Watchdog to State Ethics Commission: Speed Up Disclosure of Lobbying Ads

Good morning, members and staff of the Commission on Ethics and Lobbying in Government (COELIG). My name is Kyle Kennedy, and I am the Legislative Program Manager for Reinvent Albany. We advocate for a more transparent and accountable government in New York.

We appreciate COELIG’s ongoing efforts to issue rules and act administratively to strengthen ethics and transparency. We are also glad to see several bills from your legislative agenda pass this session or be enacted in the state budget, and we urge the Governor to sign the bills that are still on her desk. These bills do a number of helpful things, including publishing candidate financial disclosures, improving lobbyist training compliance, and requiring electronic filing of all lobbying filings.

However, as everyone at COELIG knows, there is still an enormous amount of work to do to ensure New York State government has the public’s trust and is free from conflicts of interest and the pervasive influence of big money special interests. 

Today, we urge you to add three already active bills to your next legislative agenda: 

1. S4197-A (Gounardes) / A6201-A (Kelles) – Codifies harassment and discrimination in the code of ethics. This bill has sponsors in both houses, is consistent with your goals, and has a good chance of advancing with your support.
2. S9577-B (Mayer) / A9559 (Rajkumar) – Requires lobbyists to disclose their support or opposition for bills when they disclose lobbying public officials.
3. S374 (Gianaris) / A7456 (McDonald) – Requires disclosing lobbying related to Senate confirmation votes. 

We also urge you to call for new legislation that:

1. Requires more timely disclosure for advertisements by lobbyists on behalf of their clients. 
2. Changes COELIG’s voting rules to require a majority vote of appointed members, not a majority of seats.

Sadly, public trust in government is declining to historic lows. This is probably driven in part because of the egregious corruption and self-dealing by national leaders, but it is also because New Yorkers can clearly see how powerful wealthy special interests in Albany regularly steamroll the public interest. It does not have to be this way. COELIG can help restore public trust in government, brick by brick, by supporting the everyday ethics and transparency improvements we have presented here today.

Our comments below expand on the five legislative recommendations – three for existing bills, and two that do not yet have bills – we are making and clarify our rationale for encouraging you to support these policies.

Comments on Specific Recommendations and Proposals

1. S4197-A (Gounardes) / A6201-A (Kelles) – Amends State Code of Ethics to Explicitly Prohibit Harassment and Discrimination

We are glad to see COELIG supports adding sexual harassment to the NYS Code of Ethics. However, we ask COELIG to support S4197-A / A6201-A because it includes both sexual harassment and discrimination as ethics violations, and is already supported by legislators and advocates. Both harassment and discrimination are often intrinsically linked to abuses of power within the context of government, and we believe it is within the scope of COELIG’s responsibilities to stem those abuses.

This is the approach taken in the rules of ethics for lawyers, which makes discriminatory conduct a ground for disbarment. We understand that inclusion of discrimination may drive more complaints to COELIG (though we note sexual harassment has already been established as an ethical violation/abuse of power in prior enforcement actions), and accordingly support increased resources for COELIG. We urge you to add this to your legislative agenda.

2. S9577-B (Mayer) / A9559 (Rajkumar) – Requires Lobbyists to Report Support or Opposition to Legislation

The purpose of lobbying disclosure is to give the public insight into who is trying to influence their government, and that insight is greatly diminished if the public does not know whether the lobbying was supporting or opposing a law, regulation, or other government action. This bill would address this knowledge gap by requiring lobbyists to report the disposition of their activity in four categories:

• Support
• Support with Proposed Amendments
• Oppose
• Oppose without Proposed Amendments

This would align New York with many other states that require similar reporting from lobbyists, including Idaho, Montana, Colorado, and Nebraska. This legislation – which passed the State Senate this year – mirrors the proposed legislation we included in our 2024 testimony to you, and we strongly urge you to add it to your legislative agenda.

3. S374 (Gianaris) / A7456 (McDonald) – Discloses Lobbying Activities for Confirmation or Nomination of Persons to State Office

The State Senate is responsible for confirming appointments to some of the most powerful and influential positions in state government, including appeals court judges, agency commissioners, and MTA board members. It makes no sense that lobbying activity related to confirmation votes is not subject to disclosure, leaving the public entirely in the dark about who is trying to influence appointments to these incredibly consequential positions. 

This bill closes this loophole by requiring lobbyists to report their activity related to confirmation votes. The bill was amended in 2024 to no longer be retroactive following a veto by Governor Hochul in 2023. We urge COELIG to include this bill in its legislative agenda.

4. Strengthen Disclosure Requirements for Lobbyist Ads

New Yorkers should be able to know who is paying for a lobbying advertisement when they see it, not months later.

Under the current lobbying disclosure system, there can be a substantial delay between when the public sees an advertisement intended to influence government action and when information about who paid for that advertisement becomes publicly available. In some cases, as much as six months can pass between an advertisement’s first distribution and the public release of the related Source of Funding report.

That delay undermines the purpose of disclosure. By the time the public learns who funded a lobbying campaign, the advertisement may have stopped running, the public debate may have moved on, or the government decision it sought to influence may already have been made. New Yorkers seeing messages urging them to contact elected officials or government agencies should not have to wait months to learn who is paying for those messages.

We recommend that COELIG establish stronger and more timely disclosure requirements for lobbying advertisements. Attached to our testimony is a detailed proposal modeled in part on the New York City Campaign Finance Board’s (CFB) disclosure system for advertisements by independent spenders.

Below is a summary of the key points of our proposal, which builds upon the current Source of Funding disclosure framework:

• Who Reports: Lobbyists would report advertisements they place on behalf of clients. Clients, other than 501(c)(3) nonprofits, would disclose the sources of funding for those advertisements.
• Reporting Thresholds: Advertisements costing $10,000 or more would trigger disclosure, as would contributions of $2,500 or more used to fund them.
• Timely Disclosure: Reports would be filed within one week of an advertisement’s distribution, so information is available while the lobbying campaign is still relevant.
• Meaningful Contributor Information: Source of Funding disclosures would include the information already required by law, along with additional information designed to trace funding back to an actual person rather than stopping at an intermediary entity.
• On-Ad Disclaimers: Lobbying advertisements would include a clear “paid for by” notice identifying the five largest contributors funding the group behind the advertisement.
• A Public Database of Advertisements: COELIG would create a searchable, visual database where New Yorkers could see lobbying advertisements and easily identify who paid for them, similar to the database maintained by the CFB. We recognize that building and maintaining such a system would require additional resources, and we support providing COELIG with the necessary funding.

This proposal is based on a straightforward principle: disclosure should happen while major lobbying efforts are occurring. If an organization spends substantial sums to influence government action through advertising, New Yorkers should be able to quickly and easily see who is behind that effort. More details about this proposal, as well as a summary of practices in other states, are in the Appendix.

5. Change Voting Rules to Address Vacancies

Executive Law § 94 effectively requires six votes for COELIG to take action, even when seats on the 11-member commission are vacant. The result is that every vacancy gives a smaller minority of sitting commissioners greater power to block Commission action. This is not a hypothetical problem. COELIG has operated with at least one vacancy since its creation, meaning vacancies have affected the Commission throughout its existence.

We strongly support Harassment Free NY’s proposal to amend the law so that a “majority vote” means a majority of the commissioners who are currently appointed and not recused from the matter before the Commission.

This is a narrow, commonsense technical correction to a structural problem with real-world consequences. An empty seat cannot vote, so an empty seat should not be counted when determining a majority of votes.

Click here to view the full testimony with the appendix as a PDF.