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The Green Party of New York State denounced the State Legislature’ s campaign finance legislation passed yesterday as a sham. “The provisions put into place are stunningly inadequate – they don’t even approach the stringency of federal guidelines, which are themselves highly flawed,” said state party co-chair Peter LaVenia.
LaVenia pointed out that the guidelines do nothing to address the main issues of campaign finance, which are the necessity of sufficient public funds to run a credible campaign provided to all campaigns regardless of size or stature, and the ability of private monies to influence campaigns – legalized bribery of public officials.
“The caps on soft money donations to the parties are extraordinarily high and do not address the fact that soft money *is* the problem. This is a sop thrown to the public from the Democratic legislature and Governor Spitzer, and it is bare-bones at that,” said Gloria Mattera, state party co-chair. “Just examining what Spitzer, Bruno, and Silver call ‘reform’ is incredible – $300,000 donations by individuals or PACs to parties would still be legal until 2011, and $150,000 in 2013. They are simply codifying an already rotten system.”
The Greens instead call on the state legislature to pass a real campaign finance bill, one that would:
– provide full public funding for all campaigns once candidates are on the ballot
– abolish soft-money donations entirely
– ban or establish a highly restrictive cap on private donations to candidates
– stop donations to campaigns from special interest groups and corporations
Click to here to find campaign finance reports available on the the NYS Board of Elections website.
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