Halloran Spokesman Believes Council Will Honor Participatory Budgeting Funds for District

A spokesman for Dan Halloran said they do not believe the City Council would prevent projects voted for in the participatory budgeting process would be affected by the councilman’s recent arrest.

The City Council recently voted to strip Halloran of his committee assignments and ability to allocate funding in his district after he and state Sen. Malcolm Smith, D-Jamaica, were arrested last week in an alleged plot to rig the mayoral election.

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, D-Manhattan, and the Queens delegation will now decide how to distribute funds in Halloran’s 19^th Council District.

Kevin Ryan, a spokesman for Halloran, said he believed the Council would honor funding for the winning projects in the recent participatory budgeting vote in Halloran’s district.

Projects include an art classroom for P.S. 98, additional police cameras and kayaking and canoeing launches.

“I hope the Council decides to fund these projects,” Ryan said. “The same procedures were followed by our office as the other seven overseen by participatory budgeting. It’s all documented. It doesn’t seem fair to penalize 160,000 people because of allegations against one.”

State Sen. Tony Avella, D-Bayside, said he does not believe that Quinn and the Queens delegation should not be the only ones to decide on how money is allocated to Halloran’s district.

“The senator believes that he and the other local elected officials in his district should have a say because they know the groups and the district better.”