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What's Next for New York's New State Campaign Finance System?


Voters at the polls (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayor's Office)


New York State's new public campaign finance program is preparing to award as much as $100 million in matching funds over the 2023-24 election cycle when the entire State Legislature will again be on the ballot.

The bi-partisan Public Campaign Finance Board, part of the State Board of Elections, is seeking $114.5 million in the next state budget to fund the new voluntary matching program during its first election cycle. Most of the funding would go toward candidate campaigns who meet requirements for public matching dollars, while it would also help the organization grow into a fully-fledged agency of 118 staff members.

The program, which lawmakers passed in 2020 and went into effect immediately after the general election this past November, lowers limits on individual contributions to statewide and state legislative candidates, and establishes various public matches on in-state or in-district donations between $5 and $250. The program is somewhat modeled after New York City's lauded public funds program. It is intended to increase the influence of everyday campaign donors against the massive sums that mega-donors and SuperPACS pour into elections.

Governor Kathy Hochul is set to present her executive budget on Wednesday, which will tee off two months of negotiations with the State Legislature ahead of the April 1 start of the next fiscal year. Hochul, a Democrat just elected to her first full term, raised record sums under the old system, with its higher contribution limits and no public match.

"Governor Hochul included funding for the public campaign finance program in her first budget and we will release details of the Executive Budget later this week," wrote spokesperson Hazel Crampton-Hays in an email to Gotham Gazette. Hochul made no mention of the new program in her State of the State address in January or the accompanying 275-page agenda booklet.

Last year, Hochul and the Legislature allocated $20.6 million to the program, including $10 million for matching funds, which advocates for the program saw as a gesture of support for the newly passed system. That budget gave the Public Campaign Finance Board's seven members the authority to hire 64 staffers. The board’s membership includes the four members of the bipartisan State Board of Elections and three commissioners appointed by Hochul, the Legislature's Democratic majority, and the Republican minority. That included bi-partisan co-executive directors, deputy directors, and counsel, as well as auditors, candidate liaisons, administrators, and enforcement staff, according to a State Board of Elections spokesperson.

The Public Campaign Finance Board has been busy conducting training for candidates, registering campaign committees, and setting regulations.

Now it is pivoting from laying the groundwork to launching the program.

Ten candidates have already registered committees for the 2024 state legislative elections. For the 2026 statewide elections, the lone registrant is Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli's campaign.

In a budget resolution passed in December, the Public Campaign Finance Board approved the $114.5 million budget request, which would cover personnel, capital spending, and a $100 million public matching fund. The Public Campaign Finance Board "has reviewed private reports and conducted internal forecasting" to reach the $100 million estimate for payments in the following fiscal year, according to the resolution.

The board is also exploring software and other infrastructure to support the hundreds of candidates running for governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, comptroller, and the 213 seats in the State Legislature. More training resources, including a handbook for candidates, are coming soon, according to the Public Campaign Finance Board website.

Joanna Zdanys, senior counsel at NYU Law School's Brennan Center for Justice, urged Albany leaders to include the Public Campaign Finance Board’s full request in the state budget.

“The $114.5 million that the Public Campaign Finance Board has requested is a reasonable down payment on a stronger, more inclusive democracy for New York," said Zdanys, in a statement to Gotham Gazette.

"The funding will help the PCFB to assist campaigns in participating and complying with the voluntary program, including by hiring additional candidate liaisons on staff and implementing software improvements," she wrote.

The Public Campaign Finance Board has yet to publish a calendar of payment dates and matching claims schedules for the 2024 cycle. According to the State Board of Elections, candidates in the program will use the same filing schedule as non-participating candidates, with the addition of periodic required filings in March of 2024.

Candidates for statewide office can receive a 6-to-1 match for every in-state contribution between $5 and $250. For example, a qualifying $5 contribution would give a candidate $30 in matching funds.

