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City Council Passes New Disclosure Requirements for Spending to Influence Votes on Ballot Referendums


Passing out ballot info (photo: John McCarten/NYC Council Media Unit)


Update: The New York City Council passed the campaign finance amendment on January 19, 2022.

The New York City Council is set to pass legislation this week that would require entities spending to influence voters in local referendums to disclose their funders.

The law would close a loophole in the city's campaign finance law that lawmakers, good government groups, and campaign finance regulators have decried for years. If signed by the mayor, so-called independent expenditures (IEs) of $5,000 or more would be subject to disclosure to the New York City Campaign Finance Board. As would the names of the owners and officers of the entity behind the spending, and the names of its major contributors – the same requirements that currently apply to IE spending for or against candidate campaigns.

The legislation, which would amend the City Charter, would also require ads for or against ballot questions to include a "paid for by" notice, including the names of up to three of its top donors.

Movement on the bill comes after several years of prominent ballot questions in New York City, including three charter revision commissions that put amendments on the ballot in 2018, 2019, and 2022, including ranked-choice voting in certain local elections, expanding police oversight, and strengthening the city's public campaign matching fund system.

"Ballot proposals have major implications for New York City, including by making amendments to our charter. That's why spending on ballot measures should be subject to the same disclosure requirements as spending on candidates," said City Council Member Selvena Brooks-Powers, a Queens Democrat and lead sponsor of the bill, Int. 855, in a statement to Gotham Gazette. "Int 855 would get rid of this anti-democratic discrepancy in our election laws and improve transparency."

Unlike campaign spending directly by a candidate committee, independent expenditures made without coordination with a candidate campaign are held a protected form of speech by the U.S. Supreme Court and cannot be subject to limits. But they can be subject to disclosure about their funding sources and activity and over the years city law has required more reporting to the Campaign Finance Board (CFB).

Good government groups say extending those requirements to ballot referendums is a critical response to the growing electoral influence of large donors, often cloaked in anonymity. Advocates at the Brennan Center for Justice and good government group Citizens Union testified in favor of Brooks-Powers' bill at a hearing in December. No one testified against.

“New York City voters deserve to know when someone is spending big money to sway the outcome of ballot contests that affect their daily lives," wrote Marina Pino, a lawyer at the Brennan Center, in an email to Gotham Gazette. "Across the country, wealthy individuals and groups spend huge sums to push their interests and influence voters in these critical contests. This bill takes an important step forward in closing gaps in disclosure laws that shield secret spending, while still capturing only the largest spenders seeking to sway voters.”

"Similar disclosure rules in elections for city offices have helped voters learn who is funding campaigns and mitigated the impact of 'dark money' in our city," wrote Ben Weinberg, Citizens Union's policy director, in an email. "Extending these rules to apply to local referenda campaigns is a reasonable response to the increase in Super PAC spending in New York."

The bill was first sponsored by Comptroller Brad Lander, then a City Council member from Brooklyn, after uncharacteristic spending on referendums in the 2019 elections sparked renewed interest.

That year the CFB recommended city lawmakers close the charter loophole after three independent expenditure committees spent roughly $1.15 million in support or opposition to proposed Charter amendments, most of it from a single group in support of adopting a ranked-choice voting system (the group, the Committee for Ranked Choice Voting NYC, included Citizens Union executive director Betsy Gotbaum as a board member). Ballot proposals the year before, in 2018, saw about $125,000 in independent spending. While the individuals controlling the committees had to be reported, the donors bankrolling them did not.

There are no independent expenditures reported on the Campaign Finance Board's online portal on ballot referendums in the 2022 election, which included three amendments proposed by the city's Racial Justice Commission. New York City voters approved every municipal ballot question in 2018, 2019, and 2022 by wide margins.

"[W]hen it comes to ballot proposals, our law has a blind spot. Bringing the disclosure for ballot proposals in line with the requirements for independent expenditures about candidates will provide voters with important information that will help them cast informed votes, and we urge the Council to take action,” said Amy Loprest, then-executive director of the CFB, in a 2019 statement urging the Council to pass the Charter amendment to require disclosure around spending for or against ballot questions.

