Doesn’t everybody agree that sunshine on the City Council’s pork-distribution process would be a good thing?
Actually, no.
Public Advocate Bill de Blasio announced two months ago the creation of an Internet database that councilors could use to list not-for-profit supplicants with an eye on a slice of city pork — that is, a so-called “member item.”
It’s a notion with considerable merit, given the insults various politicians have dealt to the public trust in recent years. Scarcely a week goes by without news of a public official turning the invariably secretive member-item allocation process to personal or political advantage.
De Blasio’s plan is simple enough: He wants everything online weeks before the City Council actually votes on patronage disposition.
Now, his own skirts aren’t entirely clean. When he was a councilmember, he played the game with the best of them; now he sees himself as mayor someday, and he’s suddenly got religion.
No matter. Sunshine is good.
Yet only five of 51 councilmembers provided de Blasio with the information.
Why didn’t more respond?
Who cares?
A good idea is a good idea — and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn needs to endorse this particular good idea, or something very much like it.
That is to say, to use her considerable influence to persuade her colleagues to make public every dirty detail of their member-item dealings.
De Blasio wants Quinn to post member-item information by April 30.
Sounds good to us.