Gov. Cuomo and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver want to bring New York City-style taxpayer-funded elections to the Empire State at large.
Here’s what that could mean:
Past and future mayoral contender Billy Thompson last week scooped up almost $500,000 in taxpayer money precisely because he violated campaign regulations 8,000 times, got caught and now owes the municipal fisc some $600,000.
That’s right: Thompson got a check from the New York City Campaign Finance Board — $444,029 in taxpayer money that the city “owed” him from his unsuccessful 2009 run for mayor.
We say “owe,” because the city’s public-financing law makes tax dollars available to pay down candidates’ debts, no matter how they are incurred.
Thompson’s 2009 campaign remains $687,170 in the red, and 90 percent of that comes from a whopping $594,375 in fines he owes the city for illegally posting about 8,000 campaign signs on public property.
So the city cut Thompson’s campaign the $444,029 check last week — not a tit-for-tat paydown of the fines, obviously, but not exactly a sharp stick in the eye, either.
Unless you’re a taxpayer — with better things to do with your dough than bail out Billy Thompson.
Perversely, had Thompson bothered to obey the law in the first place, he wouldn’t have been fined — but neither would he have been eligible for last week’s cash transfusion.
So, again, the city is required to drop a six-figure lump sum on a top-tier mayoral candidate so he can pay back the city for breaking the city’s own rules.
This makes no sense whatsoever — except from the point of view of New York’s political establishment, which takes very good care of itself, and always has.
Pols stand to collect up to six tax dollars for every buck they raise in donations — a sweet deal, any way one looks at it.
The campaign-finance board says matching funds “increase the value of small contributions . . . [and] make elections more competitive” — which is nonsense.
Incumbents rarely lose in New York City, for any number of reasons; public campaign financing, which began in 1989, has done nothing to change that.
But a system that poses no real threat to incumbents while providing them with a ready source of new campaign cash is bound to be popular with politicians — which doubtless explains Albany’s growing enthusiasm for it.
Which also means folks like Pedro Espada and Carl Kruger likely soon will have their hands on even more taxpayer money.
Oh, happy day!
Thompson, to be sure, has done nothing illegal, other than letting his campaign post signs on public property.
But then, he didn’t need to — because the law basically is designed to facilitate perversities like the payout he got last week.
There’s no cause to extend it statewide.
Cuomo and Silver really need to back off.