Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito (photo: William Alatriste)
As the calendar hurtles toward 2017, one of the big New York City political questions is what the future holds for Melissa Mark-Viverito, the speaker of the City Council. Mark-Viverito will be term-limited out of office at the end of next year and while she has indicated that she may continue to be active in city politics, there is no clear next step for her, especially in terms of elected office.
Mark-Viverito, a Democrat, told Newsday in an interview last month, “I keep all my options open” - a similar answer to the many other times she has been asked about her future. In keeping her options open, Mark-Viverito has continued to raise money in her city campaign account. She has also continued to spend it, though not directly on a run for office. Over the most recent six-month filing period, January through June, Mark-Viverito raised more than $185,000 and spent nearly $40,000. Over the past two-and-a-half years, the speaker has raised nearly $800,000 and spent about $460,000.
She has not declared any intention to run for another office, like Manhattan Borough President, Public Advocate, or Mayor, all of which are held by Democratic incumbents all-but-certain to run for re-election in 2017.
For politicians to raise and spend money without a particular elected seat in mind is not unusual and does not violate campaign finance regulations, although it can matter if a candidate decides to eventually participate in the city’s public matching funds program. Mark-Viverito will most likely not be participating since it’s highly unlikely that she’ll run for office in the city in 2017.
While she has been coy about any next job, speculation has been rife that Mark-Viverito could either run for Governor of Puerto Rico, where she was born and raised, or take a post in a possible Hillary Clinton administration. She may also return to labor organizing or run a not-for-profit. There has been some talk of her running for Congress. Mark-Viverito has answered repeated questions about her future with little detail, though with the presidential race heating up she has been traveling the country as a Clinton supporter, leading to increasing discussion of a federal post if the Democrat wins.
Campaign spokesperson Eric Koch declined to comment on which, if any, potential future election the speaker would participate in.
Still, Mark-Viverito has been actively raising money and using it for non-campaign related expenditures, including multiple trips around the country. Between January 12 and July 11, the last disclosure period, she spent $39,048. Much of that, nearly $24,000, went to fundraising consultants. Over the same period, she received $186,580 in campaign contributions. Her overall 2017 campaign account balance is $319,911 - after $779,996 received and $460,085 spent.
The speaker has two bundlers who raised funds for her campaign committee. The first, Joe Cayre, raised $19,800 from four donors, who all share the surname Escava, in November last year. The second bundler, Arthur Goldstein, a lawyer with Davidoff, Hutcher & Citron LLP, packaged 22 separate donations totaling $7,100, mostly between May and July 2015. When asked by phone why he raised money for Mark-Viverito even though she isn’t running for a seat, Goldstein said, “I believe she’s been a good speaker and apparently people we know thought so too.”
Since 2014, Mark-Viverito has spent around $8,500 on flights and hotels to attend political events and rallies. She has gone on trips organized by the Latino Victory Fund, a super PAC that she co-chairs, to promote Latino candidates in elections across the country; she travelled to Arizona for the Netroots Nation conference in July of last year, which was her second trip there. She went to the Somos conference in Puerto Rico in November, and will probably do so again this year. She travelled to Puerto Rico with Governor Andrew Cuomo as well.
Mark-Viverito has also campaigned in four states -- New York, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Florida -- for Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee. In March, Mark-Viverito was an official surrogate for Clinton in the spin room outside the Miami debate, following which she travelled through Puerto Rican areas for two days. The speaker’s campaign said all the trips were cleared with the city Conflicts of Interest Board.
While good government groups don’t see anything wrong with politicians using their campaign funds liberally, they would like to see certain changes in the rules by which funds can be spent.
“To us the solution is the creation of what we call an office-holder account,” said Susan Lerner, executive director of Common Cause New York. “There should be a mechanism to do the sort of things the speaker is doing with her campaign money. It’s a perfectly appropriate thing for an elected official to do.”
Lerner said that the separate account could help clearly demarcate which funds are spent on broader political activities and which ones are directly related to a candidate campaign. Cities such as Los Angeles and Oakland, California have such systems. “We would urge the City Council to look into setting those up,” Lerner added.
Gene Russianoff from New York Public Interest Research Group agreed that Mark-Viverito’s spending hasn’t been inappropriate. But he said it would be better if any and all campaign money spending came later in the election cycle. “We would prefer that the spending start much later,” he said. “There should be no spending the first three years of the campaign cycle.”
If the speaker doesn’t end up running in a city race, her campaign accounts must then abide by State Board of Elections regulations, which are much more permissive, rather than being audited by the New York City Campaign Finance Board. She would also have to decide what to do with those remaining funds. She could give money to other candidates or political committees. Mark-Viverito could also keep money around for a 2021 run for city-wide office.
“We advocate for a campaign fund to be closed within a reasonable time after an official leaves office or doesn’t run again,” Lerner said. “The money should either be returned to donors or donated to charity.”
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by Samar Khurshid, senior reporter, Gotham Gazette
@samarkhurshid @GothamGazette
Mayor de Blasio (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)
A bureaucratic procedure gone wrong has turned out to be a major headache for Mayor Bill de Blasio that refuses to go away. Even after two recent and damning investigative reports, one city agency maintains its investigation is "ongoing" given newly turned over information and the state Attorney General is still looking into the matter.
