Kathy Hochul slammed for $1B election-year ‘slush funds’

Gov. Kathy Hochul treated herself to nearly $1 billion worth of pork-barrel spending in this year’s state budget — allowing her to freely hand out cash as she runs for election against Republican challenger Lee Zeldin.

Hochul and her Democratic allies in the Legislature added the $920 million worth of outlays to the $220.5 billion fiscal plan in an 11th-hour move in April that government watchdogs warn is wide open to abuse.

“These slush funds are totally unaccountable. It’s not how public dollars should be doled out,” senior policy adviser Rachael Fauss of Reinvent Albany said Friday.

Another nonpartisan nonprofit, the Citizens Budget Commission, said the cash “will go to projects and purposes that primarily will be identified behind closed doors.”

“As such, they are ripe for political allocation rather than a distribution based on sound, holistic capital planning that addresses critical infrastructure needs,” the CBC wrote in a July analysis.

The group also noted that the $535 million poured into two of three “lump sum” spending programs — the Long Island Investment Fund and the Local Community Assistance Program — can be spent “for essentially any purpose” and “isn’t subject to any agreement with the Legislature.”

In recent weeks, Hochul announced two expenditures that squarely targeted the Long Island home base of Zeldin, an outgoing, four-term US representative.

One provided $50 million in funding for a competition to “attract and grow companies in the life sciences, health technology and medical device sectors” on Long Island.

The other awarded a $10 million grant to the Northwell Health network’s Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research for 26 new, state-of-the-art laboratories in Manhasset.

Hochul touted both initiatives on the state’s official website, which also says that “the Long Island Investment Fund will focus on large-scale projects that will support and grow the regional economy, enhance communities, and have lasting impacts across the Long Island region.”

And on Sept. 27, Hochul was joined at a news conference about the Feinstein Institutes funding by state Sen. Anna Kaplan (D-Carle Place), who faces Republican Jack Martins, a former state senator, in a race that’s expected to be close due to local outrage over New York’s controversial bail-reform law.

“Kathy Hochul hasn’t simply blurred the line between governing and campaigning — she’s completely erased it,” remarked state Senate Minority Leader Will Barclay (R-Fulton).

“New York has the least transparent budget process imaginable and what we’re seeing now is a product of creating pools of money with no guidelines whatsoever.”

In addition to the “lump sum” funding, the CBC identified six “individual purpose” pork projects, including the controversial $600 million earmarked for a new stadium for Hochul’s hometown football team, the Buffalo Bills.

The governor’s husband, former Buffalo US Attorney Bill Hochul, is a top executive at the  Delaware North hospitality and food service company that manages the scores of concession and retail outlets at the Bills’ Highmark Stadium in Orchard Park.

Another project with a direct tie to Hochul is the planned $20 million reconstruction of the Carrier Dome sports stadium at Syracuse University, her alma mater.

The planned Universal Hip-Hop Museum in the South Bronx and the planned Mohawk Harbor Events Center in Schenectady were awarded $11 million and $10 million in funding, respectively.

The New York Hall of Science in Corona, Queens, and Pace University’s Michael Schimmel Center for the Arts in Lower Manhattan will also get $10 million and $5 million, respectively, for upgrades.

In its analysis, the CBC said as much as $1.2 billion of the spending could be financed by bonds that would “consume” the state’s ability to issue debt and potentially prevent it from financing other, “critical” projects in the future.

Several critics compared Hochul’s budgetary maneuvers to those of her widely reviled predecessor, ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who resigned amid a sexual harassment scandal last year.

“This is Cuomo crony capitalism 2.0,” said city Council Minority Leader Joe Borelli (R-Staten Island), spokesman for the pro-Zeldin Save Our State political action committee.

“It’s the same old from the same old Albany crowd. And there’s nothing to address the real issues New Yorkers are concerned about.”

Said GOP political consultant William O’Reilly: “This is a classic Andrew Cuomo tactic — a pre-election Santa Claus giveaway to key voting constituencies. It costs Gov. Hochul nothing, but it costs taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars, all to benefit her reelection drive.”

“You can’t get much swampier than this,” O’reilly emphasized.

In an emailed response, Hochul spokesperson Avi Small said, “Gov. Hochul worked with the legislature to craft a fiscally responsible budget, using an influx of federal pandemic relief to make strategic investments in public safety, infrastructure, and tax relief while also making unprecedented deposits in rainy day reserves to protect against future uncertainty – even leading to Moody’s upgrading the state’s credit rating after the budget was passed.”

A spokesman for the Budget Division said the state had $6 billion in cash available to pay for capital projects, but didn’t immediately respond when asked whether that would cover all of the $1.6 billion in spending cited by the CBC.