State takes its ‘lumps’ in $15B it will ‘waste’

A Buffalo carousel got $600,000. The New York Shakespeare Festival got $250,000 more. Sing Sing Prison Museum got just $125,000 — while millions went to nonprofits focused on “safety and restorative justice.”

Those amounts were parceled out from billions in so-called “lump sum” spending approved by Albany Democrats last year — and they’re back for more.

A watchdog report released Friday found that Gov. Hochul’s proposed budget would authorize $14.8 billion in spending without saying how it would actually get disbursed — opening the door to “waste and corruption.”

“One of the responsibilities of elected leaders is to tell the people where the money goes,” said Andrew Rein, president of the Citizens Budget Commission, which published the report along with Reinvent Albany.

“Telling the people, ‘Oh, we’re going to decide later out of the public view, and then we’ll report on it at some other time — most of it,’ that’s not the way to both get the most out of your money and to be accountable. But that’s what New York state does too often.”

As proposed by Hochul (pictured), the $14.8 billion would go into two pots covering 156 total proposals — $8 billion in “emergency” spending and $6.8 billion more in a collection of funds nominally devoted to a plethora of causes.

Last year, for example:

■ The Assembly backed $600,000 for the Buffalo Heritage Carousel.

■ Stony Brook University got $3.5 million for an “Agriculture Consumer Science Center” courtesy of the state Senate.

■ New York City received $13.1 million for “probation services” from the Hochul administration while other counties got smaller amounts.

■ A long list of organizations received grants for causes like promoting jazz music among “underserved communities.”

The problem with such spending is not necessarily how the funding was eventually used, good government groups say, but that it was approved without explicit authorization in the annual state spending plan.

This opaque approach also leads to a situation where pay-to-play politics can thrive, according to the report.

Past criminal cases against former Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, former Lt. Gov. Brian Benjamin, and former state Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith have all hinged on allegations tied to lump sums.

The Hochul administration does release some details of how the state spends billions in discretionary funds — but advocates say that database is in need of updating.

And while the public gets left in the dark about how their tax dollars are getting spent, Hochul, state Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins (D-Yonkers) and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie (D-Bronx) can use the money to punish or reward their political friends and enemies.

That leaves individual lawmakers dependent on the so-called “three people in a room” to bring home the bacon for their constituents, which in turn can affect their future political careers.