget director about the slush fund scandal during a heated Council hearing in City Hall just now.
Gioia asked, pointedly, whose job is to make sure there are no phony organizations in the city budget and what guarantees exist to ensure there are no fake groups in this year’s budget.
The budget director, Mark Page, said at one point that he felt like he was “being grilled by a local prosecutor.” He added, “I’m not sure this is the forum for you to be asking me these questions.”
When pressed about whose job it was to catch the phony groups, Page said that his agency got a list from the City Council, implicitly laying the blame with the head of the City Council, Christine Quinn. (One of her top aides, Chuck Meara, was sitting in the front row in the City Council chambers during the hearing, taking note of the exchange.)
Page told Gioia, “Your question about assurance from me that there’s nothing fraudulent in the line items [of the budget], logistically, is -- looking backwards -- is a problem for me as to how to do it.”
“It’s a big budget. I get it,” Gioia said. “But my question to you is whose job is it to make sure fake organizations aren’t slipped in?”
“You know, where do we get the list from?” Page asked rhetorically, eliciting some laughter from the small crowd in the audience. “I just gave you the answer. Somebody is creating the list.”
Shortly afterwards, Robert Jackson called for a point of order, and asked Finance Committee Chairman David Weprin to stop Gioia’s line of questioning. Shortly afterwards, Gioia stopped.
The next questioner, Diana Reyna, began by saying that Gioia's line of questioning “never receives the opportunity to take place."
Gioia is planning to run for public advocate.
- Poll
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Perhaps today's exaggerated bluster from Councilmember Gioia is masking anxiety about his own member item practices, including funding an organization that is outside his district and with which his wife has a lucrative consulting contract (as reported in the Daily News on April 30 under the headline "Slush Pols Look After Their Own"). Current constituents are too often slighted while hyper-ambitious "rising stars" self-righteously grandstand in pursuit of "higher" office.
OYB
Speaker Quinn has a lot of nerve discussing the budget as if she is not a target of the federal investigation. I also find it appalling that Quinn wants photos of herself with Military Veterans on Memorial Day after she stole money from the City budget by placing it under the name of a phony veterans group. Quinn committed a crime and should be prosecuted. Speaker Quinn has cultivated a culture of corruption in City Hall.
When Speaker Quinn's aide Maura Keany comes back from her leave of absence she should have Laura Popa (Quinn's attorney) direct one of her poor interns look up the following statue: Title 18, UNITED STATES CODE, Section 1341.
The above statute is basic federal mail fraud. When Quinn's aides put a stamp on a package containing the City's budget with Quinn's phony phantom groups, then mailed it, Quinn and her staff committed mail fraud. They all should be prosecuted accordingly. Speaker Quinn got caught in her lies just like the defendant in the following video got caught in his lies:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvysdk9CyLI&feature=related
interesting that chuck meara was taking notes. it was only after he became chief of staff (under Miller) that the magnitude of the slush fund increased year after year... and more so once Quinn became speaker. i hope his role in all of this, as the right arm of both (miller first and quinn now) is being investigated.