Candidates for state legislative offices may receive between 12-to-1 matches and 8-to-1 matches for qualifying small-dollar contributions, depending on the size of the donation up to $250. Donations from corporations, lobbyists, and campaign vendors are not eligible to be matched, but there is no barrier on matching donations from people with state business, unlike New York City's program. The campaign finance law sets qualifying thresholds for who is eligible to receive public funds and limits on how much they can get.

In order to qualify, candidates for governor must raise $500,000 from 5,000 New York donors. Candidates for comptroller and attorney general must raise $100,000 from 1,000 in-state donors. Candidates for State Senate must raise $12,000 from 150 in-district donors and Assembly candidates have to take in $6,000 from 75 in-district donors.

Fair Elections for New York, a coalition of hundreds of organizations including the Brennan Center, also called on Hochul to fulfill the Public Campaign Finance Board’s budget request.

"Candidates and voters alike will need to learn how the matching system works and how to participate, and the agency must have funding for the staff and infrastructure to make that possible," the group wrote in a statement in December. "These funds will also be essential for candidate and small donor confidence in the program’s viability."

Two weeks earlier, State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli and State Board of Elections Commissioner Douglas Kellner, both Democrats, joined members of the coalition for a rally at New York City Hall to bring attention to the launch of the new system. “New York’s new public campaign finance program will eliminate barriers and level the playing field for good, qualified people to run for public office,” DiNapoli said at the time. “It will help get big money out of elections and better ensure New Yorkers are put first."

The Senate and Assembly Democratic majorities did not return requests for comment on funding the new program.

The Legislature's Republican minority leaders balked at the PCFB's funding request. “It comes as no surprise that New York’s public campaign finance system is going to be expensive," said Assembly Minority Leader William Barclay in a statement to Gotham Gazette. "Taxpayers should not be forced to fund political campaigns. They don’t need their money being spent on political consultants, mailers or advertisements. I’ve been opposed to this idea from the beginning, and if it comes with a $114.5 million price tag, it gets even less appealing.”

"While New Yorkers endure a crime and affordability crisis, Albany Democrats are focused on forcing taxpayers to foot the bill for their political campaigns," Senate Minority Leader Robert Ortt said in a statement.

On Monday, Brennan Center and the national government transparency group OpenSecrets published a study applying the parameters of the new system to the most recent 2022 elections. The study estimated the public match would have increased the share of small donations (less than $250) in state legislative races from 11% to 67% of all donations. For state races, that number could increase from 6% to 41%.

The researchers found that the 200 biggest contributors to candidates in 2022 gave nearly $16 million in donations, more than the 206,000 individuals who gave donations of $250 or less. Those sums are also dwarfed by the tens of millions of dollars in outside SuperPAC spending.

Citizens Action of New York, a progressive grassroots advocacy group and a member of the Fair Elections coalition, has conducted trainings to get the word out. "Our trainings raise awareness about the PCFP [Public Campaign Finance Board] and encourage candidates to opt into this groundbreaking program," wrote organizer Karen Wharton, in an email to Gotham Gazette. "Information is key."

Ben Weinberg, director of policy at the good government group Citizens Union, another coalition member, noted that participation in New York City's program has become "ubiquitous among new candidates and incumbents of all backgrounds and parties."

The progressive Working Families Party, which endorsed Public Advocate Jumaane Williams against Hochul in the Democratic gubernatorial primary last year, where he was massively out-raised and -spent, is also backing the $114.5 million request in its legislative agenda this year.

“New York can counteract the corrosive influence of dark money and empower everyday New Yorkers through its new small donor matching program," wrote WFP Director Sochie Nnaemeka, in a statement in January. "To ensure the long-term success of the program, we’re calling on our state leaders to allocate the $114.5 million requested by the Public Campaign Finance Board to sustain this groundbreaking public financing system."

***
by Ethan Geringer-Sameth, reporter, Gotham Gazette
     

Read more by this writer.

