In New York, pork-barrel spending comes two ways: as cash or capital. Lawmakers fund cash pork out of current revenue and pay for capital pork out of borrowed funds. One kind of pork has gotten a lot of attention, while the other kind has been largely ignored — even though the state spends a lot more of your money this way.

Gov. Eliot Spitzer and legislative leaders have recently promised to disclose the cash “member items” in the state budget. Basic information about each grant will be listed, as opposed to the current practice of including a lump sum in the budget and figuring out the details of who gets what later.

The sum has totaled $200 million a year in recent years, doled out to Little Leagues, nonprofit organizations, community groups, health organizations – many sympathetic causes. The criticism of good-government groups has always been that while the recipients may be worthy, the process is tainted because it happens behind closed doors, without any public accounting for who wins and who loses and why. Also, majority party members in each house (Democrats in the Assembly and Republicans in the Senate) get far more to spend.

But this is chicken feed compared to what happens on the borrowed side—what we’ve called “capital pork.”

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Last week’s column drew a big response. Not that any of the reporters or citizens who contacted me were surprised to learn that Upstate New York has remarkably high property taxes. But they were startled to learn that we claim 9 of the top 10 counties in the nation in property taxes as a percentage of home value.

If we agree that this is a problem (and, of course, some don’t, seeing high taxes as the fair price for a high level of government services), the question becomes, what can we do about it?

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Congratulations, Monroe County taxpayers! We pay the second-highest property taxes in the country, calculated as a percentage of home value.

Our median property taxes are $3,266, and our median home value is $119,500, meaning we pay about 2.7 percent of our home value every year as property taxes to schools, local governments and the county. We’re second only to Niagara County, which leads the nation with 2.8 percent of median home value paid as property taxes, according to calculations by the Tax Foundation.

What, you’re not excited about that?

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Gov. Eliot Spitzer took office last week with an impressive combination of lofty rhetoric, decisive action and ambitious plans – not to mention more than a few jabs at the Legislature and his predecessor.

Here’s a quick summary:

He declared that we would become “One New York” — no longer divided by political and geographical differences. In the very first press release of his administration, Spitzer announced a 15-point plan to turn around the Upstate economy. He vowed to end the culture of corruption in Albany lawmaking and signed executive orders hours after his inauguration banning gifts from lobbyists to employees of the executive branch and ending distasteful practices such as the personal use of state cars and nepotism.

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