ALBANY — When Republicans controlled the State Senate, they spread the pork barrel wealth around upstate each year — table scraps when compared with the overall size of the budget, yet still enough to bring grateful smiles from recipients and voters.

Those days are gone. If any more evidence was needed that Republicans no longer rule the Senate, consider the partisan breakdown revealed last week in the $85 million pork barrel allotments from the 62-member chamber: $77 million went to Democrats.

Push aside the party labels, and a geographic picture emerges: just $13.7 million of the Democrats’ $77 million went to upstate programs.

Add $5.1 million from the GOP allotment to upstate and just 22 percent of the total pot made it north of the New York City suburbs.

“This disparity underscores the fact that New York City is controlling all of state government,” said Sen. Catherine Young, an Olean Republican whose pork allotment — lawmakers call it “member items” — dropped from about $1 million last year to $250,000 this year.

Others, like veteran Sen. Dale Volker, a Depew Republican, lost millions compared with last year.

Critics say it was a broken system when Republicans were running things and cut out Democratic districts. They note that all senators represent about the same number of constituents — roughly 300,000 people — who all deserve a shot at the pork pot.

“It’s a grotesquely unfair system,” said Blair Horner of the New York Public Interest Research Group. “Every senator should get the same amount, end of story, or they should get rid of the system.”

Winners and losers

It was an open secret that majority parties controlled and benefited from this system of pork barrel money. Only in more recent years has it become easier to figure out what lawmaker gets how much to spend on organizations or programs in home districts. The Assembly pork list was revealed in the budget in April, and like the Senate, showed the same disparity between the majority party Democratic lawmakers’ take and their Republican counterparts. Again, most of that Assembly $85 million in pork was directed downstate.

Last Thursday, the Senate Democrats released a list of all pork recipients — an assortment of 3,827 groups stretching from senior centers and arts groups to domestic violence shelters and legal services for the poor.

The list made clear that while some groups remained largely untouchable — such as the Buffalo Philharmonic and its $300,000 grant — many of the winners under years of GOP control did not do so well. And, conversely, many groups in Democratic districts were almost giddy.

“Unbelievable,” Larry Pernick Jr., executive director of the Northwest Buffalo Community Center, said in describing how it feels to now be represented by a majority party senator during the member item disbursement process. The group offers everything from day care and dental services to counseling and youth programs.

Last year, the center got $25,000 from a pot controlled by Sen. Antoine Thompson, a Buffalo Democrat.

This year, with Thompson now in the majority after last fall’s elections switched control of the Senate following seven decades of GOP dominance, the community group is getting $181,000.

“It’s exciting to see when representatives can identify the funding and help provide the services to their constituents,” Pernick said.

Not all are so lucky.

A raw numbers game

At one time, Mercy Flight, a not-for-profit provider of emergency air medical transportation, got $240,000 a year from state legislators and their member item pots. This week, the Buffalo-based group got $20,000 — a fifth of what it got last year.

“Thank God the community has been so supportive of us over the years,” said Douglas Baker, the group’s president. He said lawmakers in recent years warned that Mercy Flight should expect the flow of pork money to decline, and so it began more aggressive fundraising campaigns in the community.

“We knew it was coming,” Baker said.

Privately, Senate Democrats have a simple term for Republicans complaining about the drop in pork funding: crybabies.

For decades, Republicans gave Democrats pennies on the dollar from the pots of money, which Democrats said robbed well-deserving projects in their community of money to expand services in a neighborhood or add a new wing to a community center. Of course, that was balanced to a large degree because the Democrat-controlled Assembly directed the lion’s share of its pork money to downstate programs.

The situation for upstate comes down to a raw numbers game. There are just five Democrats from north of the New York City suburbs in the Senate. There are 20 Republicans from upstate. The senator getting the most pork was Sen. Malcolm Smith, a Queens Democrat who is the chamber’s president and who regularly likes to use the phrase “one New York” to indicate his belief that there should not be an upstate/downstate divide.