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

NYCHA Repeatedly Missed Local Hiring Requirements, Costing Residents Jobs and Income


Work at NYCHA (photo: Demetrius Freeman/Mayoral Photography Office)


This article is published in partnership with New York Focus
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When Hurricane Sandy landed in New York City in 2012, it hit public housing hard. The sprawling Red Hook Houses, on the Brooklyn waterfront, lost power for weeks. And the recovery was slow: major renovations didn’t start until almost five years after the storm. When the federal dollars finally came in, though, they spelled a big economic opportunity — more than $500 million worth

“I saw the money as an opportunity for the neighborhood to eat,” said Karen Blondel, a longtime resident and tenant advocate at Red Hook Houses. That promise was backed up by a law known as Section 3, which requires a portion of jobs created by federal housing funds to go to low-income local residents. 

But that’s not how things played out. “When I looked out the window at the actual workers, none of them live in public housing,” Blondel said, speaking to New York Focus shortly before the 10-year anniversary of Sandy. 

Data provided by the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) to federal authorities bear out her concern. 

Annual reports NYCHA submitted to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) from 2016 to 2020 — obtained by New York Focus through a freedom-of-information request — show that the authority has often missed its Section 3 targets by large margins, particularly when it comes to construction and renovation work.

“To see such a huge job and not see as many people as I thought should have been working or getting training was very disappointing,” Blondel said of the Red Hook restoration. 

Until late 2020, Section 3 held that — “to the greatest extent feasible” — at least 30 percent of workers NYCHA hired should be low-income local residents, with public housing tenants getting priority. Similar benchmarks applied to outsourced work: Section 3 specified that at least 10 percent of construction contracts, and 3 percent of non-construction contracts, should go to qualifying Section 3 businesses. 

A Trump administration rule change in late 2020 loosened those criteria, shifting the benchmark to 25 percent of labor hours for all projects and removing the explicit preference for public housing tenants. But for the period covered by NYCHA’s reports — the most recent the authority was able to provide — the earlier criteria were in place. And NYCHA, in many cases, failed to meet them. 

From 2016 to 2020, no more than 0.3 percent of NYCHA construction contracts went to Section 3 businesses in any given year. NYCHA also fell afoul of the targets for direct hiring, despite starting off on a strong foot. In 2016 and 2017, it reported that virtually all the workers it hired for repairs qualified under Section 3. The next year — as overall hiring jumped — the Section 3 share plummeted to just 16 percent. It continued to decline through 2020. 

Some tenant leaders say they’re not surprised NYCHA has missed its targets.

“I believe it to be a steady doughnut” — a zero, said Manny Martinez, resident council president for South Jamaica Houses, of the authority’s Section 3 contracting rate. NYCHA’s self-reported figures for construction contracts match that description. 

Martinez has lived in the South Jamaica development nearly his whole life, and feels residents like him have been robbed of economic opportunities they were promised under Section 3. Had NYCHA met its targets, nearly $250 million more in contracts would have gone to local residents over five years, according to New York Focus analysis of the authority’s reports. 

“That investment alone…would have made these communities much different than what we currently are,” Martinez said.  

New York City Council Member Alexa Avilés, chair of the Council’s public housing committee, said she has heard similar concerns from many residents.

The figures NYCHA reported “are not a surprise, but they are still upsetting,” she said. 

“The mandate is right,” Avilés continued. “The public dollars should be supporting the training and hiring of residents of public housing...There should be real opportunities there that are being squandered.” 

NYCHA said it is taking steps to hire more residents, despite a long list of constraints. 

“NYCHA is committed to providing employment and training opportunities to public housing residents under the Section 3 initiative and have made several improvements… to meet this goal,” said spokesperson Nekoro Gomes by email. “HUD and the Federal Monitor have both recognized the effort we’ve put in to improving capital project delivery and these measures will serve to improve the capacity of this vital program.” 

Gomes highlighted the Section 3 rates NYCHA reported for day-to-day operations and non-construction contracts, which usually met or exceeded the HUD benchmarks. 

