[EL] NYC system a model?

Fri Mar 9 10:56:25 PST 2012

New York City's public finance system has most certainly increased 
competition in local elections, where council campaigns are still shoe 
leather labor-intensive and not overly reliant on expensive paid media.  
In 1991, in one of the first local elections run under the system, there 
were 239 candidates on the ballot (for 51 newly drawn council seats), 
136 (or 57 percent) of whom elected to join the campaign finance 
program.  This represented a four-fold increase in the number of council 
candidates on the 1989 ballot participating in the program's first 
election, when just 33 council candidates (or 34 percent) on the ballot 
participated in the program.  The 1991 election for city council 
followed a court-ordered redistricting that expanded the number of 
council districts by 16; only a small portion of the explosion in the 
number of candidates running for city council and electing to 
participate in the city's campaign finance program in 1991 can 
reasonably attributed to the increase in open seats.

The problem is, mayoral campaigns notwithstanding, competition in local 
elections is all within the Democratic party.  New York City voters are 
willing to elect mayors claiming the Republican mantle, especially if 
those Republicans are willing to spend over a quarter of a billion 
dollars of their own money running for office, as Michael Bloomberg has 
done.  But long-standing GOP atrophy at the local level means 
Republicans are not only not competitive in council races, they 
sometimes don't even bother to run for office.  The campaign finance 
system has nothing to do with this.

On 3/9/2012 12:50 PM, Smith, Brad wrote:
>
> It is, at best, debatable whether tax financed elections lead to more 
> competition in any meaningful sense. But either way New York City's 
> system, the particular item of discussion today, is a particularly 
> poor example for that contention, which may be why it doesn't 
> even rate a mention in that section of the Brennan Center report Mark 
> cites.
>
> /Bradley A. Smith/
>
> /Josiah H. Blackmore II/Shirley M. Nault/
>
> /   Professor of Law/
>
> /Capital University Law School/
>
> /303 E. Broad St./
>
> /Columbus, OH 43215/
>
> /614.236.6317/
>
> /http://law.capital.edu/faculty/bios/bsmith.aspx/
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *From:* Mark Schmitt [schmitt.mark at gmail.com]
> *Sent:* Friday, March 09, 2012 11:36 AM
> *To:* Smith, Brad
> *Subject:* Re: [EL] NYC system a model?
>
> There are a number of other stated benefits of publicly financed 
> campaigns, such as increasing competition, which they have been shown 
> to achieve. Competition in turn helps voters to remove elected 
> officials who they consider corrupt, or inept, without waiting for a 
> prosecutor to amass enough evidence.  See this report from Brennan: 
> http://www.brennancenter.org/content/resource/more_than_combating_corruption_the_other_benefits_of_public_financing/
>
> And if the argument is about overall corruption in public-financing 
> jurisdictions, you need not only a real measure of the total level of 
> corruption (more than just "case studies") but also a baseline for the 
> level of corruption in that jurisdiction pre-public financing. Most of 
> the systems were enacted in response to major state- or city-wide 
> scandals in which lots of people went to jail: Gov. Rowland in CT, the 
> late-Koch administration scandals in NYC, and the procession of 
> massive scandals in Arizona in the 1990s, from Meachm and AZ-scam 
> through Fife Symington's conviction, that took down two governors and 
> dozens of legislators. So all the systems are starting from a pretty 
> high baseline level of corruption.
>
> And then, in trying to measure the amount of corruption, you need to 
> make sure you're not just seeing more of it because there's better 
> enforcement. But there is tighter enforcement in public financing 
> systems, so more petty corruption is likely to get caught.
>
> /Mark
>
>
> On 3/9/2012 8:17 AM, Smith, Brad wrote:
>>
>> Mark's criteria strikes me as rather rigged criteria for measuring 
>> success. Tax financed elections are supposed to reduce corruption. 
>> But when there remain numerous episodes of corruption, we're told 
>> we can't count that as a failure of tax financing unless the 
>> corruption specifically involves violation of the tax financing 
>> system rules.
>>
>> Applying that logic to traditional systems of voluntary financing, we 
>> would only find corruption when someone specifically broke the rules 
>> regulating the campaign finance system - making corruption rare, indeed.
