[EL] NYC system a model?
Mark Schmitt
schmitt.mark at gmail.com
Fri Mar 9 11:13:08 PST 2012
It's not the public financing system's fault that New York is a
one-party city, except at the mayoral level, which creates a problem for
competitiveness.
Still, in the 2009 primary, six incumbents were defeated outright. And
almost all races are competitive, with multiple strong candidates for
open seats, and challengers who get a significant percentage even
against major incumbents such as Christine Quinn, who won with 55% of
the vote. (When I lived in Brooklyn in 2001, we had six good candidates
to choose from.) That's a much better record than the New York state
legislature, where neither primaries nor general elections are remotely
competitive. And there's no public financing there. At least not yet.
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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