Metro

Pol’s ‘poor’ excuses

A Brooklyn judge granted disgraced Assemblyman William Boyland Jr. a taxpayer-funded lawyer yesterday — despite Boyland’s alleged plans to use bribe money to hire a Washington law firm to help him fight an earlier corruption case.

Judge Sandra Townes previously shot down the state assemblyman’s repeated requests for a free attorney, but changed her mind when she learned the Brooklyn Democrat no longer receives reimbursements for expenses incurred on trips to Albany.

“Given those attacks on your salary, I find that, at this time, you are eligible for assigned counsel,” Townes said in Brooklyn federal court.

But she failed to mention the money is on hold because the state Comptroller’s Office found he was abusing the per-diem system during unauthorized trips to Atlantic City, Hamptons and out of state — to the tune of more than $67,000 in public money.

Even Boyland was stunned by the judge’s decision.

“I don’t know what happened in the first place,” he told The Post outside his $460,000 Bedford-Stuyvesant home, where he parks a shiny Chrysler Aspen SUV worth nearly $18,000.

“I couldn’t tell you why, because I don’t know.”

He said he doesn’t think his taxpayer-funded salary of $79,500 has “anything really” to do with his ability to afford counsel.

“You may run into some sort of financial issue, like half the country is doing right now,” babbled Boyland.

He was stripped of his chairmanship, which earned him an extra $12,500 a year, after his first corruption indictment in Manhattan in March 2011.

“It’s not an easy time right now,” he griped. “Getting into financial problems can happen anytime, to anybody.

“Anybody should be able to have public representation. Isn’t that what the Sixth Amendment says?”

Boyland is awaiting trial on federal charges that he solicited bribes to secure business deals, including $250,000 to help out-of-town real- estate developers buy a former hospital for $8 million and renovate it with a state grant.

The “businessmen” — federal undercover agents — would then have sold the development to a Boyland-controlled nonprofit for $15 million.

He also allegedly received a $7,000 cash bribe just two weeks after being charged with corruption.

In that case, Boyland told an undercover agent that he needed the $250,000 to hire attorneys for previous Manhattan corruption charges.

When that massive sum wasn’t delivered, Boyland was unable to hire the Washington, DC firm of Steptoe & Johnson to represent him, court records show, so he eventually applied for taxpayer-financed legal counsel, which a Manhattan judge approved.

The court then appointed New York defense attorneys Richard Rosenberg and Michael Bachrach, who helped Boyland beat corruption charges at a Nov. 2011 Manhattan federal court trial.

Additional reporting by Erik Kriss