“Disclosing donors of independent expenditures for ballot initiatives would be a win for election transparency and our democracy," Lander said in a statement provided by a spokesperson this week. Lander was also the sponsor of the amendment that created the disclosure requirements for outside spending on candidate campaigns in 2014.

"The public deserves to know who is paying for the ads about ballot proposals that could become law as we head into another municipal election cycle this year," he said.

The bill is scheduled to be voted on the City Council's Government Operations Committee on Thursday and is expected to go to the full Council later that day where it is set to pass. If signed by the mayor or allowed to age into law, the law will take effect on January 1, 2024. The mayor’s office did not provide comment for this article about his stance on the bill.

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by Ethan Geringer-Sameth, reporter, Gotham Gazette
     

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Note: Gotham Gazette is an independent publication of Citizens Union Foundation, sister organization of Citizens Union.

'Critical to the Future': City Council Considers Two Board of Correction Nominees


Mayor Adams on Rikers Island (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayor's Office)


The New York City Board of Correction, a nine-seat panel with oversight over city jails, may soon have two new members including a former Rikers Island doctor critical of mass incarceration and a national expert on corrections policy who now leads the advocacy group that successfully advocated for the planned closure of the Rikers jail complex.

The City Council’s Committee on Rules, Privileges and Elections on Wednesday held a hearing to question two of its own Board of Correction nominees – Dr. Rachael Bedard, former senior director of the Geriatrics and Complex Care Service at Correctional Health Services, a division of New York Health+Hospitals running health care in city jails; and DeAnna Hoskins, president and CEO of JustLeadershipUSA, which led the Close Rikers Campaign.

Bedard and Hoskins are outspoken proponents of the city’s plan to shutter the violence-plagued Rikers Island jail complex and replace it with four borough-based jails, as well as the Council’s push to end solitary confinement policies (legislation is pending to do so). While that makes them ideal candidates for a Council where a majority of members support both steps, it puts them at some odds with Mayor Eric Adams, who has repeatedly called into question the Rikers closure plan as well as defended the use of a form of solitary confinement, punitive segregation, as a necessary tool for jail safety.

The Board of Correction is an oversight body that monitors and investigates the city’s correctional facilities, creates policies that must be implemented by the Department of Correction, evaluates the performance of Department of Correction employees, and redresses the grievances of staff and detainees. Three of its members are appointed by the City Council, three are appointed directly by the mayor, who also chooses the chair, and the other three are appointed by the mayor on the joint nomination of the presiding judges of the appellate division of the Supreme Court for the first and second judicial departments.

Nominees are confirmed by the City Council, first by the rules committee then the full Council. Members of the Board of Correction serve six-year terms.

At Wednesday’s hearing, Council members pressed Bedard and Hoskins on their experience and qualifications, the Rikers closure plan, the importance of borough-based detention facilities and solitary confinement and punitive segregation.

“These appointments are really critical to the future…[to] make sure that our correctional system is functioning, that we address outstanding issues in it and that the folks that are in our custody get the attention that they often need and deserve,” said City Council Member Keith Powers, a Democrat who is the Council majority leader and also chairs the rules committee. Last term, Powers oversaw city jails as chair of the Council’s Committee on Criminal Justice.

Hoskins, who was once incarcerated herself, has previously served on the city’s task force to eliminate solitary confinement, helped develop corrections and reentry policies for the Obama administration, and worked with 20 state facilities and 80 local jails during her career. “I bring a pragmatic advocacy to this board, and I understand how the system works on the inside and how to move the needle on policy matters,” she said in her opening statement, citing her own experience with the justice system.

Bedard, who is an internist, geriatrician, and palliative care physician, works as a research fellow at the Institute to End Mass Incarceration at Harvard Law School and worked at the city’s Correctional Health Services from 2016 to 2022. She has been an outspoken critic of the failed policies at Rikers and the overall corrections system.

