After years of helping hide Albany corruption, a band of loose-cannon bureaucrats has taken on a new mission: “regulating” the First Amendment.

The state Joint Commission on Public Ethics just passed an absurd rule ordering anyone paid to talk to editorial boards about public issues to register in Albany as a lobbyist.

“Any attempt by a consultant to induce a third-party — whether the public or the press — to deliver the client’s lobbying message to a public official would constitute lobbying,” says the new JCOPE rule.

Specifically, a consultant “who contacts a media outlet in an attempt to get it to advance the client’s message in an editorial would also be delivering a message,” even if indirectly. JCOPE boss Daniel Horwitz calls this “reasonable regulation of speech.”

Sorry, Dan: You and your fellow apparatchiks can go pound sand — and every news outlet and consultant should tell you so.

Albany isn’t the Kremlin. New Yorkers, paid or unpaid, have every right to discuss public issues with editorial boards or anyone else they choose. And it’s none of anyone’s damn business if they do.

Freedom of speech is the heart of democracy — and it’s protected by the Constitution. That’s why even left-leaning civil-rights groups, like the New York Civil Liberties Union, are livid.

“Requiring someone to report every conversation with an editorial writer is intimidating to both journalists and advocates,” says NYCLU head Donna Lieberman.

First Amendment expert Ken Paulson, a former president of the American Society of News Editors, calls the rule “unwise” and “unworkable.” New York Press Association director Michelle Rea calls it “dangerous.”

Nor would the rule address any of the corruption that JCOPE has allowed to flourish since it was created to police politicians’ wrongdoing five years ago.

Hmm, maybe that’s the point: Make it seem like JCOPE is doing its job, while Albany continues its corruption-as-usual.

Something needs regulating, all right: this out-of-control panel — JCOPE.