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State Campaign Finance Reports


Summertime is always a challenge for political candidates in New York. They walk up and down Fifth Avenue in one parade after another, spend countless hours attending meetings and hearings and worship services, go to lots of ball games, shake hands with lots of out-of-state tourists. It's a shame that almost no one is paying attention.

Between Memorial Day and Labor Day, there is an understanding that while candidates will continue to campaign, their focus must be on gathering resources for the crucial weeks leading up to Primary Day and Election Day.

In other words, they are raising money.

A lot of money. A statewide race in a state the size of New York is expensive. Rick Lazio spent about $40 million trying unsuccessfully to defeat Hillary Clinton to be United States Senator from New York. This year's race for governor may not be in the same ballpark, but it is still a costly game.

Under New York state law, statewide candidates have to file reports throughout the campaign disclosing how much money they raise and spend. The most recent filing reveals that the sitting governor, George Pataki, has raised about $12.7 million in contributions over the past six months. The two Democratic candidates did not come close to that figure, but both have raised significant amounts: state comptroller H. Carl McCall raised about $2 million and former HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo raised $3.1 million.

Campaign finance filings are always highly anticipated, as much for what they conceal as for what they reveal. All three candidates were quick to point out perceived errors, apparent discrepancies, and the appearance of impropriety in one another's reports.

Some of this is just political maneuvering; a published report of your opponent's finances is bound to have something to pick on, and crying foul is one way to deflect questions about your own numbers, particularly if they are lower (receipts) or higher (expenditures) than you would have liked.

These reports can be complicated, and often require an advanced knowledge of accounting procedures to understand. Public weariness of accounting scandals notwithstanding, campaign finances is always a controversial subject. How much money is raised, who it is coming from, who it is going to, how it is being spent, and most of all, how much is left; all of these are legitimate questions for voters to ask.

So what do these reports really tell us? In New York state, campaign funds are generated by private contributions. Unlike New York City's new campaign finance laws, the state law does not set spending limits or supply public funds. These reports are a measurement of a campaign's progress, promise, propriety, and prospects.

How good of a measurement? And how does that measurement compare to the system we have in New York City? In particular, there are four ways in which the state campaign finance reports can prove useful.

Descriptive. On the surface, the numbers are fairly straightforward. One candidate, Pataki, raised a whole lot more money that the others. The other two candidates both raised millions of dollars apiece, enough to fund an entire campaign in many states, but still far less than the sitting governor. This contrasts sharply to campaigns with publicly financed candidates, who will spend money in similar amounts.

Deductive. Knowing what we do about how candidates raise money, and how much they raise, can give us some reasonable conclusions about the candidates themselves. We can see where a candidate's money is coming from, and map out patterns of giving, and possible conflicts of interest. We can safely guess that a candidate who is having success in reaching contributors is having similar success in gathering supporters as well. We can deduce that a campaign that is raising lots of money is well managed and efficient.

Conversely, we can speculate that a campaign that has failed to reach its fundraising goals may be experiencing other difficulties. Of course all of this is just speculation, but it can be useful. Public financing under city law does require that certain thresholds are met, and knowing that a candidate has qualified for the financing does give us some information. But above that, it provides us with little in the way of additional evidence, positive or negative.

Preventative. Presumably, knowing that financial disclosure will take place is one way to prevent candidates and campaigns from engaging in illegal or unethical conduct in its financial dealings. Sadly, current events in the business world would serve to illustrate the exception to this rule, but on the whole, disclosure does tend to have a cleansing effect. Most campaigns take very seriously their duty to report financial information accurately and on time. While mistakes are made, they are, on the whole, genuine oversights and not deliberate attempts to deceive.

This is true for public financing as well; mandatory financial disclosure is still the best method for keeping campaign politics on the straight and narrow.

Predictive. Campaign finance reports contain lots of numbers, but at the end of the day, only one number really matters for predicting the future success of the campaign: Cash on Hand. This is sometimes described as the candidates' warchest, the money they have managed to hold onto, the money they have left.

Knowing that one candidate has two or even three times more cash on hand than his or her opponents is a valuable piece of information. It would not be accurate to simply say the candidate with the most money will win, but it would be accurate to say the candidate with the most money usually does. There are a number of reasons for this; candidates with more money are typically candidates with a broad base of support and a strong message and a good organization.

But having a lot more money than your opponents, and even more than that, knowing you have a lot more money than your opponents, gives a candidate the ability to reach out to multiple voting blocs with varying messages in every possible medium. Basically, it means instead of having to put all your money in one place, and hope that place is the right place, you can reach out to multiple voting blocks with varying messages in every possible medium. It greatly increases the odds that come Election Day, you will have picked the right combination of message, media, and market.