>>
>> What we prefer to look for is evidence that tax financed systems 
>> acheive their stated goals, and typically stated as a primary goal is 
>> limiting corruption. The record is very weak. There are probably few 
>> governing bodies in the country more plagued by corruption than the 
>> NYC Council. Unless having a tax financed system is in and of itself 
>> the goal, regardless of whether it leads to better government, it's 
>> hard to see why New York's system would be a model anyone would want 
>> to import.
>>
>> /Bradley A. Smith/
>>
>> /Josiah H. Blackmore II/Shirley M. Nault/
>>
>> /   Professor of Law/
>>
>> /Capital University Law School/
>>
>> /303 E. Broad St./
>>
>> /Columbus, OH 43215/
>>
>> /614.236.6317/
>>
>> /http://law.capital.edu/faculty/bios/bsmith.aspx/
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> *From:* law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu 
>> [law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] on behalf of Mark 
>> Schmitt [schmitt.mark at gmail.com]
>> *Sent:* Friday, March 09, 2012 12:15 AM
>> *To:* law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
>> *Subject:* Re: [EL] NYC system a model?
>>
>> For all the "multitudes," Liu seems to be the only case that's mainly 
>> about fraud or corruption in the public financing system itself. The 
>> others are perhaps waste (use of campaign funds, from both public and 
>> private sources, after the election), or corrupt pols like Larry 
>> Seabrook who had been stealing money from every pot available (mainly 
>> putting council money through nonprofits he controlled, which is the 
>> classic NYC model) for three decades, and who also happened to 
>> participate in the public funding system. Seabrook, Pedro Espada, etc 
>> were crooks long before there was public financing.
>>
>> The Center for Competitive Politics "case studies" of Arizona, NY and 
>> Maine are mostly similar -- How is the Fiesta Bowl scandal a 
>> public-financing scandal? A bunch of politicians received reimbursed 
>> contributions that were illegal under state and federal law. The 
>> recipients included state officials who participated in the system, 
>> some who hadn't, and some who were federal electeds who weren't even 
>> eligible.
>>
>> Most of these incidents, especially those in New York, were caught 
>> and prosecuted because good public financing systems have, or should 
>> have, really capable, tough enforcement agencies. The New York City 
>> Campaign Finance Board has won all kinds of awards from the Council 
>> on Government Ethics Laws, and candidates consider the board 
>> merciless. If the FEC were one-third as independent and competent as 
>> the NYC CFB, we'd probably see a lot more identifiable corruption in 
>> federal politics, because they'd be acting on many more complaints.
>>
>> The alternative hypothesis that better fits the NYC and other "case 
>> studies" would be that, in states and cities that have public 
>> financing, there's more public support for strong and independent 
>> enforcement agencies, because they are safeguarding public dollars. 
>> And therefore, much more misuse of funds and corruption is caught and 
>> known.
>>
>> /Mark Schmitt
>>
>> (I think this is my first post to this list, but I'm a longtime 
>> reader, and sometimes write on campaign finance at TNR and elsewhere.)
>>
>>
>> Mark Schmitt
>> Senior Fellow, The Roosevelt Institute 
>> <http://www.rooseveltinstitute.org/>
>> 202/246-2350
>> gchat or Skype: schmitt.mark
>> twitter: mschmitt9
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On 3/8/2012 12:57 PM, Bill Maurer wrote:
>>>
>>> Good point.  I guess like Walt Whitman, the NYC model for 
>>> corruption, fraud, waste and abuse is large.  It contains 
>>> multitudes.  They can’t all fit in 650 words.
>>>
>>> *From:*Smith, Brad [mailto:BSmith at law.capital.edu]
>>> *Sent:* Thursday, March 08, 2012 9:54 AM
>>> *To:* Bill Maurer; law-election at UCI.edu <mailto:law-election at UCI.edu>
>>> *Subject:* RE: NYC system a model?
>>>
>>> Hey, I'm sure they gave Allison 650 words or so. There are limits.
