A Rare Consensus

Close followers of the editorial pages in this city know that a consensus is a rare thing. The New York Times is center-left, while The New York Sun is center-right. The Post and the News sometimes pick fights with each other just for the fun of it. So it is a small point worth mentioning that on the matter of totally eliminating the "member items" that City Council members use to pay off political allies and promote their careers while spending millions of our tax dollars, every paper in town stands shoulder to shoulder. In our April 30 editorial, "Trash Can Postscript," we wrote, "Yesterday's editorial, 'Double Default,' took the position that no spending in the city should be allocated solely at the discretion of an individual politician. It's a violation of the principle of checks and balances."

The New York Times weighed in yesterday with an editorial that said essentially the same thing. "The best reform would be to simply get rid of these 'member items' and other fiscal bonbons that city politicians like to parcel out in their neighborhoods. All city money should go through the regular budgeting process, with its checks and balances," quoth the Times. The New York Post, which agrees with the Times almost as rarely as we do (though it did join the Times in endorsing Eliot Spitzer for Governor) took the same stance, writing in its own editorial, "The best reform, of course, would be an end to the whole sleazy system. Why should incumbent legislators be able to tap the public piggy bank to boost their own careers?" The Daily News, in its editorial of April 29, asked, "Will anyone on the Council have the decency to call for ending all member items? Anyone?"

The answer to the News's question so far is "no." In failing to do so, the Council members are disregarding the advice of the city's four metropolitan dailies. Even worse, they are refusing to explain their spending to the public. The Times yesterday quoted a Council member as saying, "The Council's lawyers have advised us not to talk about ongoing investigations into Council discretionary funding." These are not "the Council's lawyers" — they are lawyers being paid with taxpayer funds. For them to advise the Council members not to tell the public what happened to the public money adds insult to injury. Both candor and opposition to member items will be fine litmus tests for candidates seeking newspaper endorsements in the upcoming Council elections.