In last year's mayoral race, the publicly financed candidates all had a similar amount of cash on hand, but one candidate had a warchest that allowed him to reach voters with unprecedented levels of frequency. Mike Bloomberg's victory was unprecedented in many ways, and hardly could be called predictable, but his campaign remains a powerful illustration of the value of knowing what a candidate has left. And of course, no one did know. Public financing doesn't give restrictions to what a candidate can spend of his own money, and doesn't require advance commitments of spending limits.

The race for governor gives voters a chance to evaluate the merits of a campaign finance system very different from the one the city now enforces. In both cases, there are reasons to wish there was a better way.

Susan Reefer is a Republican pollster and media strategist. She is based in New York City.

 

Hollywood East?


Over the past months, while many industries have struggled, television and film production in New York has flourished. The recent TriBeCa Film Festival celebrated that neighborhood's independent film scene, shows like "The Sopranos" and "Sex and the City" have continued to fuel a television production boom in Queens; and plans to build soundstages in the Brooklyn Navy Yard and a major film complex on Staten Island have gotten underway. The film and television renaissance began during the mid-1990s, when the number of New York-based productions climbed to levels not seen since the 1920s; there are now on average 200 films shot here each year, and 106 television shows call the city home. Traditional media production contributes $5 billion to the local economy and creates more than 70,000 jobs; factoring in pre-production; post-production, and studio work, the total economic impact doubles. And yet New York's film and television growth has not kept pace with growth abroad, and new economic and security concerns are stretching the resources of the city. Will an overtaxed police force, for example, be able to provide the red-carpet treatment for location shoots? With a drastically reduced city budget, will New York be able to compete with cities that provide direct economic incentives to producers? With such concerns, what is the long-term outlook for Hollywood East?

Like many regions, New York actively markets itself to producers. The Mayor's Office of Film, Theatre & Broadcasting was created in 1966 as both an economic development agency and an advocate for the industry. It promotes the city through financial incentives and advertising, and by sending representatives to trade shows and meetings with Hollywood producers. (After 9/11, the office sent representatives to California to reassure studios that the city was open for business.) It also makes it much easier for the productions to get the necessary permits, permission and insurance, and even provides field representatives for shoots.

According to Julianne Cho of the mayor's office, the events of 9/11and threats of future terrorist attacks have had "little to no effect on the industry" and no productions have left the city since September. Due to fortuitous timing, few productions were even interrupted by 9/11; fears of an actor's and writer's strike had pushed most film projects into the first half of 2001, and many television shows happened to be on hiatus in September. The increase in the number of feature films being made this year, Cho says, "can probably be attributed more to projects that were in their preparation phase during the latter half of 2001, than to a surge in patriotism [attracting producers to the city]."

The real threat to the city's production industry, some fear, may not be from terrorists or economic downturns but from competition from the north. A March 2001 Department of Commerce report looked at the migration of film and television production from the U.S. to other countries--particularly Canada. The report concluded that about $4 billion worth of production, as well as thousands of jobs, goes to cities like Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver each year. It's a trend that began in the 1990s, when the Canadian government created aggressive marketing and incentive programs to attract producers. From January to March 2001, production in Toronto--a city that often stands in for New York--increased 40 percent. Many studios now hire "cost consultants" to manage film and television budgets, and the cost-benefits of Canada are clear--the strong American dollar, coupled with the significant subsidies and tax breaks provided by federal, provincial, and city governments, can produce savings on average of 26 percent.

Even though New York offers some of the most extensive economic incentives to film and television producers in the country--including free permits, free police assistance, and zero sales tax on production consumables--it can't match Canada's economic advantages. Thus, if the global boom in film and television production abates, New York risks being left behind. To avoid this scenario, industry leaders in New York and elsewhere have raised questions about whether Canada's largesse violates fair trade practices. In March 2002 the Los Angeles-based Film and Television Action Committee filed a petition with the U.S. Commerce Department, asking that a duty be placed on productions made in Canada. Others have suggested that, instead of tariffs, federal and local governments should directly subsidize the movie and television industry. But would New York taxpayers be willing to pay to keep "The Sopranos" in the city, or to encourage Woody Allen to film his next project here?

As a location, New York clearly has strengths beyond the bottom line. Julianne Cho lists "a world-class talent pool, locations that cannot be duplicated anywhere else, and a simple, one-stop, expedited permit service that other domestic and international regions have only just started to imitate." Anecdotal evidence suggests that a smaller city like Toronto might not be able to sustain the high production levels it has been experiencing. (The Times quoted one Toronto resident complaining of "production fatigue," while other reports suggest that the labor pool in some Canadian cities has been overtaxed in recent years.) Many writers, directors, and actors place high value on New York's vitality--a quantity than can't be easily be reproduced, even with the latest digital technology that can edit out Toronto's trolley lines and add in New York's skyline. The city's independent film scene--which accounts for 60 percent of all films made here--might also be a source of strength, since indies tend to be driven as much by script and other creative requirements as by budget concerns.

