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Bills Would Further Restrict Coordination Between City Candidates and Independent Expenditure Campaigns


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Council Member Ben Kallos, center (photo: John McCarten/City Council)


As the city heads into the 2021 municipal elections that are already drawing hundreds of candidates and will see many millions of dollars in campaign spending, a City Council member wants to preempt violations of the law on independent expenditures by increasing penalties. 

Council Member Ben Kallos, a Democrat from the Upper East Side who is running for Manhattan borough president in the 2021 election cycle where all of city government is on the ballot, will introduce two bills on Thursday to penalize candidates who coordinate with independent expenditure campaigns by reducing the candidates’ spending limits and by directly fining independent spenders who try to circumvent the rules.

Under Kallos’ proposals, there would be new, more closely defined forms of coordination between a candidate campaign and an independent spender, and fines for violations extended to agents of an independent expenditure campaign.

“We have an amazing new campaign finance system that is encouraging hundreds of candidates to eschew donations from pay-to-play moneyed interests, including the real estate industry, and as we saw in 2013, independent expenditures can have a huge impact,” Kallos said in a phone interview, with reference back to the last city election cycle ushering in so much turnover. 

In the 2013 election, most local, boroughwide, and citywide elected officials were term-limited out of office just as they will be next year. That cycle saw $15.9 million in spending by independent entities, including $8 million on the mayor’s race alone.

“Outside spending is not new to city elections, but the scope was astonishing,” the New York City Campaign Finance Board wrote in its 2013 post-election report, recommending that the City Council pass laws requiring greater disclosure of those independent expenditures, which by law are not allowed to coordinate with candidate campaigns but are also unlimited in their own spending on behalf of or against candidates, the result of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United ruling.

After the 2013 election, the CFB fined a campaign consulting firm, the Advance Group, and newly-elected Council Members Laurie Cumbo and Mark Levine, a total of $31,000 for coordinating spending between their campaigns and an outside group, NYClass, that was advocating for a ban on horse carriages in Central Park. (Levine is also running for Manhattan borough president in the 2021 Democratic primary.)

Since that election, the City Council has approved a variety of changes to the city’s campaign finance program, including new regulations on independent expenditures and, as Kallos noted, the system was also strengthened through a ballot referendum to lower individual campaign contribution limits and provide more public matching funds to candidates. “I want to make sure that if there's independent expenditures, which there likely will be, that they have to follow every single rule on the books and that candidates can't get away with cheating to get elected,” said Kallos, who has been the sponsor of several campaign finance reforms over the years.

The city only has so much control over independent expenditures, which have been considered a form of free speech under the Citizens United decision. The ruling opened the floodgates to large, anonymous spending in elections and has been a bane for election reformers since it removed any limits on outside spending. City law requires that any entity or individual that spends more than $1,000 to support or oppose a candidate or ballot proposal must disclose the amount and top sources of its funding. 

One of Kallos’ bills would set much stricter new criteria to redefine what constitutes an expenditure that is not independent, which would effectively attribute certain spending to a candidate campaign and reduce the amount of money a candidate can spend in the race at hand from campaign coffers. For instance, an expenditure would not be considered independent if a candidate and outside entity share a campaign consulting firm, office space or staff, or if someone in common with the candidate campaign raises funds for the outside entity. If a candidate and independent spender communicate through a third party, any expenditures by the independent entity would count towards candidate campaign spending. “The legislation is spelling out specific things which would be per se, strict liability with a rebuttable presumption,” Kallos said. 

“I want candidates to see this and know it's coming, and know that it's the law to begin with but we're tightening things down to make [coordination] harder to achieve,” he added.

Kallos’ other bill was born directly out of a recommendation by the CFB in its 2017 post-election report to extend liability provisions in the law to agents of independent spenders – currently fines of up to $10,000 can apply to entities themselves, campaigns and agents of candidates running for office. Kallos’ proposal would slap up to a $10,000 fine for every instance that one of those independent expenditure agents violates the rules. 

“I have no sympathy for a candidate who thought they were gonna cheat their way into elected office and won't be able to because of this law,” Kallos said. In order for the bills to become law they will have to pass City Council committee, where they would first be the subject of a public hearing, then the full Council, and be signed or allowed to age into law by the mayor.

