Santa Claus keeps coming to town. And coming. And coming. If you are a soccer league, fire department, AMVETS Post, Boys&Girls Club or similar group, there is a good chance that you are on his list.

The problem is that you and I are buying the gifts.

Taxes have risen into the ozone layer and a multibillion-dollar state deficit looms. Yet state legislators, in what amounts to vote-buying, get $170 million tax dollars to hand out as they please. By filling the wish lists of various groups, they buy the good will that helps them to repel campaign challengers and preserve a broken government.

It is enough to make me mutilate my I Love NY lapel pin.

The handouts are called "member items"—taxpayer dollars given to each state senator and assemblyman, with ruling-party Democrats serving the largest portions.

Leading the local pack of not-so-secret Santas is Democrat Bill Stachowski of Lake View. The state senator has this year spread $4 million (!) worth of taxpayer-bought "gifts" to 62 groups, ranging from the Empire American Legion ($5,000) to the Character Council of Hamburg ($10,000); from the Lackawanna Yemen Soccer Club ($25,000) to AMVETS Post 72 ($35,000).

All of which leaves those people— and their friends and family—more likely to vote for the Santa-impersonating politician.

Stachowski got a whopping share of "member item" dollars because he faces a tough race next year. But he and Democratic State Sen. Antoine Thompson ($1.2 million) are merely the leaders of the porky pack. Each of our 17 other state legislators gets a slice of a $170 million pie that is divided among all 212 state legislators (check the list at

www.seethroughny.net

). This is the system, and it stinks.

It stinks because our tax dollars are used for what amounts to a campaign slush fund.

It stinks because some districts get more money than others. It stinks because groups that deserve tax dollars should get it directly from the budget. It stinks because candidates use our money to inoculate themselves against voter frustration. It stinks because it makes for unfair elections.

Republican State Sen. Dale Volker is the 18-term poster model for Albany petrification. He seemed ripe for defeat during last years wave of voter disgust. But the $2.5 million of "member items" that Volker-Claus sprinkled across the district, mostly in gift packages of $10,000 and $20,000, helped him to beat back a challenge from reformer Kathy Konst.

Konst said she would, on the campaign trail, walk into fire halls and community centers and "I was not welcome. People would say, Well, Mr. Volker gave us all this money. . . . He would show up with these outsized, six-foot-wide checks. How do I compete with that?"

You dont compete with that. That is partly why state legislators keep getting re-elected. These people are nearly impossible to unseat, despite voter disgust and a Legislature that long ago exiled ordinary taxpayers to the end of the line— behind municipal unions and other heavy political contributors.

If "reform" were not a four-letter word to legislators, they would put their $170 million "slush fund" back into the budget. But I do not want to sound delusional. This is Albany. Even lukewarm change—say, halving the dollars and giving each lawmaker an equal amount —seems beyond imagination.

"People should be outraged," said Blair Horner of NYPIRG, the good-government group. "It is a political spoils system, and there is no defense for it."

Even worse, there is no defense against it. Remember that the next time you see Stachowski, Thompson or some other state legislator holding a six-foot-wide check.