This month, the Economic Development Corporation will review the plans for Stapleton Studios, a project now in the early stages that would build 10 soundstages, a hotel, marina, and esplanade on 36 acres of Staten Island's waterfront. It is an ambitious and seductive plan--a small, self-contained slice of Hollywood just minutes from Manhattan--and one that might help keep New York at the center of film and television production.

Martha Hostetter writes for American Theatre magazine. 

Naming for Dollars


The New York Botanical Garden features the Con Edison Pond Gallery, the Texaco Kids and the Mitsubishi Wild Wetland Trail. The new baseball stadium for the minor-league Brooklyn Cyclones is named after the local energy company, Keyspan (formerly Brooklyn Union Gas). The Children's Museum of Manhattan includes the Time-Warner Media Center. Two theaters on 42nd Street were renamed the American Airlines Theater and the Ford Center for the Performing Arts, and a third theater, the Winter Garden, former home to "Cats," current home of "Mamma Mia," is about to be renamed the Cadillac Winter Garden Theater. So when Mayor Michael Bloomberg suggested recently that the city's parks could be named after corporate sponsors as a way of helping to pay for their upkeep, it was a logical extension of a trend, begun with stadiums and now being adopted by non-profit institutions, to trade the rights to a name for corporate dollars.

In suggesting that parks be named for corporate donors, the mayor acknowledged the success of public-private partnerships in helping to fix up and maintain the city's parks over the last few decades. And he was no doubt aware of how much money the owners of stadiums and theaters and other facilities have raised by selling naming rights. While the mayor mentioned only parks, his idea could be extended to schools, libraries, subway stations, streets.

With the city facing a multibillion dollar budget shortfall and parks slated for their lowest budget in 10 years, some parks advocates welcome the private sector's involvement in parks and would not be opposed to giving naming rights to corporate donors. But other New Yorkers think such deals, no matter how much money they bring in, are a bad bargain. A letter to the mayor signed by 27 scholars and other prominent New Yorkers said, "to rename the parks for corporations would be literally to sell the city - its heart and soul - for money."

NAMING RITES

The selling of corporate naming rights, which began in earnest with sports stadiums in the late 1980s, has become something of a mania. A couple even tried to auction off the naming rights to their newborn child (there were no takers). Nearly half of the nation's major sports arenas now bear the names of corporations, and corporate names are increasingly common in minor league and even college and town playing fields. The practice has spread to convention centers, malls, airports, hospitals, theaters, and museums. The Smithsonian Institution recently named the theater in its National Air and Space Museum after the Lockheed Martin Corporation, which donated $10 million to the museum.

Renaming long has been a preoccupation in New York City. So much time is taken up at the City Council to renaming streets - according to one estimate, about two-thirds of all council bills! - that Councilmember James Oddo has proposed "taking the City Council out of the 'name change game,'" and turning it over to community boards.

But New York City has only recently begun to warm to the national trend of trading names for money.

The amounts of money involved can be substantial. The record so far is the price tag of $300 million ($10 million a year for 30 years) for adding the corporate name "Reliant" to five arenas in a Houston complex that includes the stadium for the Houston Texans. More modest is the $5 million gift for the new building of Philadelphia's Please Touch Museum, which becomes the "Please Touch Museum Presented by McDonald's."

It is clear what the corporations get out of this. Keyspan Energy Services put its name on the new stadium on Coney Island (for an undisclosed sum) to invest in an area that it serves, according to spokesman Robert Mahony. But, Mahony conceded, the company was able to justify the investment to its shareholders because of the advertising return. "It was an excellent opportunity to associate the name of the company with Brooklyn, with the New York Mets, and with bringing baseball back to Brooklyn."

And stadium deals offer a company more than just publicity and marketing value. Corporations attaching their names to stadiums typically get free tickets, luxury suites, parking privileges, and sometimes the opportunity to sell their products at the stadium.

Cities are starting to consider the idea of selling naming rights to municipal facilities, although the rewards are lower and the risk of backlash higher than for more commercial sites. There have been suggestions in various places to offer naming rights for subway stations, school buildings or highways, but Mayor Bloomberg appears to be the first to promote the idea for parks.

There are many successful examples of other types of business support for parks. The National Park Foundation has five major corporate "partners" that have made "multi-million dollar, multi-year contributions" to the national parks, according to foundation spokesman Mike Bento. Detailed guidelines, issued by the parks service, limit how donors can be recognized. For example, permanent signage and naming are not allowed. "What's been proven is that you can get corporations involved without sacrificing the very special nature of the parks," Bento said.

