4:15 pm Apr. 12, 2012
To be clear, Governor Andrew Cuomo isn't against member items. He's just against some of them.
Cuomo has said the difference between the ones he vetoed and the ones he let through was that he was opposed to allocations to new organizations and OK with ones going to organizations to which there was previously a commitment. But it hasn't escaped notice, as he killed of $640,000 worth of member items, that the bulk of his vetoes hit districts represented by State Senate Democrats.
Senate Democrats, some of them, attribute this to ill will, possibly left over from the governor's approval of Republican-gerrymandered Senate lines, for which he was taken to task by some editorial boards and some good-government groups.
Democrat Tony Avella of Bayside said, "There's a fine line between governing and bullying and i think Cuomo has crossed it."
Bill Perkins of Harlem raised the issue of the "separation between the governor and the legislature," and said Cuomo "can't tell us how to spend it—then we're not spending it, he's spending it."
Whatever his rationale, Cuomo saw fit to approve some older (i.e., not new) appropriations to organizations even as he weeded out the others. Organizations that will not see their member items cut include the Suffolk Sports Hall of Fame and the West Islip Robotics Booster Club. (They both happen to be in districts represented by Cuomo's allies in the State Senate's Long Island-centric Republican conference: Lee Zeldin's and Owen Johnson's, respectively.)
Here are some of the member items Cuomo is not vetoing:
WSKG Public Broadcasting--$5,000
West Islip Robotics Booster Club--$1000
Chautauqua Lake Rowing Association--$13,500
Cold Spring Harbor Rowing Association--$5,000
Schenectady Rowing Club, Inc.--$700
Suffolk Sports Hall of Fame--$10,000
Oyster Bay Railroad Museum--$4,500
Neighborhood Watch Groups of Syracuse--$10,000
Russian American Council of Staten Island--$7,500
Historical Society of North German Settlements in Western New York--$2,000
Catskill Boxing Center--$1,500
Medford Taxpayers & Civic Ass., Inc.--$1,000
Millennium Dance Company--$5,000
