Pork And Blubber

Remember the upstate lawmaker who dug into the legislative pork barrel a year or two ago and withdrew several thousand public dollars to build a clubhouse for his duck-hunting buddies back home? Called to account by a taxpayers' group, he protested that the project, which entailed tearing down an old blind, was a civic matter undertaken for the greater environmental good.

That fellow, resourceful though he surely was, had nothing on the legislator who managed to extract $15,000 from the public coffers this year to further the cause of whale-watching on Seneca Lake.

In the heart of the Finger Lakes District, Seneca is a freshwater body noted for trout-fishing, board surfing, and scuba diving, because of its deep, cold water. Anyone claiming to have seen a whale there, however, could rightly be hauled in for substance abuse, most likely LSD.

According to CHANGE-NY, a tax reform organization, the money - which represents just a tiny drop in a $609 million bucket of so-called members' items - or "pork index" - will be used for a festival at which boaters pretend to search for whales.

"Taxpayers across the state should be cringing because of this nonsense," said Thomas Carroll, the group's president. Some of the 4,400 or so schemes to be funded this year are legitimate, of course, but a good number, he said, are simply "election-year grants to hometown groups."

Scalers of Montauk mountain tops, take note. An avalanche of public funds sometimes descends where least expected, or deserved.