As Bedard noted in her opening statement, she worked at Rikers during the time that the closure movement gained momentum and the jail’s population fell significantly, and also during the height of the pandemic when the jail complex was in a state of crisis. She pointed out that deaths of people in custody in the Rikers Island complex went from 3 in 2019, the lowest ever, to 19 in 2022, the highest level in 25 years.

“I believe that the Board of Correction is more important now than any time in recent memory,” she said. “No other civilian body has unfettered access to visit the jails to talk to the people who live and work there, to request and analyze jail data, and to make recommendations for change.”

The City Council and Mayor Bill de Blasio passed a law that requires the Rikers jail complex to close by 2027. But it is contingent on reducing the average daily jail population below 3,300 detainees, who would be housed in four new borough facilities that are in various stages of design and construction. But the Adams administration has expressed doubts about hitting that target, with Mayor Adams saying there should have been a “Plan B” and that he has assembled a small task force to create one. There are currently more than 5,700 people in city jails and, according to City & State, Department of Correction Commissioner Louis Molina told the Council at a December hearing that the number could increase beyond 7,000 by 2024.

At Wednesday’s hearing, Hoskins and Bedard stressed the importance of the borough-based jails plan. “Borough-based facilities are a necessity if we want to keep people close [to their families], reduce the city’s cost of transporting [detainees], running the court system,” Hoskins said, “but also empowering and encouraging our staff that this is not just about monitoring and babysitting individuals who are incarcerated. This is actively being involved in your community.”

Bedard expressed concern that the mayor “has pretty explicitly said that he no longer feels beholden” to meeting the target of reducing the jail population. “If we go forward with that, what we end up with is new facilities in the boroughs with either overcrowding or folks you have to put in other places, either keeping the island open or using state facilities or what have you,” she said.

Asked by City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams if they supported creating gender-specific facilities for the safety of women, both nominees issued a word of caution. “I also believe we have to have gender-specific programs, access, and housing but does that require creating one facility for the women that may defeat the initial purpose of keeping women close to their families, when their caregivers and other people may be taking care of their children?,” Hoskins said.

“I would reiterate that I think gender-specific housing or gender-specific units at a minimum are important in maintaining safety for incarcerated women, incarcerated folks who are transgender or nonbinary,” Bedard said. “And at the same time, especially given that so many of the women incarcerated on Rikers Island are parents, it feels imperative to try to colocate those folks as close to their family as we can.”

Both nominees spoke out against punitive segregation, which the Council and Public Advocate Jumaane Williams are trying to ban through legislation. The bill has the support of Speaker Adams and was considered at a Council hearing in September. That same month, the mayor harshly criticized the proposal.

“If someone slashes someone with a knife on the street, I put him in jail. I remove him from population because he’s dangerous,” the mayor said, at an unrelated press conference in Washington, D.C., when he was asked if he’d sign the bill. “Someone slashes someone in jail, what do I do with him? I remove him from population and put him someplace by himself until he corrects his action and gets the assistance he needs. So what the City Council is saying is if someone slashes someone in jail, you do nothing with them.” (That is not what the bill says, it allows for separation from others in such a situation, but requires evaluations and actions on a short timeline.)

Hoskins and Bedard also promised to work on reforms to management that will ensure safety of correction staff and officers as well — violence at Rikers between detainees and between detainees and guards has skyrocketed in recent years. Hoskins suggested improvements to jail infrastructure as one solution, which is part of the plan for the design of the new jails. There have also been major safety issues because of correction officer absences, in part due to abuse of sick leave.

Bedard argued for reducing interactions between detainees and officers. “If you create circumstances where you demonstrate some trust in the detainees by allowing them more independence in a safe way for their own day, you decrease the number of contacts that they need to have with officers and if you do that, you just decrease the number of opportunities for tension and conflict,” said Bedard.

