While the nature of the next City Council Speaker is unknown, the reforms that are about to be passed in the next City Council put to risk some of the funding the Speaker used to have control of.

A five-page proposal — unveiled Wednesday at a City Hall press conference — calls for doling out member items in a “fair and objective basis.”

“Member items are very important, but we don’t want them to become politicized,” said Councilman Brad Lander.

In addition to Lander, over two dozen Council members and nominees expected to take office in January have agreed to the reforms, including Jumaane Williams, Fernando Cabrera, Elizabeth Crawley, David Greenfield and Margaret Chin. The proposed legislation would give members more power to write legislation, move it to the floor and so on.

But for some, reforming the process of member items is simply not enough.

“We’ll take the proposed reforms one giant step better: Abolish member items,” writes The Daily News In a Monday editorial. “City Council members have no business unilaterally handing out upwards of $400 million a year in public money.”

“Fortunately, a former City Council member named Bill de Blasio agrees. In his campaign, de Blasio, recognizing the corrupting nature of the cash — which has landed several members behind bars — pledged to ban the slush,” The Daily News writes.”Since nobody in the Council will ever have the courage to deny themselves money they use to buy neighborhood influence, this won’t happen through legislation. But it doesn’t need to. De Blasio can and must act on his own.”

(Jacob Kornbluh – YWN)