More Money is Not the Answer

Common Cause New York has released the latest information on outside income for New York's legislators. There's a lot of it for some of our elected officials, who make a minimum of $79,500 for their part-time jobs (those in leadership positions make quite a bit more).

The chart at right shows where the outside money comes from, by industry. Not surprisingly, the majority of members with outside income are lawyers; after all, they're lawmakers. 

Common Cause notes that, on the plus side, some 60% of legislators elected before 2014 report no outside income, and they surmise that "many, if not all" of the new class of legislators no longer hold their day jobs. 

The group also believes that, in light of the recent guilty verdicts for former State Senate leader Dean Skelos and former Assembly speaker Sheldon Silver, the time is now to make some changes.  And up to that point, I agree with them -- we differ, however, on how to fix the problem.

Common Cause would like to see the following changes

• A ban on outside income
• a full-time legislature
• a pay raise for members

Their thinking is, if we turned the legislators into full-time employees of New York taxpayers, and gave them a raise, they wouldn't need to have outside income. And if they don't have outside income, they can't be 'bought' by outside interests.

My thinking is, if they're ethical people, it doesn't matter whether they're paid more or work full time or are allowed to continue earning income as veterinarians or funeral directors or owners of ice cream stands. I don't think it's necessary for them to figure out ways to convert their businesses into trusts or whatever it is they'd need to do in order to remove themselves from their 'real' careers while they served part time as our representatives.

We need our elected officials to stop looking at their seats as permanent possessions, as jobs for life instead of what they should be: short-term opportunities to serve the public. I want them to have jobs and families and careers and lives outside their public service - because I think they'd be better public servants. I want there to be teachers or auction house owners and all the rest, working part time for the citizens of New York. I'm perfectly OK with that.

What I do have a problem with, is how long some of these folks have been in office. 

In the Assembly, Gary Finch, the funeral services guy, was elected in 1999. Will Barclay was elected in 2002. Stephen Hawley, the big winner in the outside income game, was elected in 2006. 

Over in the Senate, it's even more glaring. Kenneth LaValle was elected in 1976, the year I got out of high school.

Skelos, one of the Three Amigos our Sonofa Gov Andrew Cuomo giggled about earlier this year at his economic speech, was elected in 1984. Kemp Hannon, 1989; Mike Nozzolio, 1992.

Is it the outside income that's the issue, or is it the amount of time these folks spend in Albany?

Is it outside income, or simply that some of them can't resist the benefits that come their way, the money to keep them in office, or jobs for their kids -- benefits that come to them because of the power they have, the power that comes with longevity?

Is it outside income, or is it the unending need to raise money for the next election, money from big donors who stand to benefit from laws passed by the people who receive the donations?

If you ask me, we do not need full-time legislators with bigger salaries and bigger pensions. We need term limits and we need real campaign finance reform.

• If a legislator is not worried about the next election, and instead is focused on serving the public for the term of the election they just won, we'll be better off. 
• When a legislator doesn't need to protect a pension, and instead is focused on protecting the environment, or jobs, or dwindling tax dollars, we'll be better off.
• When a legislator knows that they can't use campaign funds for whatever they please, we'll be better off. 
• When a legislator knows that they have an equal opportunity to participate, and that their constituents will have equal representation, we'll be better off. 
• When we elect people who know what the rules are, know they're going to be held accountable to the rules, and know that there will be no personal nest-feathering allowed, we'll be better off.

It all starts with term limits. 

You've Got to be Kidding Me

William Fitzpatrick, Onondaga County's District Attorney for Life, is apparently getting an eyeful in his role as one of the chairs of New York's Moreland Commission.

In a recent radio interview recapped in the local newspaper, he talked about what he's seeing and how it's making him a believer in public financing of campaigns.

I'm a fiscal conservative. If the money's not there, I'm inclined not to spend it. But in reality, based on what I've learned over the last couple of months, I'm now a proponent of public financing... The savings would ultimately be astronomical in the long run.

Yes, it's true -- some politicians (but not District Attorneys) can be swayed by the ridiculous amount of money available to them from donors, PACs, corporations, unions etc., and it can get expensive prosecuting them and getting the out of office when they break the law. 

The higher cost, of course, is the loss of faith in the system, which leads to dissatisfaction with the process, which leads to low voter turnout, which increases the powers of incumbency, which makes the politicians more attractive to big money donors, and it just goes round and round.  And there's also the bad legislation we get as a result of making the donors happy.

Like Fitzpatrick, I think we have ethical issues in politics and politicians from both on both sides of the aisle. After all, no one has a monopoly on bad acts. But I disagree that public financing is the answer.  My concern, plain and simple, is that I don't trust the politicians to come up with any viable way to enact reasonable public financing laws.  We're talking about restricting their bread and butter, after all. Further, Albany politicians have a proven track record of protecting their interests first, and yours and mine second.  Take redistricting, for example. Or their slow, strolling-through-molasses realization that they're better off without ethically-challenged members in their midst.

Fitzpatrick mentioned that 'crininality' had been found, and that the party 'housekeeping accounts' are being misused, and that LLCs (which allow virtually unlimited contributions) are bad, among other things.  The housekeeping accounts are supposed to be used for non-campaign related things, like voter registration for instance. Common Cause/NY, a non-profit advocacy group, issued a scathing report earlier this year on the housekeeping accounts. It outlines a pretty sorry state of affairs.

The LLCs?  Well, those are set up to help people get around campaign contribution limits.  The candidates, for their part, take the money and then try and convince themselves (and us) that it doesn't mean anything and that you and I are just as important as the big-money LLC donors.  Are you buying that?

My solution is not public funding of elections, typically through some sort of matching fund programs.  My solution limits the money differently:  by allowing contributions only from living, breathing residents of the district in which the candidate is running or was elected.  This solves more issues and doesn't require taxpayer dollars. It also helps restore trust in the process, and eventually I might be at least as important to my elected representative as, say, some powerful downstate Democrat in the Assembly, or some powerful upstate Republican in the senate, or our Sonova Governor, or a union, or some out-of-state billionaire with an agenda.

Back to Fitzpatrick.  He also honed in on how some pols report their campaign account reimbursements. From the article:

There's no specificity at all. We're talking about thousands and in some cases, hundreds of thousands of dollars on unspecified reimbursements.

We should be able to see how campaign funds are being spent, and I would of course prefer that elected officials or candidates use these contributions on campaign expenses -- you know, advertising, polling, campaign offices and phone banks and whatnot.  To me, it's as important how they spend the money as it is where the money comes from.

I want to see everyone report their expenses. Like Fitz did. In case you missed it, here are some of the ways he has spent his campaign contributions over the course of the past several years:

• $63,000+ on restaurants and bars
• $57,000+ on golf-related activities
• $53,000+ on donations to other people's campaigns or political parties
• $61,000+ reimbursing himself

I look at those numbers, and (taking a page out of Fitzpatrick's own quote book) I can only ask, "you've got to be kidding me, you're surprised by the behavior you're seeing?