Metro

Rep. cut donor a $100,000 pork slice

WASHINGTON — Rep. Gregory Meeks secured a $100,000 federal payout for a Far Rockaway community group whose executive director is a frequent campaign contributor.

The Queens Democrat — now facing scrutiny for his ties to a controversial Hurricane Katrina charity — earmarked the funds for Ocean Bay Community Development Corp.’s job-training program in the 2010 spending bills, while his campaign pocketed $1,500 from Ocean Bay’s executive director, Patricia Simon.

Simon has given the campaign $3,850 since 2006 — including a $1,500 contribution in September, when the taxpayer money Meeks requested for her business headed toward approval, that was nearly double her usual donation to the lawmaker’s war chest.

Meeks’ office declined to comment.

Simon said the money went toward tickets that she gave public-housing residents to attend Meeks’ annual fund-raising dinner

“I never once thought about it in terms of inappropriate,” she said.

The taxpayer dollars for Ocean Bay went toward a “work-force preparation program” that offers 17- to 24-year-old public-housing residents GED classes, job-skills training, internships and job placement.

Simon made an annual salary of $85,000 at the community-development job in 2007, the latest year for which Ocean Bay tax records were available.

Swaps of spending earmarks and campaign cash are commonplace on Capitol Hill and not usually illegal or a violation of congressional ethics rules, but independent watchdogs say it still raises concerns.

“It’s a form a legalized bribery,” said Melanie Sloan, of the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. “Americans have to wonder if he is looking out for what is good for the country or good for his campaign coffers, and you really have no way to know.”

Meeks has attracted scrutiny since a federal probe was launched over questions, first raised by The Post, about what became of money raised by a charity Meeks set up to help Hurricane Katrina victims.

The Post first reported that New Yorkers Organized to Assist Hurricane Families paid out only $1,392 of the roughly $31,000 it collected for victims of the New Orleans disaster.

The US Attorney’s Office has launched a probe to find the missing money. The hurricane-relief effort was launched by a nonprofit group, New Directions Local Development Corp., founded by Meeks and state Sen. Malcolm Smith, also of Queens.

Both Meeks and Smith have said the New Directions was run by a board that made decisions about how its funds were used.