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State of the State Opens Door to Public Financing of Elections Citizen Action Also Asks Governor to Change Direction on State Budget Albany, NY – Citizen Action of New York praised the Governor for proposing public financing of elections in his State of the State address. “The conviction of former Senator Bruno for misusing his office for personal gain is just the latest example of why we need to get private money out of our political campaigns,” said Karen Scharff, Executive Director of Citizen Action of New York. “Public financing of elections is the lynchpin of ethics reform. Without public financing of elections, corporate money and business interests will continue to stand in the way of affordable health insurance, a fair state budget, and other legislation critical to New Yorkers.” “The Governor’s compelling support today for public financing of elections opens the door to reform. The Assembly has long been the leader for public financing of elections, including passing a robust public funding bill in 2009. The Senate Majority engaged the public in hearings and on-line discussions in 2009 and developed a comprehensive public financing bill. Now that the Governor is on board, we look forward to all three coming together to pass a bill this year.” Public financing of elections is one thing in the Governor’s reform proposal that already has strong support in both houses of the legislature. The Assembly has repeatedly passed public financing of political campaigns, including passing new, updated legislation in 2008 and 2009 to create a robust public funding system for state legislative and statewide races. In 2009, the Senate held hearings across the state and introduced a full public financing bill with broad support in the Senate. In June of 2009, Citizen Action of New York released a report, New Yorkers Pay When Big Money Plays: The Case for Public Financing of Elections, that analyzed five bills relating to health care, the environment, rent regulation and ticket scalping, and found that the consumer and community groups in favor of passing commonsense legislation in these areas were outspent many times over by industries that would be regulated by the bills. (The report is available at: https://citizenactionny.org/2009/05/new-yorkers-pay-when-big-money-plays-the-case-for-public-financing-of-elections/739.) Ms. Scharff also said that she was disappointed that the Governor signaled in today’s address that he’s going to rely on cuts to school aid, health care and other critical programs to New Yorkers to balance the state budget this year. “Taking a meat axe to programs like education and health care has been repeatedly shown to be the wrong way to climb out of a recession. We hope that the Governor’s budget will look to raise additional revenue for the state, rather than cutting further the programs New Yorkers depend on in this recession.” ### |