A series of accounting changes to tax rebates and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's payroll tax has artificially deflated state spending to enable a gubernatorial boast, a fiscal watchdog said Tuesday.

The Citizens Budget Commission, a non-partisan, business-backed group, said that Gov. Andrew Cuomo's proposed $168.2 billion budget has a year-over-year spending increase of more than 4 percent — double the number the Democratic governor and his aides have touted in speeches around the state.

In his State of the State address on Jan. 3, Gov. Andrew Cuomo affirmed his commitment to New York’s union workers, saying that the state “must do all in our power to protect collective bargaining, the right to organize and preserve workers’ rights.”

Cuomo was referring to the U.S. Supreme Court case Janus v. American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 31, which could prohibit mandatory fees to unions from government workers who decline to join them. However, public sector unions in New York may also be facing another threat in the long term, in contract negotiations with the very state government that promised to protect them.

Carol Kellermann, the president of the Citizens Budget Commission, a nonpartisan fiscal watchdog organization, said the state does not have a reserve specifically for union contracts. The long-term effects of the federal tax law and the state budget deficit could constrict the funds the state has available for negotiations.

“On the one hand, everybody should have an incentive to resolve the contracts now, and not have them be lurking around during the election,” Kellermann said. “On the other hand, there are a lot of unknowns about finances, and if the unions aren’t willing to be realistic and participate in cost saving (now) so that the contracts are affordable down the road, then they might drag on until after the election.”

The next time you hear Gov. Cuomo whine about how federal tax reforms dealt New Yorkers a painful blow, tell him to look in the mirror.

Turns out his budget gooses state-funded spending by 4.1 percent. That’s more than twice inflation, and twice the 1.9 percent he claims it does. No wonder New York has the nation’s highest tax burden — and will be among the states hit hardest by the new cap on state- and local-tax (SALT) deductions.

As the Citizens Budget Commission notes, Cuomo’s plan “obscures the true rate of growth” through a number of budget tricks, e.g, by shifting expenses “off-budget” or to other budget years or by reclassifying it.

While Gov. Cuomo has touted that his budget plan would cap state spending at 2% for an eighth straight year, a fiscal watchdog group says it's actually going up twice that rate.

The non-partisan Citizens Budget Commission (CBC) said Cuomo for the second straight year used fiscal gimmicks to give the appearance that the state’s growth in state taxpayer supported spending will be lower than it is.

The CBC says $2.8 billion in costs shifts, reclassification of spending, and delaying of payments all account for Cuomo's claim of keeping the state spending hike at 1.9% in 2018-19.

New York City officials are unhappy with a provision in Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s fiscal 2019 executive budget that would enable the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to create tax increment financing districts in the city to raise revenue for operational and capital improvements.

The so-called value capture initiative has raised red flags about local autonomy and the monitoring of transportation expenses. The idea is to capture increased property tax revenue from rising assessments, which presumably are driven by improved transit near the property.

In addition, Mayor Bill de Blasio has floated TIF as a means to pay for the construction of a north-south streetcar line from Queens to Brooklyn. The project, though, is iffy and critics question just how much the city can capture through development along those parts of the outer boroughs.

“As evidenced by the successful financing of Hudson Yards], TIF can play a role in financing parts of the MTA’s capital program,” said Sean Campion, a senior research associate for the nonprofit watchdog Citizens Budget Commission.

The recent federal tax overhaul and belt-tightening at the state level cast a pall of uncertainty and concern over the $88.67 billion preliminary fiscal 2019 budget that New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio released on Thursday.

“Growth in city spending under the mayor’s budget for next year is largely fueled by rising personnel costs and debt service payments, with relatively little spending on new or expanded programs,” said Doug Turetsky, IBO’s chief of staff.

The Citizens Budget Commission, a nonprofit unaffiliated with the city government, was unimpressed.

“Before the going gets tough, the mayor should get going by limiting spending growth, bolstering the savings plan, and adding to reserves," said CBC President Carol Kellermann.

