CAMILLUS, N.Y. – Supporters of a proposed aviation museum in Camillus didn’t have to estimate how many annual visitors it would attract to convince a lawmaker to recommend the project for a $100,000 state grant.

Nor did they have to compete with others around New York who might also want to celebrate their own local history.

Instead, a group of more than a dozen town leaders took some preliminary drawings, a budget proposal and a list of potential donors to Sen. John DeFrancisco. They explained how model airplanes, photographs and other mementos from Central New York’s first commercial airport are hidden in a few people’s basements rather than displayed for the public.

That pitch was enough to launch the Amboy Airport Museum into the running for $100,000 from a new, $1.1 billion pot of money that New York’s political leaders will borrow and taxpayers will repay.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo quietly created the new pot back in 2013 by inserting it into a budget bill. State lawmakers approved it. Each year since then the pot has grown, so that now Cuomo and legislative leaders have given themselves the authority to borrow up to $1.1 billion for yet-to-be-named projects.

The early projects, hand-picked by lawmakers and Cuomo, are starting to come to light as the borrowing begins. So far, the state has borrowed $66 million for this program, according to the state comptroller’s office. That means there’s more than a $1 billion – plus interest – to go. New York income tax payers will foot the bills.

This “State and Municipal Facility Program” money, or SAM for short, is the place where Cuomo got $15 million when he decided to build a new film studio in DeWitt and to spend $5 million to help CBS build a new studio for Stephen Colbert. It’s also the source of state money recommended by Central New York lawmakers to help build youth athletic fields in DeWitt, fix water problems in Tully, save the ice rink at Meacham Park in Syracuse, build a better ice rink for the Syracuse Crunch, and make improvements to the Kallet Civic Center in Oneida.

New York is gearing up to borrow tens of millions of dollars for new generators for town halls, police security cameras, park gazebos, pole barns, fire trucks and police cars across the state. Syracuse is supposed to get one of the biggest allocations so far — $10 million toward fixing the city’s crumbling water system.

The budget laws creating the program say qualifying projects must meet two main objectives: Each proposal must save or add jobs, or it must pay for a capital expense for a government entity. Nothing in the law describes how the money should be distributed among projects or how state leaders should measure the necessity of each project.

That means nowhere in the process does anyone measure whether water system needs are more dire in Syracuse than in Albany, or whether Buffalo might be in greater need of the $13 million going to Rochester to help buy police cars.

Lawmakers defend the borrowing. They say each project is vetted by legislative staff and state agencies before the money is borrowed through the state’s Dormitory Authority. They also say using state debt to pay for the projects keeps the costs off of local budgets – and off of local property tax bills.

“As long as there is disclosure and everybody is required to show what the hell they are doing with the money, I don’t see the problem,” DeFrancisco, R-Syracuse, said. “I don’t think there is anything wrong with this process.”

Critics say SAM grants are a disappointing return to political pork. When Cuomo took office in 2011, he began challenging communities and regions across the state to compete for this type of money.

Now Cuomo, through his budget office, holds the ultimate approval when it comes to borrowing money through SAM, according to the budget legislation. (Cuomo’s office did not respond to questions for this story.)

So instead of pooling the money into large statewide projects that could rebuild the transportation network, state leaders are dividing up an enormous pie of debt into little slices. That creates more ribbon-cuttings and good headlines, but does little to fix big infrastructure problems, according to financial analysts at the Empire Center in Albany.

“Why are my grandchildren going to be paying for your fire trucks?” asked E.J. McMahon, a conservative fiscal watchdog at the Empire Center who first brought attention to the fund hidden in the state’s budget. “This is still not the way to pay for them.”

Recipients of the grants – almost always local governments – are thankful that Albany has reopened a spigot to help localities with infrastructure and qualify-of-life improvements.

“The residents of the town of Camillus are residents of New York state,” says Camillus town parks Director Eric Bacon, one of the aviation museum supporters. “And if they’re going to have this money that they are giving statewide, why not the town of Camillus?”

Uneven distribution

But it’s unclear whether each local government – or each lawmaker, for that matter – gets equal or proportionate access to the SAM fund. What is clear is that lawmakers in the majority party in the state Senate and Assembly have nominated many more projects than those in the minority. And it’s Cuomo, ultimately, who controls whether anyone gets money or not.

In the Syracuse-area, legislators of different parties, and in different houses, got varying direction on the amount of money they could spend in their district. The only standard? Each nominated project must cost at least $50,000. Lawmakers said they did not know of any upper limit for each loan.

In the New York State Senate, Republicans control the house and have nominated dozens of projects for SAM money. Their partners, the Independent Democratic Conference (Sen. David Valesky, D-Oneida, is a member), also have millions of dollars’ worth of projects in the works. Other Senate Democrats say they have no access to the money so far.

