HARRISBURG — Gov. Tom Corbett’s administration has approved more than $48 million in pet-project grant money requested by state legislators before he took office, even though Corbett had vowed during his campaign to end such grants dubbed WAMs for “walking-around money.”

A spokesman for Corbett’s Department of Community and Economic Development said Thursday that the requests were originally submitted under Democratic former Gov. Ed Rendell.

The spokesman, Steve Kratz, told The Associated Press the new Republican administration felt an obligation to honor commitments made by Rendell to approve the grants, even if the applications were not sealed with a contract. The administration had an obligation to approve others that had signed contracts, Kratz said.

No applications submitted after Corbett was sworn in Jan. 18 are being processed, he said.

The grants are typically open to applications from local government agencies and nonprofit groups, and applications must meet certain guidelines. However, approval of an application under Rendell also tended to be contingent on whether a top legislator recommended it to the governor’s office — a practice that some critics of WAMs, including Tim Potts of Democracy Rising Pa., say violates the constitutional separation of powers.

All told, the Corbett administration provided a list of more than 1,200 grant applications it was approving from programs housed in the department. The biggest grant was for $5 million for a nonprofit-run statewide program called the Fresh Food Financing Initiative that helps finance supermarkets, grocery stores, farmers markets and other food outlets where communities are underserved, according to project details provided by the department. The grant was originally requested by House Democrats.

Three projects are supposed to get $1 million, including the Ogontz Avenue Revitalization Corp., a nonprofit group in the Philadelphia district of Rep. Dwight Evans. Evans was the House Appropriations Committee chairman until November, when his fellow House Democrats elected challenger Joe Markosek of Allegheny County to take over the powerful post.

The money is spent on everything from ball fields and festivals to police cruisers and youth sports equipment. The minimum grant amount is $5,000.

The grants have existed in one form or another for at least a couple of decades, built around the concept of providing the Legislature with a pot of money to spend as it sees fit. Legislators have sent the governor’s office requests for more than $270 million in grant money since July 1, 2008, according to an AP analysis of documents released by the Rendell administration.

That’s an average of more than $1 million for each of the state’s 253 House and Senate districts over three years.

In his successful campaign for governor, Corbett aired a TV ad attacking WAMs, in which he said, “The first thing we’re going to do is put a stake in the heart of the WAMs program. Millions of dollars spent on legislative pet projects with little oversight.”

Kratz said the fact that the remaining $25.7 million balance of current-year funding for the programs is being moved into a reserve account shows Corbett’s commitment to ridding the state of the practice. Another $29.4 million rolled over from the previous year is being used to help pay for the grants, he said.

Corbett’s 2011-12 budget does not include any money for the grants in the fiscal year beginning July 1, Kratz said. Rendell routinely slashed money for the grants out of his budgets, but he typically agreed later in closed-door negotiations with top lawmakers to reinsert money for their requests.