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by Samar Khurshid, senior reporter, Gotham Gazette
     

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Voter Turnout in New York City Jumped 7.5% from 2016 to 2020


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Voters in 2020 (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)


Despite concerns about how the coronavirus pandemic may affect voter turnout, more than 2.97 million New York City voters cast a ballot in the 2020 general election, an increase of about 7.5% or 210,000 more votes than were cast in the city in the last presidential election, in 2016.

By election night, more than 2.25 million New York City residents had voted in person, 1.1 million of whom cast a ballot in the nine days of early voting before Election Day. As expected, absentee voting swelled, with more than 720,000 absentee ballots returned to the New York CIty Board of Elections by the November 10 deadline. Counting those ballots just began and is expected to take weeks. 

With 5.56 million registered voters in the city as of November 1, the turnout rate was roughly 53.4%. The rate was slightly lower than the 56.3% in 2016; there were fewer registered voters in the city that year – 2.76 million out of 4.9 million registered voters cast a ballot. There are roughly 13.56 million registered voters statewide in New York. 

President-elect Joe Biden easily won New York State and, as expected, is winning New York City by an even larger margin. The city is home to 3.74 million registered Democrats, roughly 568,000 Republicans, and more than 1 million party-unaffiliated voters, as well as many thousands of voters registered with smaller political parties. But President Donald Trump received more votes in the city this year than four years ago – even without absentee ballots, he had garnered 586,900 votes compared to a total of 494,549 in 2016. 

An analysis by Steven Romalewski, director of the mapping service at the Center for Urban Research, CUNY Graduate Center, shows that from 2016 to 2020 turnout in the city increased the most on Staten Island, large portions of Queens, and parts of Brooklyn. In Manhattan, turnout only increased slightly while in large parts of the Bronx, fewer voters cast ballots this year than four years ago. It’s unclear what role the coronavirus pandemic had in boosting or suppressing voter turnout.

“I think it reflects the intensity of the race and the heightened attention to this particular election. So, as far as civic engagement in New York City, that's a good thing,” Romalewski said in a phone interview. 

Recognizing the challenges posed by the pandemic, state lawmakers and Governor Andrew Cuomo took several steps to make voting easier in the election. These came on top of the fact that early voting had been passed at the state level last year and was being implemented in a presidential election for the first time.

The governor signed several bills into law on August 20 that immediately allowed all voters to request an absentee ballot by citing the risk of contracting COVID-19 as an excuse; allowing voters to postmark their ballots as late as Election Day; and mandating that absentee ballots received the day after the election without a postmark are counted.

New York State still does not allow no-excuse absentee ballots, which requires an amendment of the state constitution. The state Legislature has already voted to pass that amendment once and must do so again before presenting it to voters for their approval as a ballot question, which is also true for same-day voter registration which would allow new voters to register and vote on the same day.

“Anything that helps increase turnout, makes it easier for people to vote is good,” Romalewski said. “It doesn't seem to make sense to have artificial restrictions on when you can submit an absentee ballot, whether you can vote by mail or not. And I think the early voting definitely helped in terms of making it easier for people to vote in a less crowded indoor environment.” 

Among the neighborhoods that saw the highest increase in votes – between 5,001 to 10,995 more votes – were the Upper East Side and the Upper West Side in Manhattan; Greenpoint, South Williamsburg, Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens, Gowanus, Windsor Terrace, Kensington, Borough Park, Midwood, Sheepshead Bay and Brighton Beach in Brooklyn; and large swathes of western, central and northeastern Queens including Sunnyside, Ridgewood, Long Island City, Queensbridge, Ravenswood, Astoria, Woodside, Maspeth, Ditmars Steinway, Forest Hills, Rego Park, Jamaica Hills, Jamaica Estates, Forest Hills, Middle Village, Kew Gardens, Fresh Meadows, Bay Terrace, Auburndale, Clearview, Douglaston and Little Neck.  