But “capital” work — meaning one-time renovations or repairs — was by far the biggest source of new jobs, and NYCHA’s reported numbers suggest that efforts to hire within its own community slipped down the list of priorities.

In part, NYCHA’s trouble keeping up with Section 3 reflects another urgent need: an enormous, and mounting, backlog of repairs. Entire developments have gone days or even weeks without heat or hot water; months without cooking gas; and years without remediation of hazardous lead, mold, and asbestos. 

“They’re just floundering trying to do what they can to keep the buildings running,” said Iziah Thompson, senior policy analyst at the Community Service Society (CSS), an advocacy and research nonprofit that often focuses on NYCHA. “In the ideal world, you want them to be a provider of housing and a provider of job training. But [they] did the housing part first, I think, and I don’t blame them for focusing on that.”

The sharp drop in NYCHA’s Section 3 hiring rate in 2018 partly reflects a surge in hiring overall, essentially of construction and building trades workers needed to address those long overdue repairs. Between federally funded Sandy recovery efforts and general repairs required under a 2019 agreement with HUD, NYCHA hired thousands of workers. 

That may have gotten more repairs done — but rarely by tenants themselves. And jobs remain an equally pressing need for many public housing residents.

NYCHA developments and their surrounding neighborhoods have some of the highest unemployment rates in the city, which in turn faces higher unemployment than the country as a whole. In sections of East New York and the South Bronx where NYCHA developments are most concentrated, Census five-year estimates put unemployment at 15 percent or more. The city average is half that

Unemployment rates within NYCHA developments may be even higher. CSS’s latest complete survey of public housing residents, conducted in 2021, found that some 22 percent were out of a job, with the highest rates among Black and Latino residents. 

If Section 3 had been implemented to its full extent when big federal funds came in, the picture would look much different, said Keith Swiney, president of the Section 3 compliance firm Motivation Inc. and a national expert on the law. 

“You’d have residents riding around in Bentleys right now,” Swiney said. 

Section 3 had its origins in the Housing and Urban Development Act of 1968, a capstone of the civil rights era. The law sought not only to provide low-income people with decent housing, but to give them jobs building and maintaining those homes — the key goal enshrined in Section 3. 

“Public Works, Not Charity: Black Houses, Black Jobs,” read the title of one article about the law, published that summer in Commonweal magazine and reproduced in the congressional record

Though Section 3 has been tweaked in the decades since, its core principle stands: housing authorities and developers that receive federal subsidies must make their best efforts to ensure that a portion of the jobs they create go to low-income local residents. 

The country has never truly delivered on that principle, Swiney said. Agencies that go above and beyond the law’s mandate are a rare exception. But if anyone should be meeting their targets, he said, it should be NYCHA. As the country’s largest public housing agency, it has the power to set a national example.  

Swiney cautioned that NYCHA’s self-reported numbers should be taken with a grain of salt: the 100 percent Section 3 hiring rate it submitted to HUD in 2016, for example, was likely inflated by faulty accounting. On the flip side, the authority may actually have under-reported how many of its construction contracts qualified under Section 3, because it didn’t have the means to fully track that workforce. 

But the big picture remains the same: “What those folks didn’t get is actually a very palatable amount of economic lift,” Swiney said. 

Sandy was a case in point. In Red Hook, the lion’s share of the work went to companies like Adam’s European Contracting, Inc., a Greenpoint-based firm. According to a tracker published on NYCHA’s website, the company was awarded one of the single largest public housing contracts of the last decade — $380 million — for its restoration work in Red Hook, and more than $900 million altogether for NYCHA work since 2013. 

Adam’s did not respond to requests for comment. Its website notes that it is a woman-owned business, founded by a Polish immigrant, and that it works with a variety of unions to supply labor. 

