The City Council is spending more than $12,000 to fund an upstate “dance party” for black and Hispanic lawmakers — a move critics blast as a schmoozy waste of taxpayer money.
“I don’t see how we can justify spending $25,000 when each year in our budget battles we’re fighting about firehouse and library closures,” said Queens Councilman Dan Halloran, a Republican. “A caucus event is not the appropriate place to spend city money.”
In the last two years, the City Council has allocated a total of $25,000 for festivities connected with the New York State Association of Black and Puerto Rican Legislators’ conference, city records revealed.
A spokesman for Council Speaker Christine Quinn defended the allocations.
“This is an event that’s been going on for years,” said the spokesman, Jamie McShane.