Christine Quinn
When her fellow New York City Council Members elected her Speaker in January 2005, Christine Quinn became the first openly lesbian or gay person elevated to that position. For many in the LGBT community in New York, the symbolism was clear: Quinn’s election signified the community’s coming of age. But the scandal now enveloping Speaker Quinn is becoming an issue for the LGBT community in New York as well.
“City Council Speaker Christine Quinn’s office hid millions of taxpayer dollars by allocating grants to phantom organizations as a way of holding the funds to dole out political favors later — bogus bookkeeping that is the subject of city and federal probes,” Frankie Edozien reported in the New York Post on April 3. Granted that the Post is a right-wing homophobic mouthpiece for Australian media magnate Rupert Murdoch. But it is not just the Post that is asking tough questions of the Speaker; it is also the entire New York media, including the New York Times, the New York Daily News, Newsday (the leading daily on Long Island), and the local network affiliates.
And it is also Gay City News, the leading LGBT weekly in New York. “It is crucial… that the full details are spelled out at the earliest possible date,” GCN insisted in an editorial in its April 10 issue, calling the Post’s revelation of the slush fund “a stunner.”
“More troubling is the fact that 24 percent of the distributions in fiscal year 2007 went to Quinn’s district, though… many of the recipients, including the LGBT Callen-Lorde Community Health Center and the American Folk Art Museum, serve a citywide constituency,” the GCN editorial continues.
Many in the LGBT community have applauded Quinn for using her position as the second most powerful person in city government to help fund the LGBT Community Center and many other LGBT community organizations — many of them based in her own district — the third Council district, which includes Greenwich Village and Chelsea.
“Is this a gay issue?,” GCN asks, pointing to “the symbolic role Quinn plays in our community” and concluding that “When, as expected, she runs for mayor next year, she will not get every LGBT vote, but it would be the rare queer New Yorker who would not in some sense feel she is carrying the aspirations of all of us on her shoulders as she enters the field. Christine Quinn has brought a compelling story of achievement by an out lesbian to New York’s public life. Putting this matter quickly and convincingly behind her is something we should all be insisting on.”
Indeed. Questions will now inevitably be asked as to whether those LGBT community organizations were funded through the scheme that has now come under investigation and that may even result in criminal indictments, and it is all the more important that the slush fund scandal now engulfing the first openly gay Council Speaker not taint the the LGBT community as a whole.
Chris Quinn has established a close working partnership with Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg — widely rumored to be possible vice-presidential running mate for either the Democratic or Republican nominee — and her position as a superdelegate and as the New York City LGBT community’s most prominent supporter of the presidential candidacy of Hillary Clinton means that the emerging scandal could have national implications.
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Yes, I agree: the accounting scheme with dummy receipients used in the Council Speaker's Office is much more serious than the use of earmarks in federal legislation. My comparison to earmarks was only because they often are buried as unrelated tag-alongs for local pet projects in broader omnibus budget bills.
@Chris
I'm really not Hillary Rodham Clinton but the alter ego of History of Gay Bars; if you click on the link for "Hillary Rodham Clinton" you will find that it directs you to my site "History of Gay Bars." I apologize profusely if you believed I actually was the former First Lady, cuurent junior Senator from New York, and failed candidate for the Democratic Presidential nomination. I thought the First Amendment allowed political satire; however, perhaps in your ideal world, it apparently would not be allowed. Should the actors on SNL be precluded from representing themselves as presidential candidates or is it only the written word on which you would place such restrictions?
Do you kiss your lover with that mouth? :-) Come on. Take it easy. I'm sure there is no one convinced that the poster is the real Clinton.
Sincerely,
James
While problematic and even pernicious, earmarks are technically legal and the recipients of federal budgetary largesse are a matter of public record.
The NYC Council practices included setting up dummy corporations as fronts so that funds could be moved around to different organizations without any form of oversight or public purview. And the term 'slush fund' was one that Chris Quinn herself has not contested.
It's not so much even a question of which organizations -- many of them legitimate and deserving of city funding -- received funds through this scheme; it's an issue of transparency and accountability. And in fact Quinn just announced today a series of reforms of the process, explicitly acknowledging that the existing system was unacceptable.
First, Paul Schindler, the author of the Gay City News story, states the following: "There has been no suggestion - in fact all evidence is to the contrary - that any individual personally profited in a manner at odds with appropriate use of government funds."
However, Mr. Schindler then reports "that 24 percent of the distributions in fiscal year 2007 went to Quinn's district."
If the money from the so-called "slush fund" is being directed in large measure to finance pet projects in Quinn's district, isn't this tantamount to an attempt to buy votes from constituents? Doesn't this personally benefit Quinn by maintaining power for her own personal glory?
One significant problem that is reported on from time to time is that campaign contributors are not precluded from receiving NYC business, and often those who receive the most city business are those who contribute the most in campaign contribution. This apparent "pay for play" routine has to end.
If an individual or company in NYC wants to donate to the campaign of a politician fine; but that same individual or company then should be precluded from receiving city contracts of any type. Of course, the problem does not exist simply within NYC but plaugues most jurisdictions and yet most seem content with the "pay to play" scheme in which campaign contributors receive goverment business in an unseeming quid pro quo.