Rettig Calls for Probe into $2M NY Senate Grant to Kiryas Joel

From Matt Retting For State Assembly

ORANGE COUNTY, NY — Assembly candidate Matt Rettig has called on the New York State Attorney General to investigate what he described as a “highly suspicious” $2 million Senate grant to Kiryas Joel earlier this year. The grant was allocated via the State and Municipal Facilities Program to the Orthodox community for road and pedestrian improvements in January 2018.

In his letter to Attorney General Barbara Underwood, Rettig said it was “highly suspicious” that the funding in question was the “only State and Municipal Facilities Program grant – of many hundreds – that attributes no Senator’s name to funding.”

Once news of the grant became public, “it was only after concerned citizens and the local media dug in and raised questions that this completely anonymous $2 million grant turned into semi-anonymous funding from the Senate ‘Rep Conference,’” said Rettig, referring to the New York State Senate Republican Conference.

Rettig noted in his letter to Underwood that his concern with the appropriation being a “dark” request is that the public has no way of knowing who sponsored it, and thus has no way of holding the sponsoring legislator accountable.

Still worse, a grant made in this manner invites suspicion of an arrangement of a quid pro quo between a legislator or legislators and the community that is benefiting from the state funding, Rettig said.

“I am respectfully requesting that your office investigate this transaction to ensure that there was no illegal quid pro quo and to make a recommendation that it is in the public interest that all budgeting requests made by any legislator be attributed to one or more specific legislators so that the public can be certain who is directing money to which projects and constituencies,” Rettig said in his letter to Underwood.

“Corruption and dishonesty are making it hard to trust our government. That’s why I’m putting transparency and accountability in Albany front and center in my campaign,” said Rettig.

Rettig, a commercial airline pilot who lives in Cornwall, is running to succeed James Skoufis in the 99th Assembly District.

Image via Google Maps