New York City Campaign Finance Board Seeks Greater Disclosure ...

In a move that could affect the 2013 municipal elections, the New York City Campaign Finance Board on Thursday released proposed rules requiring more disclosure of campaign spending by independent groups like unions.

After a Supreme Court decision in 2010 allowed corporations and unions to spend an unlimited amount of money in candidate elections, a ballot initiative in New York City calling for tighter campaign finance controls was approved in 2010 by 84 percent of voters. And it fell upon the board to come up with specific rules to administer that law.

?Independent expenditures have long been a part of City elections, but a gap in disclosure requirements has kept the details of independent spending hidden from public view,? the board said in a statement.

Under the proposed rules, most internal communications among union members like mailers, called member-to-member communication, would not be considered independent expenditures, and therefore not subject to detailed disclosure.

But any leaflet that a union sends to its members advocating on behalf of ? or in opposition to ? a candidate, like ?Candidate X is who we need? or ?Proposal Y would be bad for our city,? would be considered an independent expenditure requiring disclosure, according to the board.

Laurence D. Laufer, a former general counsel to the board who is now a partner at Genova, Burns & Giantomasi, said that the rules did not appear, at first glance, to be as draconian as unions had initially feared. But he said that he was struck by how much more regulatory authority the board was trying to assert ? more authority, he noted, than the Federal Election Commission has under federal law ? while also subjecting noncompliance to investigation and penalty.

?The C.F.B. is standing very much like a candle in the wind against a generally deregulatory trend at the federal level,? Mr. Laufer said.

Unions, though, did not react favorably, and vowed to make their displeasure known at a public hearing in the fall.

Harry Nespoli, president of the Uniformed Sanitationmen?s Association, called the new proposals ?troubling? and said that the union?s lawyers were reviewing them.

?The regulations suggest that an activity as simple as posing for a photograph with a City Council member must be reported,? he said. ?The voice of labor will not be silenced. We will not surrender our First Amendment rights.?

Source: http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/08/city-campaign-finance-board-seeks-greater-disclosure-from-donors/

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