Council Cash Tricks

IT looks like several City Council members will be opting out of the city’s public campaign-finance program for this year’s elections — although they still claim to champion the system. The excuse for having taxpayers fund campaigns is that it supposedly reduces the influence of special interests and “pay to play” fund-raising. Yet the councilors who are opting out insist that doesn’t mean they’ve sold out.

What’s going on? Well, among the dubious reforms the council rammed through last year was one that lets incumbents spend campaign funds on “office-holder expenditures.”

As Gotham Gazette reports, several members have used the new loophole to spend like drunken sailors.

Councilman David Greenfield (D-B’klyn) has already raised and spent over $300,000 to air his weekly radio program — which is more than he’d be able to spend in total if he were in the public-finance system.

Special interests? Pay to play? Greenfield heads the Land Use Committee, and much of his cash has come from developers.

Also over the public-system spending limit is Julissa Ferreras-Copeland (D- Queens), one of the contenders to be the next speaker. (As head of the Finance Committee, she too has had great “luck” in raising private funds.)

Meanwhile, at least eight other council members spent more than the public-system limit of $49,000 last year. Some, like Brad Lander (D-B’klyn) say they’re staying within the system’s overall spending limits; others, like Corey Johnson (D-Manhattan and another would-be speaker) aren’t so sure.

Members seem willing to stay within the limits if they face no real opponent for reelection — in other words, if it’s a no-risk proposition. How moral of them.

Candidates have until June 12 to join the program. Yet, of about 40 incumbents likely to run this year, only Councilmen Stephen Levin and Robert Cornegy Jr. have opted in.

And at least a quarter of the 40 are looking to opt out of the system because it doesn’t serve their selfish interests — that is, because they get an advantage from dropping out.

Taxpayer funding of campaigns is supposed to level the playing field between incumbents and machine pols on the one hand and challengers and outsiders on the other. The evidence is growing that it does the reverse.