If he walks like the proverbial duck, and quacks like him, is he a duck? Taken another way, is Andrew Cuomo becoming a member-item man?

Everybody knows that member items — political pork — are a corruption vector.

At best, they are taxpayer-funded constituent bribes, meant to aid incumbents.

Then there’s ex-state Sen. Pedro Espada, now on trial for diverting member items to his own bottom line. He ain’t unique.

Cuomo has pretty much abolished member items at the legislative level — and good for him.

But now he wants to sprinkle millions in “economic-development grants” around the state on his own say-so.

Member items for the governor, you ask?

Shut your mouth!

The grants are to be shuffled out as part of a “competitive process based on need,” insists Gov. Mallard, er, Cuomo.

Meanwhile, legendary member-item maven Sheldon Silver, the Assembly speaker, is taking a pork-by-any-other-name approach: “There doesn’t have to be member items if [a dialogue on individual district needs] can take place among members of the administration and members of the Legislature,” Silver says. So, don’t call them member items, but “dialogued items”?

Whatever: To hell with them.

Three straight budgets have passed now, essentially absent member items. There’s no public outcry to reinstate them.

Leave it that way.