The lifting of deed restrictions on Rivington House, a nursing home on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, which allowed the property owner to sell to a luxury condo developer at massive profit, has been scrutinized and criticized over the past several months. Mayor Bill de Blasio has admitted that his administration made a significant mistake, but there have been more questions than answers.
With allegations of impropriety swirling, de Blasio insisted that there was no inappropriate intent, only poor communication and an outdated deed restriction removal process. Two reports on the matter - one each from the city’s Department of Investigation and Comptroller Scott Stringer’s office - sought to answers some of the lingering questions and both painted a picture of City Hall mismanagement, though not criminality. A third investigation, by Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s office, continues.
But while the DOI did release a report on the Rivington matter, that investigation featured condemnation of City Hall for redacting information and limiting access to computers. Now, after DOI threatened to sue and City Hall granted more access, DOI has indicated that it still has “an ongoing investigation,” according to a spokesperson for DOI, who declined to comment further.
The watchdog agency could issue a follow-up to its report given new information, which, it said in a press release upon receiving the unredacted documents, includes an essential de Blasio administration memo on the Rivington matter.
While DOI continues its Rivington investigation, the Comptroller’s office confirmed to Gotham Gazette that its report on the deal is final and that Comptroller Stringer has nothing else to add at this time.
The two reports mainly criticized City Hall for poor communication with city agencies and allowing the Rivington deal to go through without the proper checks and oversight that would have stopped such a transaction.
The DOI report, released July 14, found a stark absence of accountability in how the city deals with deed changes and a lack of vigilance among city officials who knew of the deal yet did little to ensure adequate public benefit. It stated that City Hall pleaded ignorance of the details despite having been informed at multiple occasions by agency subordinates.
The Comptroller’s report from August 1 was more pointed in assigning blame, stating that though the process could be improved, the problem largely stemmed from failure in execution and communication by city officials.
Both reports showed that First Deputy Mayor Tony Shorris was not overseeing the related deliberations and processes with clarity, and no one from his office was reading reports that contained key information. Neither the DOI report nor Stringer’s report found that Mayor de Blasio was at fault or even aware of the deal.
That the DOI should consider the matter still open is not surprising. Its report pointed out that it did not receive all the information and documents requested and that the Law Department denied access to computers at City Hall. DOI claimed that “a substantial number of documents” that it did receive were redacted by the Law Department. The report concluded, “Because DOI did not receive a full production of what it requested, it is unclear what Rivington-related information remains on the City Hall servers and computers, to which DOI was denied access.”
A tense back and forth followed, with Mayor de Blasio and the Law Department, led by Corporation Counsel Zachary Carter, at first denying claims that DOI’s investigation was hindered in any way. “There’s been a huge effort made by various elements of the administration to be cooperative and helpful to DOI and obviously the other entities that are investigating,” the mayor said following the release of the report.
“A huge amount of material was provided,” he said. “There was a lot of transparency. The Law Department has a job to do, to make sure things are done the right way. And there’s a natural institutional tension between the two agencies...I’m very convinced that everything was provided that was necessary, and clearly [DOI was] able to come up with a comprehensive report.”
The apparent attempts to obfuscate the investigation have been a separate but related source of criticism to the issues that led to the Rivington mishap, the likes of which de Blasio has pledged will never happen again. In part, he says, because all deed restriction lifts will go through the Mayor’s desk.
A week after DOI’s report, Inspector General Jodi Franzese wrote to Carter asking that the Law Department give them the information and access they were denied in the investigation. "DOI has the exclusive prerogative to determine how it conducts its investigations and what information is relevant to its investigations,” Franzese wrote. “Neither City Hall, Law, nor any other City agency or official is entitled to interfere or refuse to cooperate with a DOI investigation or determine what material is relevant to that investigation."
Five days later, under DOI’s threat of legal action, Carter released thousands of pages of documents and gave DOI access to City Hall computers. One of the crucial pieces of documentation to emerge was a July 2014 memo that showed city officials had reviewed the benefits and possible drawbacks of converting Rivington House to condominiums. (Carter had also redacted a deed restriction waiver for the Harlem Dance Theater in a separate transaction.)
The newly unredacted memo shows detailed consideration of the deed restriction removal and various options for the Rivington property, indicating a good deal of attention from administration officials about the situation. It is the type of deliberation that de Blasio had indicated did not go into the decision to lift the deed restrictions, which he assigned to miscommunication and bad process, which left a lack of scrutiny over whether lifting deed restrictions on any property advance the city's interests.
While DOI says the investigation continues, that does not necessarily mean that it will release additional findings, a new report, or an addendum to its prior report. A DOI spokesperson declined to give indication about what the public could anticipate may come from examination of new information.
Dick Dadey, executive director of Citizens Union, a government reform group, criticized the mayor and the Law Department about their cooperation - or lack thereof - with DOI, insisting that the response to the investigations was the “exact opposite” of what should have happened.
