Winners & lulu-sers

It was a funny coincidence: The exact day state Senate Democrats and members of the Independent Democratic Conference reunited — booting the IDC from its leadership partnership with Republicans — was the day IDC members pocketed big bonus payments for serving in leadership roles.

Those bonus payments, called lulus, are wasteful and corrupting. They’re also, of course, the norm in Albany. They get ladled out to members of both minority and majority parties, but those in the majority get more. And in some cases they are attached to fake positions.

Republicans’ alliance with the IDC set off an elaborate lulu shuffle that’ll hurt your hair to try to understand. Suffice to say that senators got assigned positions they didn’t really hold in order to enable maximum stipends.

Five senators — three GOPers and two IDC — were designated chairs of committees they didn’t lead. State Controller Tom DiNapoli got wind of the shenanigans and Wednesday held them back. Good for him.

DiNapoli let two lulus to IDC members go through; they were for real leadership positions, not fake ones. Sens. Jeff Klein and David Valesky took home hefty stipends of $25,500 and $20,625, respectively, atop their base salaries.

It’s absurd and obscene that some senators and Assembly members make more money than others, courtesy of taxpayers, by mere virtue of being favored by leadership. The absurdity and obscenity are underlined when the payments are disbursed at the very moment members abandoned the majority.