The Transportation Bond Act would put New York State on the fast track to fiscal ruin and put pressure on taxpayers’ wallets, the Citizens Budget Commission said yesterday.

The bond act, Proposal 2 on November’s ballot, would authorize the state to borrow $2.9 billion toward maintenance and construction of its transportation infrastructure, particularly highways, bridges, and the subway system.

“New York State has serious infrastructure needs, but it already has too much debt,” the president of the New York-based independent watchdog group, Diana Fortuna, said. “The state must learn to finance needed infrastructure without placing an unreasonable debt burden on the taxpayers, both present and future.”

New York State has $46.7 billion in outstanding, state-funded debt, an $8 billion increase since 2000 and nearly $10 billion over affordable levels, according a report the commission released yesterday in tandem with its announcement of opposition to the bond act.

“If we wanted to build, … there are other ways to fund these things,” the commission’s director of research, Charles Brecher, said. “You have to pay for it in the short term.”

The bond act has attracted bipartisan support among lawmakers, with Governor Pataki, Mayor Bloomberg, and the Democratic candidate for mayor, Fernando Ferrer, all announcing they are in favor of it, as well as nonprofits such as the Regional Plan Association and the Partnership for New York.

“The proposed bond act falls into the category of affordable, or good, debt, because it is an investment that will continue paying dividends for years to come,” the president of the New York Building Congress, Richard Anderson, said.

A staff attorney for the Straphangers Campaign, Gene Russianoff, agreed. Asked about the burden of debt the proposal would place on the state, he said long-term capital investment is what state borrowing is for. “I’m hopeful that it will generate enough economic activity to pay for itself. … Infra structure enhances the economy.”

He added, “I’m probably one of the biggest transit critics in the city, but I’ve come to realize that unless you give the MTA more money to buy new cars and fix the track and so on, they can’t do anything about it. … If they don’t have the money, they can’t even try.”

The Citizens Budget Commission wants voters to send a message to Albany about its borrowing. Mr. Brecher said Albany has already authorized $13.2 billion of what is called “backdoor borrowing,” debt issued by state supported public authorities like the Thruway Authority and the Urban Development Corporation. Backdoor borrowing, Mr. Brecher said, not only circumvents debt caps required by the state constitution but also costs more than general obligation borrowing.

The commission advocates for constitutional debt reform to establish debt limits based on affordability and to apply those limits to all forms of state-backed borrowing. However, because backdoor borrowing is not subject to voter approval, voting against the bond act is “the only way voters can send a signal to Albany that they don’t want to take on debt the state – and therefore they, the taxpaying public – can’t afford,” Mr. Brecher said.