11 May 2022: Lawmakers Seeking to Cut Off Cuomo's Access to Campaign Fund Millions

Push continues to restrict Cuomo from spending prior campaign money

This report covers an effort by NY state lawmakers to block politicians from being able to spend money they collected for their campaigns for previous elections if they are found guilty of a crime or, more questionably, whether they were investigated by the state attorney general or state legislature committees for breaking laws. Here's an excerpt describing the rationale behind the proposed legislation:

Common Cause NY and ethics-minded lawmakers remain committed to preventing former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and other misbehaving elected officials from spending the campaign war chest they amassed while in office.

"This is one instance, unfortunately among many, and it's time to deal with this gap of law," Common Cause NY Executive Director Susan Lerner said Tuesday at the Capitol.

The legislation was first drafted by Assemblyman Phil Steck, D-Colonie, after Cuomo resigned in August amid the threat of impeachment following investigations from the attorney general's office and the Assembly Judiciary Committee. It would cut off access to campaign funds for any elected official who was convicted of a crime or resigned following an investigation conducted by the attorney general or a committee of the Legislature that concluded the official had violated the law.

Steck said he was concerned Cuomo may use the $18 million that remained in his campaign's coffers for "political retribution."

"We hold those funds in trust for a public purpose, which is to communicate ideas to the public when we're running for office," Steck said Tuesday. "So it's not something that we should be able to use for whatever purpose we see fit."

While it would be viable to block politicians convicted of crimes from being able to access or spend money collected for their political campaigns, we're afraid doing that for politicians who were only investigated by state officials or lawmakers would not pass constitutional muster.

If NY lawmakers were serious about this kind of reform, all politicians should be subject to repaying all campaign funds to their donors if not spent within a three-month period on election-related expenses after the election for which it was collected. The only debate should be over which donors would be repaid and how much they would be repaid, where we would suggest "All" and "in proportion to what they donated" as the answers to those questions.