Is Cuomo's "Public Financing" Plan a Sham? Yes, Says NYS Comptroller Di Napoli
As promised... from yesterday's NYT:
>>>>“What they did is take something well-intentioned,” Mr. DiNapoli said in an unusually blunt interview, “and hijacked it for their own short-term purposes, very much at my expense.”
On its face, the new public financing law, enacted March 31 as part of the state budget, uses this year’s comptroller’s race as a trial run for public campaign financing. Emphasizing small-dollar donations, it provides six-to-one matches for individual gifts of up to $175; requires candidates to generate at least $200,000 in donations that qualify for the match from at least 2,000 donations of $10 to $75 from residents of New York State; and caps individual donations at $6,000.
Existing state campaign finance limits, which are among the nation’s highest, allow individual donations of up to $60,800 for statewide races.
Governor Cuomo heralded the new rules as “the largest single advancement” lawmakers had made in public campaign finance in 30 years.
As it happens, testing out public financing on the race for state comptroller was Mr. DiNapoli’s own idea. But his office says his proposal would have taken effect with the 2018 election, not now.
Mr. DiNapoli said the new law differed from his proposal in other troubling ways: The much-criticized Board of Elections was put in charge, and the money for matching funds is to come from the state’s unclaimed property, which Mr. DiNapoli’s office is entrusted with returning to its rightful owners, a direct conflict of interest.
>>> the entire article:http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/07/nyregion/comptroller-to-forgo-financing-by-public.html?_r=0
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