Smith got more than $5.5 million, but likely also dipped into one of a handful of other “delegation” pork barrel pots, in his case the “Conference of Black Senators” and the “Queens Delegation” funds. Besides pork accounts for individual lawmakers, Democrats also created delegation pork pots for the New York City boroughs, the downstate suburbs, upstate, black senators and Latino senators.

Smith, who holds the Senate’s top title, did spread more than $1 million of his money outside his district, such as $200,000 to the Buffalo schools.

‘Reappropriations’

The pork allotments originally should have been contained in the state budget passed in April. But Democrats didn’t have their list of pork recipients ready. They finally were ready to go on the afternoon of June 8. Minutes before the resolution was to come to a vote, a surprise coup hit the floor — and the ensuing chaos shut down the Senate for a month.

Fast-forward to Thursday, with Democrats back in control, and the list of pork spending was approved — at 4 in the morning. Its approval came shortly after Democrats adopted new internal rule changes they claim will make things fairer between the two parties in the Senate.

Those rules were adopted in talks with Republicans in a house where Democrats control by a 32-30 margin.

One of the key demands of the GOP last week involved past pork barrel promises. Just because a pork spending item is announced in a particular year does not mean the money goes out the door that year. A recipient, for instance, might not be ready to get the money because plans for a new building or piece of equipment are not ready. So, that money then goes into a budget pot called “reappropriations,” which then routinely gets approved each year with a new budget.

Democrats estimate that Republicans have several hundred million dollars worth of “reappropriations” that the GOP senators insisted should still be able to flow even if they were out of power. A spokesman for State Sen. Dean Skelos, the Republican leader, could not confirm a number.

With two Democrats from the region in the majority, the City of Buffalo’s pork allotment does well in comparison with all other upstate communities. Sixty groups with Buffalo addresses received more than $3.5 million. But, Buffalo always did quite well, as Republican senators in the past routinely approved member item money for various cultural, civic and community groups in the city.

Stachowski gains

Locally, Sen. William Stachowski, a Lake View Democrat, got the most this year: $4 million in pork, not including an unknown amount from the upstate “delegation” pot. His colleagues say he got that much because of seniority from his 28 years in Albany.

But others say that Stachowski and other Democrats who might be vulnerable in next year’s elections — such as Sen. David Valesky, a Syracuse-area Democrat, who got at least $4.5 million in pork last week — were given pre-election treats in the form of member items to spread around their districts in advance of their actual campaigning in 2010. Valesky has been in the Senate since only 2005.

Thompson, who came to the Senate in 2007 and whose district is heavily Democratic, got $1.5 million from various pots.

The single largest pork contribution by Sen. Michael Ranzenhofer, a Republican who represents the eastern suburbs, was $25,000 to Genesee Community College. Stachowski, by comparison, had 12 allotments over $100,000, including $500,000 to Horizon Health Services, a provider of mental health services and addiction treatment.

Only one Republican, Young, had a single allotment that reached $50,000 — and that check to the Southern Tier Health Care System then left her stretching her remaining $200,000 to just 15 other groups.

Stachowski, by comparison, was able to give to 59 separate organizations, including many popular ones that could help his campaign next year. Those organizations include senior citizen groups, anti-crime efforts, a Hispanic group and local colleges.

Thompson says he likes how it feels to be able to spread around more taxpayer money to projects in his district, from a local food bank and literacy program to a YMCA and the Niagara Falls Fire Department.

In the past, Thompson said he would routinely ask Republican senators to share some money for programs in Buffalo.

Sen. Dale Volker, R-Depew, was willing to use some of his member item money in Thompson’s district, he said. But this year, he said, none of the area Republicans asked him to share any of the taxpayer money.

Thompson knew exactly how much money he got in the past couple of years, and just how much Republicans still have left to spend on the books, a number he put at $400 million from past budgets.

“I stretched,” he said of his $250,000 pork allotment last year.

As for upstate, critics of the system say the region should be prepared to see less money coming from Albany in the way of pork barrel spending.

“It’s the function of majority politics. For years, upstate probably got more than it deserved, and now it’s getting less,” Horner said.