Joel Rivera

Pork handouts offered to pressure council members to OK congestion plan
Daily News, Wednesday, April 2nd 2008

Up in the Bronx, a major retail redevelopment project at the Kingsbridge Armory that had been stalled for a year suddenly moved forward in the past few weeks.

Joel Rivera, the Council majority leader from the Bronx, had opposed the mayor's congestion pricing plan until Monday. Rivera suddenly switched his position the day of the vote. He joined six other members of the Bronx delegation to deliver near-unanimous support for the mayor's $8-a-day tax on cars coming into the central business district on weekdays.
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Getting to the bottom of City Hall pork barrel

Daily News, BY BOB KAPPSTATTER

Friday, July 6th 2007, 8:48 PM

With some sunshine now cast on the new city budget's $35 million in member-item funding - sometimes called "pork" - we now have at least an oinkling of how much each City Council member gave to various groups, activities and causes.

It's not a full picture yet, since many of the larger items were sponsored by more than one member or by delegations, and the list still needs a CIA-level codebreaker to pull out some of the goodies.

But courtesy of the online Gotham Gazette, published by the good-government group Citizens Union, here's how much each member of the Bronx delegation sponsored individually:

Joel Rivera, $321,337;
Annabel Palma, $285,000;
Maria del Carmen Arroyo, $239,187;
Larry Seabrook, $238,431;
G. Oliver Koppell, $172,187;
James Vacca, $165.187;
Maria Baez, $127,187