Reinvent Albany Recommends Incentivizing Small Donor Campaign Fundraising to Mayor’s Charter Revision Commission

Testimony to the 2018 NYC Charter Revision Commission on Campaign Finance Recommendations in the Preliminary Report

July 25, 2018

Good afternoon Chair Perales and members of the Charter Revision Commission. I am Alex Camarda, Senior Policy Advisor for Reinvent Albany. Reinvent Albany advocates for transparency and accountability in State government, and are leading champions for transparency in New York City government, especially strengthening open data and the Freedom of Information Law.

Reinvent Albany has testified previously before this commission on ​campaign finance reform​, ​city-affiliated nonprofit regulation​, ​instant runoff voting​, and ​redistricting​.

Tonight we conclude our testimony by commenting on specific issues raised in the ​2018 NYC Charter Revision Commission Preliminary Staff Report​.

Campaign Finance Reform

The Cap on Matching Funds
Reinvent Albany believes the public match cap, currently 55 percent of the spending limit for the office, should be raised to 85 percent of the spending limit for the office (effectively lifting the cap altogether except when the spending cap is lifted in response to a non-participating candidate and assuming the current $6:$1 match rate).

We do not believe the 65 percent threshold is high enough for Council races, which would only result in a maximum of $19,000 in additional public funds or 15 additional contributions of $175 matched at a rate of $6:$1. Thirty percent of Council candidates hit the public match cap in during the 2017 primary demonstrating the cap is too low.

We agree with the CFB’s concern about public funds being provided in early August, six weeks before a primary as being too late in the race for a candidate who is mostly relying on public funds. We believe the solution to this issue is not to minimize raising the public match cap but rather to change the distribution of public funds. We support an earlier distribution of public funds irrespective of the public fund cap issue because campaigns begin at least several months before Election Day, not six weeks. If we are serious about candidates relying more heavily on public funds as Mayor de Blasio laid out in his State of the City speech this year, the date and the amount of public funds distributed must be addressed.

We are flexible about how the distribution date is changed but recommend the following options:

1)  Raise the existing early payment to up to 50 percent of the public match cap for the office, depending upon how much candidates are eligible for in public funds..3 Currently the early payment, distributed two weeks prior to the last day of petitioning, is no more than about 6 percent of the public funds cap for any office — which is miniscule.

2)  Untether the distribution of public funds from the finalization of the ballot.

a)  Candidates should receive up to half their public funds in the year of the election once they qualify for the public matching program and an opposing candidate has registered a political committee declaring they are running for the office.

b)  Candidates should receive up to half their public funds once they individually raise or spend 1⁄4 of the spending limit for the office and if another candidate has registered a political committee declaring they are running for the office.

We do not believe the last proposal runs afoul of Supreme Court rulings in Arizona Free Enterprise Fund v. Bennett ​and ​McComish v. Bennett because the public funds being granted to the candidate are based on the candidate raising and spending his or her own funds and their having an opponent on the ballot, but not their opponents’ speech as measured by their opponent raising or spending campaign funds. Therefore it cannot have a chilling effect on their opponents’ speech. We also believe candidates who raise or spend this level of funds typically make the ballot anyway so the CFB will not often have to claw back funds unless their opponent drops out.