Uh-oh: The little piggies in the state Legislature have been sticking their snouts where they don’t belong — again. This time, they found $31 million in taxpayer cash to spread among themselves.
As The Post’s Candice Giove reported Sunday, the Senate awarded funds for over 130 porkbarrel projects in the final hours of the legislative session in June, including:
* $100,000 to a questionable Harlem nonprofit to pay for a new boiler, care of Sen. Bill Perkins (D-Manhattan).
* $250,000 for new washing machines at a stylish development in downtown Syracuse, from Sen. John DeFrancisco (R-Syracuse).
Big-time bacon, in other words.
But wait? Didn’t Gov. Cuomo do away with member items?
Well, that’s what he says. Yet he, too, approved of this $31 million pork-fest.
Fact is, New York pols always find a way to fill their trough.
“It’s a classic Albany shell game,” one legislative source told The Post.
The Senate had the cash left over in a capital-projects fund, and members just couldn’t keep their hands off it.
It’s the latest chapter in Albany’s sordid history of treating taxpayer money as a lawmaker slush fund — all while pretending they’re doing no such thing.
OK, it’s not news that lying is the primary method of communication for New York pols. But it certainly puts the question of a pay hike for them in perspective.
Who can doubt, after all, that lawmakers will push for raises for themselves right after the fall elections, though barely any of them will discuss the subject now?
Yet again, they’re itching to sneak a little swag for themselves behind voters’ backs.
One more reason not to let them.