You can't make this stuff up. The Daily News reports that Speaker Silver and Leader Skelos are assuring their troops that their pet district projects will continue to be funded. Because, you know, budget crisis, whatever, it's an election year.

State lawmakers insist all New Yorkers must share the pain of budget cuts - but that sentiment doesn't apply to them, the Daily News has learned. Despite a $50 million cut in legislative member items, otherwise known as pork, Assembly Speaker Speaker Sheldon Silver quietly assured his members last week their prized election-year pet projects would still get funded. "He told us, 'The promises you made for this year will be kept,'" one Democrat said. "How it is done exactly I'm not sure, but I assume he has a rainy day fund."

It would be all too easy to turn this into yet another diatribe on the Speaker. But the problem is bi-partisan and systemic, because Skelos is doing the same thing.

Silver and his Senate counterpart, Majority Leader Dean Skelos, control several large pots of unallocated money that can also be used if needed, they added. "It's a real cut in that there will be $50 million less in the budget, but it won't impact too badly the groups that get the money or the lawmakers that give it," a Republican senator said.

Meanwhile, belt-tightening goes on apace.

In addition to the member items, funding to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which has called for a new round of fare and toll hikes, was slashed by $789,000. Lawmakers also cut $26 million from CUNY.

So funding to CUNY is cut, but hey - those groups that, say, Serph Maltese relies on in his re-election efforts will still get their pork. The idea of using these legislative slush funds, pardon, rainy-day funds, to offset the losses at CUNY, doesn't yet seem to have dawned on anyone. That would just be too obvious, I guess.