IF the new state budget deal is a high way robbery of New York taxpayers, then the Working Families Party is driving the getaway car.
Most New Yorkers know the Working Families Party, if at all, from its agitation for the left-wing cause du jour or its minor-party standing on Row E of the November ballot.
But far from being a fringe also-ran, the WFP — a decade-old joint venture of Big Labor and the radical “community organizers” of ACORN — has leveraged a multi-tentacled, financially opaque structure to become a key power player in both the city and Albany.
How opaque? It’s even set up a for-profit corporation that hides its campaign expenditures from public view, in apparent contravention of state election law.
The Working Families Party, in short, is not a political party in any normal sense of the term. It’s a complex tool for well-funded special interests looking to raid the public treasury.
CONSIDER: Normal parties are be holden to any number of special in terests — but union control is practically written into the WFP’s bylaws.
Unions hold all but a handful of the 38 seats on the WFP’s Advisory Board, which party Executive Director Dan Cantor says is responsible for determining the party’s stances.
And City Councilman Bill de Blasio, who recently won the WFP’s endorsement for public advocate, told The Post that winning it required votes from two-thirds of the party’s union constituents.
Big Labor is also the party’s chief source of cash: The WFP pretends to rely mainly on small-dollar donations from “working families,” but last year, more than half its funding — $1 million-plus — came from powerful unions, many of which emerged unscathed from the budget process.
(Most of the rest was from Democratic politicians; more on that below.)
Leading the donor pack was the potent health-care workers’ SEIU Local 1199, with more than $300,000 — followed by the teachers unions, with $200,000.
And ACORN — itself a major recipient of union cash — has tremendous overlap with the WFP. The two share two Brooklyn office spaces, plus senior leadership: WFP Executive Committee Chairwoman Bertha Lewis also runs ACORN’s New York chapter.
WHY would the unions want their own political party — especially given the willingness of both major parties in Albany to dance to their tune?
The answer lies in state election law — and the creative ways the WFP exploits it.
New York is one of the few states to allow minor parties to cross-endorse major-party candidates. And third-party endorsements have long been sources of great influence and patronage. Which is why it’s more than a little suspicious that the Working Families Party regularly enters into business relationships with the candidates it endorses.
Recently, its No. 1 client has been state Senate Democrats, who last fall took back the majority for the first time in a generation.
In January 2007, days after securing the WFP’s endorsement, Long Island Democrat Craig Johnson paid it $220,000 to hire its network of campaign workers for his soon-victorious bid for a vacant Senate seat.
Then, last fall, state Democrats pumped more than $400,000 into WFP coffers, plus another $200,000 into its for-profit arm — and WFP canvassers flooded key Senate districts.
Democrats present an innocent-sounding explanation for the transaction. To wit: The WFP’s canvassing operation is, as one insider put it, “the best in the state,” and the WFP had a clear ideologi cal interest in Democratic victory — so why shouldn’t the Dems pick up the cost for WFP canvassers who were essentially on loan to them?
Indeed, the WFP’s canvassing prowess is widely acknowledged to be the foundation of its influence in Albany.
But is that all that’s going on?
IT’S strange enough that one political party would essentially rent itself out to another — but these transactions are hidden behind a wall of corporate secrecy.
Yes, corporate: To run its canvassing operations, the WFP has created an in-house, for-profit corporation called Data & Field Services. The party publicly discloses only the five-figure lump sums it occasionally “pays” the company. (Some individual candidates also disclose payments to DFS.)
This practice apparently violates state campaign-finance regulations. Board of Elections officials insist that party committees are required to itemize exactly who gets the money they dispense, even if it’s paid through an “outside” vendor.
But Cantor disputes that interpretation — and no one’s done anything to test the case.
Thus, while the public can see where the WFP’s money comes from, it knows very little about where it goes.
To add it all up: In the Working Families Party, union cash has created a conglomerate that is one part campaign machine, one part commercial enterprise and one part lobbying-clearinghouse for left-wing, special-interest money and muscle — a conglomerate that is shored up by its privileges as a state-registered political party and shielded from scrutiny by a corporate subsidiary.
This force wasn’t just key to winning Democrats control of the state Senate — it’s still growing in power.
VITAL to the WFP’s influence is its ex tensive paid-canvassing operation. A Democratic strategist familiar with the Senate campaign explains that the party functions essentially as a “vendor of campaign services,” providing a ready-made field operation that a candidate would otherwise have to spend time building.
Such get-out-the-vote efforts were once the exclusive province of well-oiled political machines — that is, part of the Democratic Party’s internal structure. Now the Democrats are essentially outsourcing the effort to the WFP.
Which gives the WFP a lot of leverage with the new majority — especially since Democrats know its muscle can be turned against them in a primary. The WFP made that clear last September, when it handily replaced veteran Manhattan/Brooklyn Sen. Martin Connor with neophyte Daniel Squadron.
BUT lately the WFP’s leverage has been focused on protecting the inter ests of its union paymasters. Mission accomplished: The state budget deal announced over the weekend includes nearly $8 billion in new taxes and fees, while growing state-funded spending by $3.3 billion. (Add in federal stimulus cash, and state outlays rise $10.5 billion.)
Education and Medicaid — areas of top concern to the unions that control the WFP — won larger outlays than last year. Meanwhile, the budget’s centerpiece $4 billion income-tax hike is a virtual carbon copy of the WFP’s “Fair Share” plan.
Nearly three-fourths of the Senate Democratic conference endorsed that plan — which, in the absence of any real pushback from self-proclaimed fiscal conservatives like Gov. Paterson and Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith, dominated the debate.
HAVING picked New Yorkers’ pockets to the tune of billions, what’s next for the WFP? More of the same.
That is, the party has established itself as a major conduit for the conversion of special-interest cash into political influence — which in turn keeps that cash flowing in from hard-up middle-class taxpayers.
Yes, the unions have other means of influence, too — just as special interests have been pressing their case in Albany from time immemorial. That’s their right.
But the rise of the Working Families Party represents something new: a power-broker almost completely outside the checks and balances contained within New York’s traditional party structure.
What’s more, that power is housed in a vehicle of questionable activity and limited transparency. That’s bad news both to taxpayers’ wallets and the cause of good government.
New Yorkers need the WFP to be held to account — and to play by the same rules as everyone else.
John Wilson is a member of The Post’s editorial board. jwilson@nypost.com