Here in New York, we've been roiled over the last month and a half by repeated revelations of huge amounts of public money paid out at the sole discretion of an individual elected official. Over $350 million in the New York City budget is controlled by individual City Council members, state legislators' member control items totaling almost $140 million, and over $1 billion in the state budget is controlled by the Governor and legislative leaders for discretionary "capital projects."

Elected officials like to call these amounts "discretionary funds."  Here at Common Cause/New York, like other members of the public and the press, we call them what they are: slush funds. Why do we even have these slush funds at all?