Cooper Challenges Levy on Funding

 Suffolk County Legislative Majority Leader Jon Cooper (D-Lloyd Harbor) challenged County Executive Steve Levy to identify which of several community service agencies are recipients of the "pork barrel" spending that the executive criticized in a recent statement.

Cooper sent Levy a list of agencies and organizations that serve the Huntington area that are scheduled to receive funding in the 2011 operating budget.  Many are already struggling because a decline in private donations.

Three of the groups on Cooper's appropriations list are 501c3 not-for-profit organizations that provide assistance to women and children who are victims of domestic violence.  According to experts, incidents of domestic violence in Suffolk County have increased dramatically since last year.

"These women and their kids have already been brutalized once by the men in their lives.  Now Steve Levy wants to attack them all over again," Cooper said.  "Steve is famous for saying, 'We are doing more with less.'  But the only ones having to do more on their own are the people with the least amount of resources already.  Now Steve wants to cut their services even further.  Shame on him." 

Cooper challenged Levy to either identify which  appropriations are the "pork barrel" spending he referred to or apologize to the agencies.  Cooper defended his allocations saying in his letter to the county executive, "I challenge you to show me the pork.  There are no 'bridges to nowhere' in my proposed budget allocations."