POLS HOG WILD

State budget stuffed with billions in pork

State lawmakers were so eager to get out of Albany for t he holiday weekend that they signed off on billions of dollars in porkbarrel spending with barely a debate. The trough includes money to boost tourism in a posh Hamptons town, as if it needs it.

“What are we going to fund next, yachts?” said one pol.

Lawmakers in Albany barely batted an eye as they signed off on billions of dollars in porkbarrel spending with almost no discussion — instead beating a path out of town for the holiday weekend.

In ramming though the $87.9 billion Aid to Localities Budget, lawmakers stopped to discuss just one item in the more-than-1,000-page spending bill, according to Manhattan state Sen. Brad Hoylman: a $3 million tab for a luxe golf tournament in upstate Endicott that was paraded as an economic development initiative.

“The $3 million for the Dick’s Sporting Goods golf tournament seems to be just an egregious expenditure,” Hoylman told The Post on Sunday.

It was the only earmark discussed on the Senate floor Friday night because lawmakers wanted to push the budget bill through to get home for the Passover and Easter holidays, according to Hoylman, who voted against the Aid to Localities measure.

The golf-tournament dough was ultimately included in the bill, along with several other eyebrow-raising expenditures, including $100,000 for tourism in the tony Long Island destination town of East Hampton.

“What are we going to fund next, yachts?” Hoylman quipped. “Oh, that’s right. We used to have a tax credit for yacht purchases.”

The legislation is lawmakers’ chance to bring home the bacon for their districts and pet projects, and many of the expenditures benefit a narrow group of constituents, even though New York taxpayers across the state actually foot the bill.

Meanwhile, money that previously bolstered rent protections was slashed by $4.5 million.

But even worse than spending on golf tournaments and 1-percenter beach towns are socalled lump-sum appropriations that set aside billions of dollars for specific purposes — without specifying who or where the grants are going to, according to John Kaehny of Reinvent Albany.

“The pork smells bad,” he said. “But what you can’t see is even worse.”

He estimated that there are billions in lump-sum appropriations that list a dollar amount but don’t specify who gets the dough.

“The budget process is a disgrace. It’s abysmal,” Kaehny said.

Examples of lump-sum appropriations include $2.97 million for anti-drug, anti-violence and crime-control programs whose list of grantees will be selected by the Republican-led Senate at a later date.

The budget also sets aside a $1.6 million lump sum for domestic-violence programs — but again, the actual recipient is still to be decided by the Senate.

Another $5 million will go to as-yet-undetermined women’s-health-service providers.

The lump-sum allocations are problematic because they allow the Assembly speaker and Senate president to steer piles of cash with less scrutiny, Albany-watchers say.

The state budget director and comptroller must still approve the payments. But there’s no competitive bidding, which means Albany power brokers can send funds to favored groups.

That opaqueness could lead to pay-to-play corruption, Kaehny warned.

Former Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver was accused of corruption for steering $500,000 in lump-sum payments to a doctor pal who, in turn, allegedly sent lung-cancer patients to Silver’s law firm, Weitz & Luxenberg. The former speaker was convicted in 2015, but the conviction was overturned last year after a Supreme Court decision vastly narrowed the definition of corruption.

The full budget will total more than $168.4 billion.