A lulu of a scam

So patently corrupt are lulus, the bonus cash payments that Albany legislative bosses hand out to favored members, that the state Senate has 87 such leadership posts, each with a lulu, ranging from $41,500 per year down to $9,000. There are only 63 senators. No wonder this practice of legalized bribery — to the tune of $1 million, on the Senate side alone — is banned in 49 other state Capitols, the U.S. Congress and even the City Council, which abolished lulus last year.

Every senator is a leader, but some are more leaderly than others. And even that tragicomic reality hasn’t stopped Republican Majority Leader John Flanagan from playing a phony game of musical chairs to maximize the cash to his buddies in his narrow coalition, kept in place with an alliance with a band of breakaway Democrats, the Independent Democratic Conference.

Flanagan, who gets the top lulu of $41,500, plays this charade even if it means by lying that Sen. So and So is chair of the Such and Such committee, just to squeeze every last bonus dollar out of the pockets of taxpayers.

The regular Dems charge that Flanagan is breaking the law by committing fraud and filing a false instrument.

That’ll be up to prosecutors and the courts. But the evidence is incontrovertible that the entire lulu law is a fraud and should be dumped.

Flanagan controls 46 lulus. The Democrats have 41. And the law says that each member can only get one lulu.

As our Ken Lovett found, several of Flanagan’s top GOP pals hold two titles and choose their lulu, with the leftover getting passed down. Like Kemp Hannon, the assistant majority leader on conference operations of Senate ($25,000 lulu) and chairman of the health committee ($15,000). Hannon takes the bigger lulu, declining the health money — but he still runs the health panel.

Flanagan then gave the unused $15,000 health lulu — as though it’s his, not the taxpayers’, to give — to Patty Ritchie, who is agriculture chair and in that post only entitled to an extra $12,500. So she is falsely listed in official records as health chair.

Flanagan is using the same lying maneuver to boost the lulus of three other Republicans and two IDC members. It’s an outrageous scam that’s gone on for years, made even more infuriating because it’s layered atop an entire system that’s a lie.

Only Liz Krueger, a regular Democrat entitled to a $20,500 lulu, and Tony Avella, an IDCer with a $12,500 lulu, show integrity and refuse the cash. Republican Pam Helming was given one of the lulus via lying, for $12,500, and gave it back. Good.

Meanwhile, GOPer Rob Ortt remains under criminal indictment but still gets his $12,500 lulu. Just perfect.