Indeed, Section 3 is far from NYCHA’s only hiring criteria. The authority has also signed a project labor agreement (PLA) with the New York City Building and Construction Trades Council (BCTC), which requires that contractors hire almost all of their workers through union hiring halls. Martinez, the Queens tenant rep, said NYCHA has used this as an “excuse” to not bring more of its own residents into the fold.

“If these unions are demanding 100 percent union requirements, then either the union or the contractor has to start making room for these unqualified persons to get trained,” he said.

Swiney, the consultant, said there has historically been “a gigantic conflict” between Section 3 and organized labor. 

BCTC president Gary LaBarbera strongly disputed this characterization. 

“We do not view the PLA as an impediment, but as an opportunity,” LaBarbera said by email. “While labor unions do not hire workers directly, we use the PLA to ensure every worker on the job receives the same rate of pay, the same level of benefits, and the same security and protection as any other worker performing the same craft.” 

LaBarbera stressed that the building trades have worked with NYCHA to provide training and apprenticeships to residents, offering them a path to the middle class and promoting safety on the job. 

But Martinez said those opportunities have been “minuscule.” Thompson, of CSS, agreed that training opportunities have been inadequate, in part because tenant reps have not gotten a seat at the table when NYCHA negotiates collective bargaining agreements. 

Another hurdle arises from the way NYCHA carries out repairs: typically, piece by piece, focusing on elevators in one instance and roofs the next, for example. That need for specialized workers makes it all the more complicated to ensure that training syncs up with job openings. 

That could change if NYCHA were to undertake more comprehensive retrofits, Thompson said.

“The potential for a huge jobs program is there. The workforce is obviously there. But the case has to be made,” he said. 

The controversial Preservation Trust approved by state lawmakers last year could offer a test case: it promises some of the first full-scale retrofits to NYCHA’s buildings outside of the RAD-PACT system, which transfers buildings to private management. Better yet would be a direct infusion of federal funding, Thompson said — but with Build Back Better long dead and Republicans in control of the House, that can’t be counted on any time soon. 

In the meantime, the city and state both need to step up to make sure that NYCHA residents get both the repairs they need and the jobs that come with them, Avilés said. 

“We have to walk and chew gum at the same time,” she said. “While yes, we have to prioritize, we have limited resources — we cannot ignore one side of the ledger for the other. The residents deserve both.”

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This article is published in partnership with New York Focus

After Second Legislative Passage, New York State Equal Rights Amendment To Go Before Voters in 2024


Gov. Hochul signs abortion rights legislation (photo: Governor's Office)


Voters in the fall of 2024 will have a chance to enshrine civil rights protections for women, LGBTQ people, and abortion access into the state constitution after lawmakers on Tuesday pass the New York State Equal Rights Amendment for the second time.

If approved by voters, the state constitution will for the first time prohibit discrimination on the basis of ethnicity, national origin, disability, and sex, "including pregnancy and pregnancy outcomes, sexual orientation, gender expression.” The amendment's sponsors say those protections include reproductive rights, which would add New York to the minority of states that include access to abortion in their highest governing documents.

Though there is that final step to go, the victory for women's and LGBTQ rights advocates comes just after the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision and 100 years after Congress first introduced the Equal Right Amendment for women to the U.S. Constitution, which has never been ratified

New York would be part of a growing number of states to adopt an ERA in recent years. The amendment saw renewed interest last year, after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Roe and made abortion a top issue in state and federal elections across the country. The court’s conservative majority opinions have also raised concerns that the body may be open to reconsidering other established rights, including marriage equality and obtaining contraception. Twenty-two states have adopted some form of ERA, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, double the number in 2019.

The amendment would go further than the federal Equal Protections Clause by protecting against actions that have a discriminatory effect, regardless of intent, "thus providing a critical legal tool to dismantle acts that in effect perpetuate and/or result in inequality," according to a memo from State Senator Liz Krueger, a Manhattan Democrat and the resolution's sponsor. The amendment would be "self-executing," meaning it wouldn't require further implementing legislation in order to enforce it, if it is passed by voters this fall. That was a point of contention in previous iterations of the resolution and one of the reasons the State Senate and Assembly failed to agree on an ERA before 2022.

