Welcome to Bruno country, built by generosity
Thank-yous to Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno are not hard to find. He is honored for his largess (with taxpayers’ money) in ways normally reserved for philanthropists or war heroes.
Fly into Albany’s airport, and there is a bust of Bruno.
Drive on I-90, and there is an exit marked for the Joseph L. Bruno Stadium, known simply as “The Joe.” That’s the single-A baseball park that Bruno secured $14 million in state funding to build. It has an instant replay screen in the outfield, fireworks and giveaway days, including, yes, a Joe Bruno bobblehead.
Head up the Northway to a state park in Saratoga, and you’ll find a handsome new pavilion around a popular spring water well. It’s the Bruno well — just a stone’s throw from a performing arts facility he has funded to the tune of $4 million since one of his longtime advisers took it over a few years ago.
In Troy, a social services center is named after Bruno, as is a public television station studio down the road — after it got $500,000 in state money from Bruno. A college theater has Bruno’s name on it, as does the lobby of a local YMCA.
Bruno’s generosity with state money is everywhere in the Capital District. He has directed state money to a racetrack in Saratoga, a welcome bonus for nearby homeowners who can rent their houses for $10,000 a month to rich horse owners each summer.
Bruno has gotten funding for new interstate exits, spawning housing and commercial development nearby. Local hospitals thank him for money, as does a new, enormous YMCA in Saratoga with pillars on the outside and flat screen TVs in the locker rooms.
Want to take your child to a nice playground? Head to a school in Bruno’s district.
He steered millions of dollars to a city center in Saratoga and got money for an automobile museum. He helped fund a rail station in Saratoga — built of granite, cedar siding and copper — complete with an outside children’s play area. Not bad for a station that averages 76 riders a day.
Bruno pork has gone to Head Start programs, a new science and math program at a private college, a new fire training center, and $180,000 for new street sweepers in Troy.
Entities with deep pockets have benefited, too. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, a private college in Troy not far from his home in Brunswick, recently saw its latest Bruno gift: $33 million to help build the largest university- based supercomputer in the world.
Nearby, a General Electric unit got $10 million from Bruno for a new digital X-ray facility on a growing hightech campus. And Bruno gave backing to a New Jersey equity fund that was building a $650 million power plant in his district.
Like any good politician, Bruno pays attention to the big stuff and the small, like the money for a local rowing club, a history museum, and $38,000 for a new building at a county fair to house antique machinery. After an episode involving one of his grandchildren, he pushed through $500,000 for an eating disorder center.
Bruno’s office declined to provide a list of all the projects he has funded with state money.
So does he keep count in his head of how much state money he has provided the Capital District?
“No, I do not,” Bruno said. “If you compound it, it gets pretty up there.”
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