Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg is dropping a reported $5 million on a media blitz to help Gov. Kathy Hochul beat back lefty opposition to her charter cap-lifting, bail law toughening proposed budget ahead of an April 1 deadline.

“Gov. Kathy Hochul is working to ‘fix bail reform,'” reads one of several Facebook ads posted by a shadowy group called American Opportunity, which could not be reached for comment by publication time.

The group is running TV and digital ads plugging gubernatorial proposals on issues like housing, school funding and child care while noting that she also opposes raising income taxes – notable contracts with the Democratic supermajorities in the state Senate and Assembly who are pushing for more social spending and higher taxes on the wealthy in a final budget deal.

Bloomberg, who made billions in the private sector before entering politics, cultivated a reputation as a technocratic centrist and a boogeyman of the political left during his three terms as mayor.

News of the three-term mayor’s entrance into the state budget process was reported Tuesday by The New York Times as budget negotiations heat up between Hochul, Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie (D-Bronx) and state Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins (D-Yonkers).

A PR campaign could help the embattled governor mobilize public opinion against the Democratic supermajorities that oppose her push to overhaul cash bail laws amid rising crime to make it easier for judges to lock up criminal defendants ahead of their trials.

Hochul is also pushing a record-high $227 billion proposed budget that includes making the state charter school cap statewide — allowing New York City’s cap to effectively be lifted — is billions less than the draft spending plans backed by Democratic legislators, who are proposing to raise taxes for people making more than $5 million to fund a range of new spending.

“Governor Hochul’s Executive Budget makes transformative investments to make New York more affordable, more livable and safer, and we welcome support for those proposals,” Hochul spokeswoman Hazel Crampton-Hays said.

But the financial support from Bloomberg is raising eyebrows in state political circles after the Albany Times Union reported Tuesday that American Opportunity, which has ties to the Democratic Governors Association, is engaging in the budgetary expert even though it is registered as a social-welfare nonprofit organization with the federal government.

That status is supposed to block the DC-based group, which appears to be unregistered in New York, from engaging in politics as its main focus.

And the fact that the Bloomberg cash was hidden from public view prior to the Times report has government watchdogs barking about a lax campaign finance system.

“There are only a few enforcement people at the state Board of Elections and they’re hamstrung, deliberately hamstrung by rules, and there’s not very many of them to start with,” John Kaehny, executive director of Reinvent Albany, said. “So there are lots and lots of laws and rules that are barely enforced, and even then they’re full of loopholes.”

“The reports out of the Buffalo News and Times Union today demonstrate an ongoing and concerning trend of unaccountable money in politics,” Susan Lerner, executive director of Common Cause/NY, added.

An influx of money, and the digital and TV ads it buys, might help Hochul score victories over the political left in budget negotiations, it is already undermining her vows to remake Albany as a more transparent and accountable place since replacing disgraced ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo following his 2021 resignation.

“Voters deserve transparency, not the litany of end-runs around their right to know who is supporting campaigns and campaign materials,” Lerner said. “New Yorkers shouldn’t have to tolerate coy dodges from Party Leaders and the people running American Opportunity; they deserve answers.”