New York State’s new campaign finance system is ripe for fraud and abuse.
Ahead of the June 25 primary election, the state’s Public Campaign Finance Commission awarded more than $8.6 million in matching funds to 69 state legislative candidates, with no real guardrails to prevent shady candidates from defrauding taxpayers.
This commission appears to be just as incompetent as the Cannabis Control Board, which, not coincidentally, was also established under Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
In the spirit of responsible local journalism, the New York Times reported that Dao Ying, a Flushing Democrat running for state Assembly, Used straw donner Cheating the system $162,800 With taxpayer funded matching funds.
Not surprisingly, New York State funds one of the most generous statewide public matching funds programs in the nation: Every $50 donation earns you $600 in public funding, up to a maximum of $250 donations that earns you $1,800.
For contributions from legislative district residents between $5 and $250, the first $50 will be matched 12 times, the next $100 will be matched 9 times, and the next $100 will be matched 8 times.
And the board’s “oversight” doesn’t seem to do much more than send out checks.
When The Times examined Yoon’s donation card, it found numerous red flags.
- At least 48 alleged donors said they had never heard of Yoon, denied making the donations and claimed signatures were forged, while some said they no longer lived at the addresses listed.
- About $28,000 in cash came from small donors.
- The majority of his contributions, 80 percent, were cash, about 15 times the average cash percentage of contributions made by state legislative candidates who participate in the program.
- Multiple “donor” records are missing important required contact information or have other errors.
- Dao Ying was the campaign finance manager and fundraising director. and candidate.
The board’s liaison to Yoon’s camp was unaware of all this and took Yoon at his word that he had sent so-called “good faith” letters to verify suspicious donors.
In fairness, the city’s campaign finance commission may have been similarly lax: More than $1 million was raised in the 2020 borough president race and the 2021 city council election. city Matching funds.
(With the 2025 election season approaching, the City Council will also need to complete an audit of the 2023 City Council elections.)
The folly of the nation was present from the beginning.
According to an April 2018 Siena poll, nearly two-thirds of New York voters oppose public funding of state elections, which they say would cost at least an estimated $100 million every two years.
But Governor Cuomo and the state legislature went ahead with the plan anyway, and in March 2019, they created a committee to design the system.
They packed the committee with political activists, including election lawyer and former de Blasio fixer Henry Berger and state Democratic Representative Jay Jacobs, for whom Gov. Cuomo suspended state restrictions banning party representatives from holding “policy-making” positions in state government.
Currently, the PCFB’s chair and vice chair are former state legislators Barbara Lifton (Democrat) and Brian Kolb (R) – meaning the positions are bipartisan and nepotistic.
But the geniuses also lacked some basic guardrails:
- Mandatory post-election audits of all election campaigns.
- Adequate staff to review and monitor campaign applications.
- The committee does not have independent subpoena powers to pursue corrupt campaigns.
The hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money distributed by political appointees are a magnet for corrupt people.
This state program is a boon to incumbents and their unscrupulous challengers, but an unnecessary burden on taxpayer wallets.