>>>
>>> /Bradley A. Smith/
>>>
>>> /Josiah H. Blackmore II/Shirley M. Nault/
>>>
>>> /   Professor of Law/
>>>
>>> /Capital University Law School/
>>>
>>> /303 E. Broad St./
>>>
>>> /Columbus, OH 43215/
>>>
>>> /614.236.6317 <tel:614.236.6317>/
>>>
>>> /http://law.capital.edu/faculty/bios/bsmith.aspx/
>>>
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>
>>> *From:*Bill Maurer [wmaurer at ij.org <mailto:wmaurer at ij.org>]
>>> *Sent:* Thursday, March 08, 2012 12:44 PM
>>> *To:* Smith, Brad; law-election at UCI.edu <mailto:law-election at UCI.edu>
>>> *Subject:* RE: NYC system a model?
>>>
>>> Brad,
>>>
>>> You’re selling the New York system short.  It has so many more 
>>> avenues for waste and abuse than just those.
>>>
>>> http://www.makenolaw.org/blog/8-government/187-fighting-corruption-by-getting-the-taxpayer-to-pay-your-parking-tickets
>>>
>>> Bill
>>>
>>> *From:*law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu 
>>> <mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu> 
>>> [mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] 
>>> <mailto:[mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu]> *On 
>>> Behalf Of *Smith, Brad
>>> *Sent:* Thursday, March 08, 2012 8:05 AM
>>> *To:* law-election at UCI.edu <mailto:law-election at UCI.edu>
>>> *Subject:* Re: [EL] NYC system a model?
>>>
>>> Ironic that the CFI report should coincide with recent news about 
>>> more corruption in New York City's tax financed system for 
>>> campaigns. See 
>>> http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/unclean_elections_xC5dUPJXIhx5tStDvjARnN#ixzz1oUzlTHh4. 
>>>
>>>
>>> "The arrest of Hou — accused of using straw donors to trigger more 
>>> matching funds from taxpayers — is merely the latest shoe to drop.
>>>
>>> Yet Liu is far from unique. The numerous abuses include everything 
>>> from City Council candidates collecting public funds for “races” 
>>> that weren’t seriously contested, to labor unions being accused of 
>>> illegally coordinating efforts with candidates."
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Read more: 
>>> http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/unclean_elections_xC5dUPJXIhx5tStDvjARnN#ixzz1oXeyAINm
>>>
>>> /Bradley A. Smith/
>>>
>>> /Josiah H. Blackmore II/Shirley M. Nault/
>>>
>>> /   Professor of Law/
>>>
>>> /Capital University Law School/
>>>
>>> /303 E. Broad St./
>>>
>>> /Columbus, OH 43215/
>>>
>>> /614.236.6317 <tel:614.236.6317>/
>>>
>>> /http://law.capital.edu/faculty/bios/bsmith.aspx/
>>>
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>
>>> *From:*law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu 
>>> <mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu> 
>>> [law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu 
>>> <mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu>] on behalf of 
>>> Rick Hasen [rhasen at law.uci.edu <mailto:rhasen at law.uci.edu>]
>>> *Sent:* Thursday, March 08, 2012 11:00 AM
>>> *To:* law-election at UCI.edu <mailto:law-election at UCI.edu>
>>> *Subject:* [EL] ELB News and Commentary 3/8/12
>>>
>>>
>>>     “‘Small Donors, Big Democracy: New York City’s Matching Funds as
>>>     a Model for the Nation and States’ published in Election Law
>>>     Journal” <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=31225>
>>>
>>> Posted onMarch 8, 2012 7:53 am <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=31225> 
>>> by Rick Hasen <http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
>>>
>>> See this press release 
>>> <http://www.cfinst.org/Press/PReleases/12-03-08/%E2%80%9CSmall_Donors_Big_Democracy_New_York_City%E2%80%99s_Matching_Funds_as_a_Model_for_the_Nation_and_States%E2%80%9D_published_in_Election_Law_Journal.aspx>.
>>>
>>> <http://www.addtoany.com/share_save#url=http%3A%2F%2Felectionlawblog.org%2F%3Fp%3D31225&title=%E2%80%9C%E2%80%98Small%20Donors%2C%20Big%20Democracy%3A%20New%20York%20City%E2%80%99s%20Matching%20Funds%20as%20a%20Model%20for%20the%20Nation%20and%20States%E2%80%99%20published%20in%20Election%2>
>>>
>>> Posted incampaign finance <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10> 
>>> |Comments Off
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
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