Senate Elections Committee Public Hearing Taxpayer Funded Political Campaigns

Written testimony of Brian Sampson, Executive Director May 7, 2013

Thank you Chairman OMara, Ranking Member Tkaczyk and the other members of the Senate Elections Committee, for the opportunity to share my thoughts with the committee on this important topic. I am the Executive Director of Unshackle Upstate, a non-partisan, pro-taxpayer, pro-economic growth, education and advocacy coalition made up of business and trade organizations from throughout Upstate New York. As an organization, our primary purpose is to achieve reforms in Albany that make Upstate New York a better place to do business. Among our priorities is to limit state spending and borrowing. In an ideal world, we would spend our time advocating for reductions in state and local government spending, and reductions in state-imposed taxes, fees and assessments. But this being New York State, where budgets and taxes seem only to go up, we fight to limit the amount of spending and tax increases. To this end, Unshackle Upstate strongly opposes any changes to the states campaign system that will add additional financial burdens on all of us through the use of taxpayer dollars to fund political campaigns. We are especially concerned that the only proposals that have been submitted would do just that establish an open-ended program that will result in additional funds from the taxpayers. Recent debates and arguments on the projected costs of a new public campaign finance system miss the point a penny more, a dime more, a dollar more paid for by the taxpayers is simply bad public policy.

The majority of taxpayers in Upstate New York do not support the state using their hard-earned tax dollars to pay for political activities, especially at a time when the state is cutting back on the services it provides. Nor can Unshackle Upstate support such a proposal. For those of you who are not from Upstate, let me make sure you understand why this is the prevailing view in the region. The economic reality in Upstate New York today is that our communities are suffering. Local governments are cutting back on the services they provide. Their ability to pay for essential services including police and fire protection is coming into question. Libraries are closing. School districts have had to dismiss teachers and support personnel, and cutting back on the classes they offer. And in this last budget you cut more than $90M from programs that support people with developmental disabilities. And now you want to try and convince us that publicly financed campaigns will make everything better? Well, we arent buying it. The money we earn should not, under any circumstance, be ripped from our wallets and purses to be mandated by New York State for political purposes. The funding that is spent on campaign-related activities including consultants, robo-calls, television commercials, and polling should always be paid when an individual decides to invest in the candidate not the state. We all have the ability, should we choose to exercise it, to financially support the candidates that we want to help elect. We should also not be fooled or distracted by recent political scandals as a justification for a taxpayer funded campaign system. It is extremely unfortunate, embarrassing and saddening that our state at times is viewed as a cesspool of corruption, scandal and cases of bribery. Recent events over the past several months, even days, have only amplified these ailments for the entire nation to witness. However, we should have a frank discussion about cleaning up Albany from many of the bad actors who have recently blackened the eye of public service in New York State. We should clean up public corruption; we should remove the Senators and Members of the Assembly who have disgraced their offices. That is what the taxpayers want and deserve. But lets not disguise this under the veil of taxpayer funded campaigns. What we have in New York today are advocates using the perception of a crisis to push their agenda. If New York State had a truth in political advocacy law, these groups would be known as Billionaires for Campaign Finance Reform. Quite frankly, I am awestruck by the irony some might even say hypocrisy -- of these wealthy supporters of so-called fair elections. How is sending hundreds of thousands of dollars to influence the outcome of Upstate Senate races fair? For those of us who actually live Upstate, what we saw last fall in terms of money coming in from outside the region felt a lot more like unfair elections.

Last week, two fundraisers for the New York City Comptroller were convicted in an illegal campaign finance scheme they were found to be cheating the very system that is supposedly going to end corruption in Albany. Others may be willing to ignore this, but we cannot. We are also concerned that the changes that have been proposed to the states campaign finance laws will result in an uneven playing field one that favors organized labor over other participants in our political system. This is not an idle concern. One need only look to the Working Families Party whose leadership includes a number of high-ranking labor union officials to see what organized labor has been able to accomplish in terms of its political involvement. Rather than using limited taxpayer dollars to fix the ills that plague the states political system, we urge you to instead consider other actions that we think can be effective in addressing public corruption. Many solutions to this exist. For example, the Attorney General has a public corruption unit, but it does not have jurisdiction over state level officials. The state Board of Elections can and should upgrade its campaign finance disclosure database to be brought into the 21st century. Tighter restrictions on, improved disclosure and an effective, independent enforcement entity should be first steps. In closing, Unshackle Upstate supports additional oversight over public corruption and improving New Yorks electoral system. There are a number of potential enhancements to the states Election Law and to Board of Elections practices that are necessary and would not force the taxpayers into footing the bill for a campaign system that will do nothing to clean up our state. Thank you for the opportunity to provide the committee with testimony on this issue.

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