“On what would have been the 50th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the Senate Majority is delivering on the promise to pass for the second time the Equal Rights Amendment to ensure that New Yorkers get the opportunity to codify abortion in our state Constitution, and afford equal protection from discrimination to women, LGBTQI+ individuals and many more New Yorkers," said Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, the first woman and first Black person to lead the chamber, in a statement.

"We will continue to focus on protecting our reproductive rights and enhancing protections for our abortion providers while expanding access to the full gamut of reproductive health services," Stewart-Cousins added.

The resolution is part of a reproductive rights package to pass in the Senate, which includes an abortion access grant fund called the Reproductive Freedom and Equity Program. With the exception of the ERA, the bills in the package either have yet to be introduced in the Assembly or remain in committee.

"Today, we passed the Equality Amendment for the second time, which, if approved by the people, would enshrine in our constitution expanded protections for the civil rights of New Yorkers and ensure that no one is denied the opportunity to fully participate in society on the basis of their identity," Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie said in a statement.

"Women have waited far too long to be included in our State Constitution,” Senator Krueger said in a statement, “but so have LGBTQ people, people with disabilities, Latinos, and everyone who has faced discrimination based on characteristics that are beyond their control.”

Assembly Member Rebecca Seawright, another Manhattan Democrat and the resolution's prime sponsor in her chamber, echoed that sentiment. "We are closer than ever to enshrining a woman’s right to choose and equality protections against discrimination in the most important governing document of our state," she said in a statement to Gotham Gazette.

“While New York has a robust set of anti-discrimination statutes, our state Constitution is inadequate when it comes to ensuring equality,” said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU), in a statement to Gotham Gazette. “Next November, New Yorkers will be able to demand the lasting protections of a constitutional amendment that would prohibit discrimination against groups who have been historically targeted."

The fervor that erupted last year around the overturning of Roe and other rulings by the conservative Supreme Court pushed the Legislature's Democratic supermajorities to act quickly to come to an agreement on its provisions in the waning days of legislative session last year.

State constitutional amendments must be passed in two consecutive legislative terms and then be approved by voters in a referendum. Tuesday's vote marks the ERA's second passage. New Yorkers casting ballots in the fall of 2024 will be able to vote to approve or disapprove the ERA.

Democrats' have had a mixed record on ballot questions in recent years with the passage of recent environmental protection measures but failure of high profile electoral and redistricting amendments. Lawmakers are expected to put the question on the ballot in the fall of 2024, seeking to avoid leaving the ERA’s fate up to voters in the off-year 2023 election, where there will be few races on the ballot, turnout will be lower and approval less certain.

2024 will be a high-turnout presidential election year, with many other races on the ballot as well.

"We will enshrine these rights, not just in law, but in the Constitution of the State of New York with ERA, and we're going to do it again," Governor Kathy Hochul said at a press conference organized by Planned Parenthood in the Legislative Office Building in Albany ahead of the vote Tuesday. "We're not going to finish until we get that over the finish line. We're not going to stop."

Hochul, New York's first female governor, included passing the ERA in her State of the State agenda this year along with other protections for people seeking abortions. Those would include personal data protections for abortion seekers, authorizing pharmacists to prescribe abortion medication and contraception, and allowing SUNY and CUNY health care centers to provide medication abortions.

"Here in New York, we will continue to take bold measures to protect the rights of New Yorkers, and I applaud the New York State Legislature for taking another crucial step toward enshrining the Equal Rights Amendment into the state constitution," the governor said in a statement after the resolution passed Tuesday. "Last year, I was proud to convene an Extraordinary Session of the legislature that led to first passage of this historic amendment, and I am grateful the amendment is on its way to being presented to voters next year."

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by Ethan Geringer-Sameth, reporter, Gotham Gazette
     

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