There are at least 733 public authorities in the state, from the familiar Metropolitan Transportation Authority to the relatively obscure but no less independent Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation.

Now, members of the state Assembly, the legislative body that created the first public authority in 1921 to manage the port of New York and New Jersey, are seeking to rein in and eliminate some of the authorities that constitute what has become, in the words yesterday of state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, a “shadow government” of quasi-governmental entities that provide vital services to New Yorkers but operate with little oversight.

Yesterday, state Democratic leaders unveiled the latest proposal for a bill that, like a number of recent predecessors, would aim to make the public authorities more accountable and transparent.

“The bill essentially treats these agencies, it retains their independence, but treats them as we treat our government departments,” the state comptroller, Alan Hevesi, said as he presented the proposal alongside Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, Mr. Spitzer, and Assemblyman Richard Brodsky. “We need to reform the product. And the product is public authorities and a number of issues, including debt.”

In addition to growing in number and power over the years, Mr. Hevesi said the public authorities have been mismanaged and have saddled the state’s taxpayers with a debt burden of $70 billion. “With interest, it will end up as $120 billion,” he said.

In contrast, the comptroller said, the state’s total debt burden is $47 billion.

Mr. Hevesi said he has audited 90 public authorities since 2003 and has found both mismanagement and outright corruption. The New York Racing Association, according to an audit last month, paid employees more than $1 million in “excessive travel and entertainment expenses,” including a golf outing for the executives’ wives and country club memberships.

The comptroller criticized the MTA’s projected costs for its new office building in Manhattan, which jumped to $450 million from an original estimate of $145 million. He said the building’s elevators, which were to cost $700,000, came in at a cost of $6 million. The proposed legislation would require that public authority contracts with outside vendors – of which there are 17,000 each year – be submitted to the state comptroller’s office for approval, Mr. Hevesi said.

While the bill includes portions of previous proposals and was heralded yesterday as a bipartisan effort, there are differences from earlier efforts. The new proposal calls for an inspector general who would have the appropriate powers to investigate allegations of wrongdoing. While the MTA already has an inspector general, not all authorities do.

The plan would also call for the creation of a public authorities budget office that would scrutinize their budgets. The MTA’s capital budget request of $27 billion for 2005-2009 was rejected by the MTA Capital Program Review Board, which includes state legislators, because it was not detailed enough.

While Republican leaders such as Vincent Leibell, a state senator from Westchester and Putnam counties who introduced a reform bill last month that would require public authorities to provide unfettered access to their records, were not critical of the new proposal, they also declined to endorse it.

The chairman of the Corporations, Authorities and Commissions Committee, Mr. Leibell said setting up a new oversight body risks creating a bureaucracy “that is, in itself, difficult to manage.”

He also said he wanted to make sure that other ideas for reforming the public authorities have a chance to come to the public’s attention. Last month, the governor created a panel composed of representatives of the Senate, Assembly, the comptroller, and the attorney general. It is headed by a corporate governance expert and Yale School of Management professor, Ira Millstein. While critics of the governor, such as Mr. Brodsky, criticized the Millstein Commission yesterday as lacking substance, a spokesman for Governor Pataki urged patience.

“We’re pleased that they’ve incorporated provisions that have already been advanced by the governor, and as the new, broadly inclusive, and nonpartisan Millstein Commission on Public Authority Reform begins its work, we anticipate that they will be looking at these and additional measures to continue improving New York’s public authorities,” Kevin Quinn said.

Local officials who have no statutory control of the regional authorities such as the MTA, which affect millions of city residents, welcomed the prospect of the MTA’s operations being less inscrutable. Last fall, the MTA created the MTA Bus Company, one of many subsidiaries, without any legislative approval, a move that local officials saw as emblematic of the authorities’ ability to sidestep review, a City Council member who is chairman of the Transportation Committee, John Liu, said.

“Public authorities concentrate too much power in a group of individuals who are not elected and aren’t held accountable,” said Mr. Liu, who welcomed yesterday’s proposed legislation.