Corporations also sponsor events and programs at municipal parks all over the country. For example, Pathmark and M&M covered the cost of the Easter Eggstravaganza held recently in Central Park. Typically, the identification of the corporate donor is low-key, and sponsors often have a logical tie-in to the event or program.

The city parks commissioner, Adrian Benepe, has said he would like to take existing corporate partnerships a step further by offering naming rights in exchange for the construction and maintenance of a facility. Although the proposal has not gone farther than the concept stage, said department spokeswoman Jane Rudolph, "the goal is not to make Central Park change its name. The goal is to take specific facilities or a special garden like the Heather Garden in Fort Tryon Park and possibly give it a sponsorship."

Another facility that has been mentioned for corporate support is the track and field complex being built on Randalls Island.

The most concrete plan put forth by the Bloomberg administration is to sell advertising space within city recreation facilities. For example, a corporation may pay to have its billboard displayed on the walls of an indoor basketball court.

Any corporate identification would be tasteful and low-key, said Rudolph. "Nobody at parks is going to turn any facility into a corporate name with huge flashing signs," she said.

PRIVATE NAMES=LESS PUBLIC FUNDING?

Whether handled tactfully or otherwise, the idea of selling the naming rights to parks raises a number of questions.

A major pitfall of corporate naming for public spaces like parks is that it tends to erode the government's obligation to fund what are traditionally public services, according to Jerold Kayden, associate professor of urban planning at Harvard Graduate School of Design. "It decreases the necessity of public funding in ways that can have an ultimately corrosive effect on lots of public activities," he said. "It leads us to abandon, step by step by step, down a slippery slope, a commitment of public tax dollars to certain things that are not deemed high priorities."

Yet the public and the government have little control over how long the private support will continue, as the cultural institutions in Houston so painfully learned when a bankrupt Enron couldn't come through with promised donations. If the private sector pulls out, it can be a struggle to get the city to restore former levels of funding.

Also, would corporate donations help the parks that are most in need -- small parks in poor neighborhoods in the outer boroughs? The parks department could try to direct corporate gifts to those areas or earmark a percentage of the donation to the entire system, but the project would ultimately depend on what a corporation is interested in funding, and corporations would probably be interested in high-profile, popular spots.

In New York City, private funds may have already contributed to the decline of public funding for parks. A concerted effort by private donors and volunteers helped turn around Central Park, and then other parks in the city. Yet even when the city's budget was flush during the 1990s, New York continued to trim the parks department budget and encourage the department to raise a greater share from private donors and concessions.

WHAT'S IN A NAME?

Many buildings and public spaces - hospitals, theaters, plazas, gardens - are named for philanthropists who donated money for their construction or renovation: in Central Park, for example, there are the Delacorte Theater and the Wollman Rink. How is this different from naming a public space after a donor that happens to be a business?

Critics see many differences. These public places have been named for individuals being honored for their generosity, public service, or importance to history - not as a quid-pro-quo with profit-making companies.

"It's the sale of New York's great heritage to some corporate donor, which is sad and unfortunate," said Gary Ruskin, the executive director of Commercial Alert, a non-profit organization founded by Ralph Nader to oppose commercialism. "Across the country, a wave of sponsorships is turning municipalities into marketing agents," he said, arguing that it is not the proper role of cities to promote corporations that pollute, sell unhealthy products, or exploit low-earning workers overseas.

Cigarette and liquor companies, as well as businesses involved in disputes or selling controversial products, would probably be off limits. But to Ruskin the concept of putting any corporate name on parks in particular poses problems. "These parks exist to give people a respite from the aggressive hawking of products and huckstering that we are all subject to on a minute-to-minute basis in our society," he said. "Naming rights defeats that worthy purpose."

Similar concerns led the people of Boston to block a plan to sell the naming rights to four of the busiest stations in their subway system. As one reader wrote in The Boston Globe, "Post a bond or raise taxes, but please do not make us say the names of corporations when we describe where we go."

But maybe corporations should keep out of this name game simply for their own good. Several commentators have detected a "naming rights curse." A number of firms that placed their names on stadiums soon saw their stock drop or even went bankrupt. (A web site tracks the stock prices of companies that purchased naming rights to sports arenas). The list of bankrupt sponsors includes PSINet, TWA, Pro Player and, most notoriously, Enron. Earlier this year, after Enron fell into disgrace, the Houston Astros bought back the naming rights, and changed Enron Field back to Astro Field - until the team can find another corporation willing to spend millions of dollars a year to put its name on the ballpark.

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