When the City Council voted last week to give itself a pay raise, upping the annual base salary for Council Members from $90,000 to $112,000, reaction across the board (including here) was predictably negative. The ethical ramifications of raising one’s own pay were called into question, though only a handful of actual legislators were willing to stand up to their leader, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, and say that the raises were wrong.

But at least the raises were out in the open and across the board. Quinn holds the purse strings to a whole other set of financial benefits for her City Council faithful. For each chair of a City Council committee or subcommittee, Quinn can provide a member with a stipend, also known as a “lulu,” for their specific work on that committee. In 2006, Quinn has doled out $479,500 in such stipends, including a $28,500 lump payment for herself.

Few would argue that anyone who serves as speaker of the City Council would certainly deserve a little more money than their other Council colleagues. Some might even argue that Quinn deserves more than she’s getting. On the other hand, one could argue that many of the “lulu’s” handed out by Quinn amount to nothing more than her special rewards for those who are loyal to her leadership.

Take, for example, the tale of the Council’s civil rights committee. When it was just a lowly subcommittee, it was headed up by Bronx City Councilman Larry Seabrook, who took hold of the subcommittee in 2004. Under Seabrook’s able leadership, the civil rights subcommittee did not meet one single time while Seabrook was its leader. How did Quinn punish Seabrook for his inability to hold a single hearing during his two-year chairmanship? By making the subcommittee a full committee, and continuing to reward Seabrook with the $4,000 per year “lulu” he received for basically doing nothing.

Seabrook’s not the only one. Some of his colleagues are paid their own “lulus” for holding what could only amount to positions within their own political party. Staten Island member James Oddo is the Council’s minority leader. Of the four Republicans on the City Council, Oddo is paid $18,000 to steward them through the rough and tumble world of the legislative process. Five Democrats and one other Republican also hold leadership positions within the City Council, and all five also receive hefty stipends for holding their more or less useless party positions. Would anyone ever argue that deputy majority leader of the City Council is an important post? Nope, didn’t think so.

Only five members of the City Council do not receive stipends or chair committees, and they also happen to be five members who have been, at one point or another, on the outs with Speaker Quinn. To prevent such political gamesmanship with taxpayer funds, why not cut down the “lulu” list? Some committees can be eliminated altogether. Start with all five subcommittees and the two so-called “select” committees, each of which brings with it a $4,000 yearly stipend. Each of the subcommittees could simply be folded into its overreaching committee. As for the “select” committees, both could just be dumped. The business handled by the vaguely named “community development” select committee could likely be handled somewhere else, while the libraries select committee could be combined with the Department of Redundancy Department, especially given the presence of an actual libraries committee, one without a pesky “select” attached to its name.

Numerous other committees could be folded into an overreaching committee. We currently have a juvenile justice committee as well as a fire and criminal justice services committee. But wouldn’t we be better off just folding both into the public safety committee? We could eliminate government waste and save $20,000 at the same time. Couldn’t the small business and economic development committees be placed under one roof, with maybe even the lower Manhattan redevelopment committee thrown in? The committees of standards and ethics, oversight and investigations, and rules, privileges and elections could certainly be combined into one boring committee. And let’s just throw out the technology in government committee, since any time the government tries to get involved in technology, it just messes it up anyway.

With not even that much ingenuity, we can eliminate a whole host of useless committees that do nothing more than serve as rewards for loyalty to the boss. Any elimination of these committees and their “lulus” would require a vote of the City Council, which we already know does not like to deny itself more money. The bulk of the City Council delegation is term limited and will never have to face the music for raising its own salary. Why would it care that anyone would be angry to see it use taxpayer funds as its own personal party favors?