NYCHA should spend the millions it has saved on energy costs to step up boiler repairs and heating improvements, Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams said Monday.

Adams, at a press conference with tenants at the Gowanus Houses, said NYCHA's utility costs fell by $48 million between 2013 and 2016, mostly because of conversions from oil to natural gas, according to a report from the Citizens Budget Commission.

That money and any future savings should be added to the $200 million Mayor de Blasio announced last week for projects to give relief to tenants who have shivered through heating outages, he said.

"You're not going to freeze us out," Adams said. "We are going nowhere, and we're going to demand the services we deserve."

Gov. Andrew Cuomo's proposal to allow the MTA to unilaterally carve out special districts in New York City and direct an increment of the property tax within those districts to the MTA "fails to conform" to best practices of the infrastructure-funding technique, a watchdog group said today.

The executive budget proposal — first reported by POLITICO — also "undoubtedly violates" the "spirit" of the home rule provision in the New York state constitution, by enabling the state authority to usurp city tax revenue without city approval, according to the non-partisan Citizens Budget Commission.

A spokesman for the governor had no immediate comment.

The budget watchdog's critique of the proposal is manifold.

Among the criticisms: The transportation districts the MTA would create would exist forever and, contrary to common practice, send money to the MTA "long after the Authority has recovered its investment;" the "incremental revenue is not segregated to repay the costs of the projects that created the value;" and the "districts can be used to tax current property owners for past MTA projects."

Saying he’s charting the same historic path as FDR and Fiorello La Guardia, Mayor de Blasio on Friday staunchly defended the city’s ever-swelling payroll — which tops 330,000.

That’s up more than 33,000 from the 297,349 employees on the books at the end of fiscal 2014, which covers former Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s final year.

Fiscal watchdogs have expressed concern that potential funding cuts from Washington and Albany, plus any significant downturn in the economy, would make the recurring payroll expense untenable.

“Additional headcount should be justified with metrics that show improved service outcomes and productivity in city government,” said Maria Doulis, vice president of the Citizens Budget Commission.

Saying he’s charting the same historic path as FDR and Fiorello La Guardia, Mayor de Blasio on Friday staunchly defended the city’s ever-swelling payroll — which tops 330,000.

That’s up more than 33,000 from the 297,349 employees on the books at the end of fiscal 2014, which covers former Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s final year.

Fiscal watchdogs have expressed concern that potential funding cuts from Washington and Albany, plus any significant downturn in the economy, would make the recurring payroll expense untenable.

“Additional headcount should be justified with metrics that show improved service outcomes and productivity in city government,” said Maria Doulis, vice president of the Citizens Budget Commission.

The mayor's financial plan will be the first of his second term and comes after four years of steady tax revenue increases, a strong city economy and a rise in employment.

The city's tax revenues have increased by $6.3 billion from fiscal years 2014 to 2017 with the added money going mostly toward de Blasio's first-term policies and programs including the successful rollout of universal pre-K.

During the past four years however, de Blasio has also significantly increased the city's spending, the public employee headcount, and spent millions of dollars in new agency programs without requiring department heads to find significant savings.

The city's total headcount was projected to reach 330,158 positions in fiscal 2018, as of November, an increase of nearly 8,000 positions, or 2.4 percent, from fiscal 2017, according to data gathered by the Citizens Budget Commission.

When Bill de Blasio took the reins at City Hall, he inherited a municipal workforce of more than 300,000 people all working with expired labor contracts. In four years, his administration reached agreements with more than 99 percent of them.

But now, as the mayor prepares to release his latest budget plan on Thursday, those contracts are all beginning to expire again — in a more restrictive economic environment.

Budget watchers say the unions are actually better off now than last time around, when the Bloomberg administration budgeted nothing for wage increases.

“The one percent reserve for collective bargaining is often seen — or it's definitely seen — by labor as a floor rather than a ceiling,” said Maria Doulis, vice president at the Citizens Budget Commission. “In a sense, they're already starting ahead.”