City BOE Makes Plea For $110M In Additional Funds
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At a time when just about every city agency is being asked to do more with less, the city's scandal-plagued Board of Elections is making some costly and eyebrow raising demands. NY1's Grace Rauh filed the following report.The city's Board of Elections is a popular punching bag at City Hall. Last fall, Mayor Michael Bloomberg even called its Primary Day performance a royal screw up.
The bipartisan board is controlled by the Democratic and Republican parties, and the agency is considered one of the last vestiges of political patronage in New York City.
But now the board is sure to enrage its critics even more. Officials are demanding the city give them close to $110 million in additional funding. They say they need to add 104 new permanent positions to the agency to properly do their job.
"We have a constitutional obligation to hold free and fair elections. And these elections are costly," said New York City Board of Elections President J.C. Polanco.
The board testified before a City Council committee Wednesday, saying that if Mayor Bloomberg's proposed budget for the agency is approved the consequences could be dire.
"The reductions and underfunding proposed in the mayor's preliminary budget has put our democracy in peril," said New York City Board of Elections Deputy Executive Director Dawn Sandow.
It's unlikely the board will get anywhere close to what it wants this year -- not with teacher layoffs and firehouse closures on the budget cutting table. The chairman of the City Council's Finance Committee, for one, wasn't sympathetic to the plea for more money.
"I don't think they are hearing the cry out, of the people of the City of New York, that we have to do more with less. And that taxpayers want more for their money," said City Councilman Domenic Recchia.
Recchia was particularly incensed by the board's request for an additional $32 million it says is needed to pay for support services from the company that built its voting machines.
"This outside contracting has got to stop. It's going through the sky," Recchia said.
As for the future of the elections board, it remains in flux. The board has been without a full-time executive director since October.
So far, officials say just five people have expressed interest in the position.