Though Rikers is already under the purview of a federal monitor because of a consent decree stemming from a 2011 lawsuit, several elected officials and advocates have pushed a federal judge to appoint a receiver who would take over the Department of Correction and the operation of city jails amid the current crisis. In November, the judge in the case, Laura Taylor Swain, chief judge for the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, gave the DOC more time to implement reforms, ordering all sides back to court in April for another review.

Council members did not pose any questions about the possible receivership to Hoskins and Bedard.

If appointed, Hoskins will serve a six-year term while Bedard will serve the remainder of a term that ends October 12, 2026. There are currently three vacancies on the Board of Correction – Hoskins and Bedard would fill two of them. Mayor Adams has appointed two members of his choice, including the chair, Dwayne Sampson, to the board and a third based on a judicial nomination.

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by Samar Khurshid, senior reporter, Gotham Gazette
     

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Mayor Adams Raises $428K in Latest Fundraising Haul, Already Has $1 Million in Campaign Cash


Mayor Adams (photo: Benny Polatseck/Mayoral Photography Office)


Mayor Eric Adams raised $428,000 over the last six months for his reelection in 2025, according to campaign finance disclosures filed with the New York City Campaign Finance Board on Tuesday. Adams now has just over $1 million in campaign cash on hand, but already expects more than $920,000 in public matching funds when the board begins to allocate them in December 2024 for the 2025 election cycle.

When Adams, a Democrat, ran for mayor in 2021, he proved to be a prolific fundraiser, bringing in more than $9 million in private contributions for his campaign. That fundraising helped him receive $10.1 million in public matching funds from the city’s voluntary campaign finance program, which matches qualifying small-dollar donations at an 8-to-1 ratio to disincentivize the influence of wealthy donors in elections. In all, Adams spent about $18.1 million to get elected. But wealthy donors helped him nonetheless, through maximum donations of $2,100 to his campaign as well as $8.2 million in outside expenditures to support it. 

[Read: Eric Adams’ $18 Million-Plus Campaign]

In the latest filing, covering the fundraising period from July 12, 2022 through January 13, 2023, Adams’ campaign raised $428,000 and spent nearly $133,000.

The mayor’s campaign pulled in 386 contributions at an average of $1,110 each. That included 88 max contributions of $2,100, the limit for citywide candidates that participate in the public funds program (nonparticipants can raise as much as $3,700 from a single donor). According to the filing, about $42,700 would qualify for matching funds – for citywide candidates, the program matches the first $250 of each qualifying contribution from city residents – meaning an expected $341,000 in public matching funds.

Adams raised about $213,000 from contributors within the city and slightly more from people who don’t live in the city, just over $215,000. In his first year, the mayor has regularly solicited political donations outside the city, traveling to Beverly Hills, Chicago, and the Hamptons to boost his campaign coffers and kicking off a fundraising spree that is unusually early for first-term mayors.

If Adams faces a primary in 2025, he already has a strong leg up on any potential challengers. The spending limit for the mayoral primary election is just over $7.9 million, and candidates can spend another $7.9 million on the general election. No other major candidates have filed to run for mayor in 2025 at this time.

He is also nearly halfway to meeting the dual threshold for public funds, which requires a candidate to raise a minimum of $250,000 in qualifying contributions from at least 1,000 donors. So far, Adams’ campaign has 1,060 donors and claims more than $126,000 in contributions that are matchable. A mayoral candidate can receive up to $7 million in public funds for each of the primary and general elections.

Overall, Adams has raised nearly $1.3 million in private donations for his reelection campaign since January 2022, and spent $217,000.

Also on Tuesday, the Campaign Finance Board was expected to vote on violations and penalties for Adams’ Transition and Inauguration Entity (TIE), including for accepting prohibited donations, failing to properly wind down the TIE’s activities, and failing to respond to requests for information and documentation. The vote was, however, delayed to the CFB’s next meeting.

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by Samar Khurshid, senior reporter, Gotham Gazette
     

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