…something’s wrong.
Last month, I wrote excitedly about Israel’s Supreme Court canceling government funding for yeshiva students. And this month, New York Governor David Patterson decided to cut the state budget, while increasing public funding to yeshivot!

But some legal experts question whether the measure will meet the requirements of the New York State Constitution, which has stricter prohibitions.
Critics have also raised questions about the timing of Paterson’s action. He inserted it in his budget plans last January, just nine days after he collected $140,000 at a fundraising dinner held in his honor at Kiryas Joel, an upstate village established by the Satmar Hasidic sect. Akiva Klein, who is a powerful businessman and a board member of the Uta Mesivta of Kiryas Joel, a rabbinical school with 1,300 students, chaired the dinner. Paterson was planning to run for re-election at that point, though since announced that he will not.
“I wonder if that proposition would have been presented if the governor had not announced his campaign plans that early on,” said Francis Clark, a spokesperson for the New York Public Interest Research Group, a good government organization. “It’s hardly a shocker and not the first time an elected official used their role in government to set himself up for reelection.”

Read the whole article at The Forward.