ALBANY -- Activists and municipal officials called on the governor and legislative leaders Tuesday to release $8 million for already approved projects to redevelop contaminated urban properties, and to reform the brownfield tax-credit program so subsidies are based on need.

Part of the state's brownfield-cleanup law, passed in 2003, provides money for community groups and municipalities to plan how they can revitalize neighborhoods with contaminated properties. Local officials and community representatives from around the state said Tuesday that funding for the program has been caught up in "bureaucratic limbo" because the release of millions of dollars requires that the leaders of the Assembly and Senate and the governor sign off on the grants.

Fifty-three projects have been waiting for a total of about $8 million, and there is at least $30 million more that hasn't been allocated that is also being held back, said Mathy Stanislaus, co-director of New Partners for Community Revitalization, a non-profit based in New York City. That money was approved during former Gov. George Pataki's administration.

"We don't understand why it has been held up. We understand that there are no substantive disagreements (between the parties) on it," Stanislaus said at a news conference.

"We can't see how anyone ... would be holding this up, holding up the progress of communities, the very communities that have identified the need to clean up and redevelop sites to meet community needs for jobs and affordable housing," he said.

Additional funds were approved in last year's budget and are included in Gov. Eliot Spitzer's proposed spending plan for next year. Dispensing that money doesn't require a signoff by the governor and legislative leaders. But, Stanislaus and other advocates said, the state departments of State and Environmental Conservation should not jointly administer the Brownfield Opportunity Area program; it should be one agency or the other.

There are tens of thousands of brownfields across the state. A previous agreement signed by the former governor and legislative leaders released Brownfield Opportunity Area program money for 50 communities.

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, D-Manhattan, said the issue is part of ongoing budget negotiations. "I'm not familiar with a logjam at all," he said.

Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, R-Brunswick, Rensselaer County, said the Senate Majority was reviewing the process, how the money is handed out and where it goes "to make sure that everybody's conforming. I believe in our house we're trying to expedite it a little bit." The governor's interest in changing the law on brownfields cleanup and redevelopment may be slowing things up, Bruno said.

A spokesman for Spitzer could not immediately be reached for comment.

Speakers at the news conference said they support a proposal in Spitzer's budget to cap tax credits in the Brownfields Cleanup Program and award the incentives to projects based on need. Developers are reimbursed between 10 percent and 22 percent of the total cost of cleanup and development of a site.

The tax credits have been criticized because some big developers claimed large tax credits. As a result, the Department of Environmental Conservation has limited the access to the credits. The Brownfield Cleanup Program provides oversight, liability protection and financial incentives to developers that voluntarily undertake the investigation, cleanup and redevelopment of a site and sign an agreement with the DEC.

The governor's budget proposal states that the "program has proven to be unsustainable in its current form. Millions of dollars of state tax benefits have gone to private developers for projects that would have been undertaken without state incentives." In many cases, millions of dollars in tax credits went to projects with minimal cleanup expenses, according to the proposal.

The success of the Brownfield Opportunity Area program relies a lot on the availability of tax credits, community leaders and officials said. Grants to the communities are for planning, and environmental and economic assessments.

"There needs to be an inducement for the private-property owners to get involved," Stanislaus said.

Since the Brownfield Opportunity Area program's inception, more than 100 different communities with nearly 8,000 individual brownfield sites have applied for grants.

Kingston is redeveloping its waterfront area and received initial funding to organize and explore site and market data, according to Stephen Finkle, director of economic development for the city. The city has applied for money to conduct an environmental review but has not received anything because funds are being held up, he said.

"In order to redevelop these areas ... we need to have these tools," he said.