Zachary Carter’s obligation is to the people of New York City rather than the mayor, Dadey said, and that his actions came across as an attempt to protect de Blasio. “There are a lot of questions about this whole process and who is going to be held accountable for the mistakes that were made along the way,” Dadey told Gotham Gazette. “That the corporation counsel’s office now seems to have attempted to conceal needed information from the DOI raises even more questions about the integrity of this investigation and whether or not we will get to the truth about what happened.”
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by Samar Khurshid, senior reporter, Gotham Gazette
@samarkhurshid @GothamGazette
Note: Gotham Gazette is an independent publication of Citizens Union Foundation, sister organization of Citizens Union.
above: Melissa Mark-Viverito; below: Ben Kallos (photos by William Alatriste)
New York City’s campaign finance system, particularly its public matching funds program, is considered a national model, and it stays that way by being regularly updated and modernized. The Campaign Finance Board issues reports following each election analyzing ways to plug holes in the system and bolster the already-robust provisions of the relevant law.
But, the next city election cycle, in 2017, may come and go without any improvements made to the system as a package of legislation aimed at doing just that continue to languish in the City Council.
It’s been more than three months since the Council’s Committee on Governmental Operations held a hearing to consider eight bills related to the city’s campaign finance laws. The most significant of the proposals would prohibit contributions from being matched with public funds if they are bundled by people with business before the city (there already significant limits on the contributions those people can make themselves).
Another key bill would provide public matching funds to candidates at an earlier stage in the election, while other proposals enhance disclosure rules for individuals and firms that own entities with business before the city.
These bills were introduced November 10, 2015 and have barely budged, save for the one hearing, despite having broad support from government reform groups and even the backing of the de Blasio administration. At the hearing on May 2, Henry Berger, special counsel to the mayor, testified in support, suggesting only a few technical changes.
At a news conference on Tuesday, Gotham Gazette asked City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito why the bills hadn’t been prioritized with time running out for them to take effect and be effective in the 2017 cycle.
Mark-Viverito would only say that the Council’s legislative process was continuing. “Sponsors of the bill, I’ve already engaged in conversation with them, we’ve had hearings on all the bills,” she said. “That’s a process internally, have those conversations and decide what we move forward. So conversations have happened with some of the sponsors of those bills.”
In the past, the Council has expedited bills to a vote even if they weren’t time sensitive, unlike the campaign finance bills. Case in point, when the Council approved large pay raises for its members earlier this year, the proposal was introduced, heard and voted on within the span of eight days even though the pay raises would have been retroactive to January 1 regardless of when they passed.
Although it’s not definitively too late now for the Council to move on the campaign finance reform bills, it soon might be. “It is getting late to change the rules of a four-year campaign cycle in what is essentially the third quarter of the game,” said Dick Dadey, executive director of Citizens Union, a government reform group. “That we stand not to have any needed improvements to our campaign finance laws would be a black eye on this Council because it will have been the first time since the law was enacted 25 years ago that quadrennial changes have not been made.”
The reforms under consideration were first recommended by the CFB in its 2013 post-election report, issued September 2014, and the board has continued to push the Council to adopt the changes.
“With so much attention on campaign finance reform in the presidential election,” said Matt Sollars, director of public relations at the CFB, “there is no better time and no better way to demonstrate that New York City’s public financing system is the strongest in the country than by passing legislation to make it even stronger.”
Council Member Ben Kallos, chair of the government operations committee, is prime sponsor on four of the bills in the package. Right after the May 2 hearing, he said to Gotham Gazette, “I think it’s a matter of the public, who want their voices to be louder than those of special interests, to let their elected officials know that they need to sign on to this bill and they need to bring it to the floor of the Council.” Kallos did not provide comment for this article. Of the other bills, two were introduced by Council Member Jumaane Williams, one by Council Member Fernando Cabrera, and one by Council Member Andy King.
On June 6, the campaign finance board made another campaign finance-related recommendation when ruling on the matter of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s fundraising for the Campaign for One New York, a political nonprofit group set up by his allies to promote universal pre-kindergarten and affordable housing. The CFB ruled in the mayor’s favor but also took the opportunity to question the methods. They urged the Council “to strengthen the city’s protections against influence-seeking by wealthy interests, and pass legislation to more closely regulate fundraising solicitations by elected officials for non-profit organizations, especially 501(c)(4) entities,” referring to the IRS’ designation for issue advocacy organizations like Campaign for One New York.
Susan Lerner, executive director of Common Cause New York, another good government group, also believes the Council could still make changes to the law if it moves quickly. “We’re definitely approaching the point at which it’ll become difficult to implement these bills for the coming election cycle,” she said. “The delay is a matter of concern and is unnecessary.”
The bills are well within the public policy goals of the campaign finance system, Lerner said, and none of them could be considered controversial, although she suspects the bill related to bundlers could be holding up the process. “I think voters and constituents need to know that officials are on the side of the public,” she said, “and not lobbyists who want to use bundling as a way to gain influence.”
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by Samar Khurshid, senior reporter, Gotham Gazette
@samarkhurshid @GothamGazette
Note: Gotham Gazette is an independent publication of Citizens Union Foundation, sister organization of Citizens Union.