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The number one health concern in the Bushwick/Williamsburg district that Democratic assemblyman Vito Lopez represents isn't cancer — it's asthma (but please, grups, continue to pack up your Bugaboos and move to luxury condos right up alongside the BQE)! So why does Lopez channel $50,000 of his district's money to cancer research at UES hospital Memorial Sloan-Kettering? Well, maybe because — as the Voice reveals this week — Lopez has leukemia himself and has been a patient at Sloan-Kettering since 1993. You'd think the dude would stop there, but no: he's also channeled $130,000 annually to Ridgewood Bushwick Senior Citizens Council, which sounds totally kosher — except for the fact that Lopez lives with the council's director, Angela Battaglia.

It's shocking stuff, and might have made a good cover story for the Voice. But they clearly had a much more important issue to report on.

A Tale From The Slush Fund [Village Voice]
Brooklyn Pork-Barrel Spending Revealed [Brooklyn Record]