E D I T O R I A L

For those who dream of a more open, competitive system of political representation in New York, the news seemed almost too good to be true.

In negotiations over a new state budget in early May, legislative leaders agreed to move forward with a new public campaign finance system that would reduce the influence of the deep-pocketed interests who have long bankrolled Albany’s legislative campaigns – and instead give a stronger voice to local, small-dollar donors.

Remarkably, the leaders of the Democratic majorities in the state Senate and Assembly agreed to go ahead with this new system of public financing even though some of their members had been grumbling for months that it could make their re-election bids more difficult.

But now it’s turning out that it was all too good to be true. Last month, moving swiftly before the legislative session wrapped up on June 9, both the Senate and Assembly passed a package of amendments to the new campaign finance system that don’t just weaken it but turn it on its head. The changes actually would make the new public financing program far worse than no reform at all.

As this issue heads to press, a chorus of good-government groups is calling on Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul to veto the amendments bill. If she allows it to become law, she will be creating what Republican state Sen. George Borrello of Chautauqua County aptly called “an incumbency welfare program.”

The new public financing system, as a story in our June issue detailed, started out as a major victory for government reform advocates who wanted to counter the powerful influence of wealthy and corporate interests in state campaigns.

Last year, an analysis by two nonpartisan groups found that people who contributed $250 or less to New York’s state legislative campaigns accounted for just 11 percent of total campaign donations in 2022, or $13.5 million, while the 200 largest donors alone contributed nearly $16 million.

To counter that imbalance, the new public financing system was designed to provide taxpayer matching funds, allocated through a voluntary check-off box on state tax returns, that would be heavily weighted to boost the impact of small donors. For individual contributions up to $250 from within a legislative district, the program would provide $12 in public matching funds for every dollar of the first $50 contributed, $9 for every dollar of the next $100 contributed, and $8 for every dollar of the next $100.

Under the system as originally approved, donors who contributed more than $250 to a campaign would not have any amount of their contribution matched. The most insidious of the bad amendments passed in June would change that and instead provide matching funds for the first $250 of any contribution, no matter how large.

The lawmakers who supported this change have cast it as a matter of fairness, but a little math quickly reveals how bogus that argument is.

Consider: Under the original program, a person who contributed to $50 to a local state Senate candidate would see their contribution matched by $600 in public funds, while a donor contributing $10,000 would receive no match.
Under the new amendments, the $50 donation would still receive a $600 match, but the $10,000 donation receive a $2,300 match in public funds.

That change alone would take a promising reform and turn it into a taxpayer-funded tool to tighten the grip of incumbents and the special interests that now rule Albany. It is an outrage.