Over in the New York State Assembly, Al Stirpe, D-Cicero, said he got a letter from Sheldon Silver, when Silver was still Assembly speaker, saying the lawmaker could nominate up to $1.5 million for projects in his suburban Syracuse district of six towns. Stirpe said he didn’t know how many other Democratic lawmakers got a similar letter.

“I’m sure there are members who get a lot more money for things,” Stirpe said, noting that Magnarelli has requested the $10 million for Syracuse’s water pipes. “I’m focused on what I need and trying to get as much as I can to fill that need.”

Assemblyman Gary Finch, R-Springport, said he was told by Republican leaders within the last two weeks that he could nominate two to three projects from his district, which spans four counties. Each project could be a max of $100,000.

Finch learned from a Syracuse.com reporter that the money would be borrowed. He generally votes against the Capital Projects portion of the budget, which included this SAM program.

“Philosophically, I have problems with it,” he said of adding to the state’s debt. At the same time, he added: “I don’t want to deny the people in my district from having a piece of it. I don’t want to turn the money down.”

Déjà vu lawmaking

After the lawmakers select the projects to nominate, written applications from each project go to legislative staff – the Ways and Means Committee in the Assembly and the Finance Committee in the Senate for review, lawmakers say.

From there, the requests go to Cuomo’s budget office – the place with the real approval or rejection power, according to McMahon.

If this all sounds familiar, it’s because state leaders had a very similar system with slush funds in the past. In the old slush programs, taxpayer-backed loans could go to non-profit organizations – some of which had ties to lawmakers or to campaign donors.

That type of broader borrowing is limited under this new plan. Now the law specifies what types of government or public agencies – from libraries and colleges to fire departments and ambulance corps – can get the money.

“This is not pork,” Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, D-Bronx, said this summer about the windfall of money through SAM. “This is about giving the city of Syracuse money to help their infrastructure.”

The Dormitory Authority is doing the brunt of the borrowing for lawmakers. That means staff at the public authority review paperwork, including a questionnaire that asks, among other things, whether the lawmaker nominating the project has any financial interest in the project. Concerning answers can get a project disqualified, according to the authority.

Still, no one along the way compares the requests with other needs across the state. That’s part of the problem, McMahon said. “It’s throwing $1 billion at the wall,” he says.

The Amboy Airport

The town of Camillus is in line to get some of that splatter for its proposed aviation museum.

In the late 1920s, the city of Syracuse turned an alfalfa field in the hamlet of Amboy into the first commercial airport in Onondaga County. Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart soon visited, as they did at many airports across the nation.

But Amboy stood out among the nation’s early airports, advocates for the museum say. Beacon and runway lights – now ordinary sights on runways – were first tested and used at Amboy, according to supporters of the museum.

“The ramifications of the project go beyond the town of Camillus,” said Tom Kehoskie, the town’s former parks director who is now one of the advocates behind building the museum.

Plus, Kehoskie said, town isn’t asking the state for $500,000, the full estimated cost of building museum. “We’re looking for a little seed money,” he said. “We’re not looking for some government agency to give us the total bill. We don’t want a check for half-a-million dollars.”

The town of Camillus and its property tax payers aren’t paying a dime toward the museum. When asked why state taxpayers should pay for a local museum, Camillus Town Supervisor Mary Ann Coogan paused.

“That’s a good question,” she said at first. “It’s hard for me to answer that one.”

She and other advocates added they believe this small museum would draw tourists from outside of Camillus and Onondaga County, thus a boon to state taxpayers. The town’s Erie Canal park draws more than 200,000 a year, according to town records. A local museum celebrating the Octagon House gets about 1,400 people a year.

The Camillus museum backers have not done a market study to find out how many people might come to the aviation museum.

The town’s application for the $100,000 grant is now at the Dormitory Authority for consideration, according to state records.

“This is just politics,” McMahon said of state officials funding various projects in their districts. “This is meant to make you feel good. If you’ve got a local park, pay for your own park.”

Borrowing just beginning

McMahon argues New York income taxpayers shouldn’t be on the hook for hundreds of little projects like the museum in Camillus. Instead, he argues, the state should pool its financial resources to tackle big issues – highways, bridges and, yes, aging urban water systems.

“I think that’s a valid point,” Valesky said, but he added he’s not sure it has to be one or the other – small projects v. big ones. “I think this is one form of an infrastructure program. It’s not the only way of doing things.”

Lawmakers said they didn’t know whether the money available through SAM would continue to grow, as it has the past two years. McMahon, who has been watching New York budget decisions for decades, believes it will.

In Camillus, town leaders are pleased they have more opportunity from Albany to chip away at local projects.

“It’s kind of nice that some of these funding opportunities are coming back,” said Bacon, the Camillus parks director.

© 2015 Syracuse Media Group