Notably, according to Romalewski’s analysis, two Assembly districts – District 80 in the Bronx and District 56 in Brooklyn – saw a marked decrease in turnout, of between 5,001 and 6,888 fewer votes. District 56 had one of the few competitive Assembly races in the city, at least in the Democratic primary, since longtime Democratic Assemblymember Tremaine Wright did not run for reelection while unsuccessfully seeking a State Senate seat. Democrat Stefani Zinerman won Wright’s seat, running uncontested in the general election. In District 80, first-term Democratic Assemblymember Nathalia Fernandez handily won reelection, defeating nominal general election opposition in the heavily Democratic district.

There were parts of the city that saw a smaller drop in turnout, up to 2,500 fewer votes. That includes Brooklyn’s Assembly District 60, which covers New Lots, East New York and Starrett City and is represented by Assemblymember Charles Barron, who was reelected unopposed; and Manhattan’s Assembly District 71, which is represented by Assemblymember Al Taylor and includes Hudson Heights, Sugar Hill and Hamilton Heights. Taylor was also reelected and did not have an opponent in the general election.

Large swathes of the Bronx saw a similar decrease in voting including Fordham Heights, Fordham Manor, West Bronx, Mt. Hope, Crotona, Belmont, Claremont Village, Morrisania, Concourse Village, Charlotte Gardens, Highbridge, Mt. Eden,  Soundview, Clason Point, Longwood, and Hunts Point.

While the presidential election has shown additional encouraging signs of participation in a city that has long been known for voter apathy, but has seen marked increases in 2018 and now 2020, the turnout percentages are still relatively low, and a real test is coming in the municipal elections next year. The future of the city will be on the ballot via June primaries and the fall general election as the city holds elections for mayor, comptroller, public advocate, five borough presidents, and all 51 members of the City Council. Most of those offices, including mayor, will see a new person elected given most of city government is leaving their current offices due to term limits.

The last situation like this, in the presidential election of 2012 and the city elections of 2013, when most of city government including the mayor was turning over, general election turnout in the city went from 53% in 2012 to 23.9% in 2013. But, given the city’s overwhelming Democratic enrollment imbalance, what often matters most is voter involvement in the party primaries -- in 2013, that stood at 22% of registered Democrats, about 40% of whom advanced Bill de Blasio to the general election and mayoralty. In 2016 and 2017, with the Hillary Clinton-Donald Trump presidential election followed by de Blasio cruising to reelection, the dropoff was even more severe. 

“If there is a fall off again in turnout...it's really unfortunate,” Romalewski said, “because in some ways, the person we elect as mayor and the people we elect as City Council representatives have a more direct impact on our everyday lives than people at the federal level. So you would hope that there would be even higher turnout for municipal elections, but that hasn't been the case.”

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by Samar Khurshid, senior reporter, Gotham Gazette
     

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As Federal Covid Aid Dried Up, Hunger Soared in New York City, Report Shows


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Emergency food offerings (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayor's Office)


Many New Yorkers have become less certain about securing their next meal during the economic crisis wrought by the coronavirus pandemic, and the situation has worsened since federal aid evaporated this summer, a new study shows.

In September and October, almost a third of New York City residents had visited a food pantry in the previous 12 months, compared with roughly one in eight at the beginning of the year, according to a report being released Tuesday by Robin Hood, a foundation focused on poverty reduction, in partnership with Columbia University.

While food pantry use rose sharply under the state of emergency that closed down thousands of businesses and coincided with a stoppage of tourism to the city, leading to mass joblessness, the ratio of New Yorkers facing "food hardship" -- defined as running out of food or worrying that you will -- at first remained relatively flat at one-in-three. But that was only until stimulus payments and other benefits from the federal CARES Act expired in July. Since June, the proportion of New Yorkers dealing with “food hardship” has risen to 42%, according to the new study.

The data confirms what city officials, advocates, and millions of New Yorkers already understand, that hunger continues to be a parallel epidemic, an undertow feeding into the turmoil of the crisis as the city stares down another wave of infections.

"There are families right now, working class families, even middle class families, trying to choose between food or medicine or the basics of life," said Mayor Bill de Blasio at a press conference on July 30, the eve of the expiration of federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation (PUC) benefits, which provided $600 a week in CARES funding to people who had lost their jobs.

"Those choices are going to get tougher and tougher," he said at the time. (The city had already launched a massive emergency food initiative to support public and private meal programs, crowned by a $170 million commitment from the mayor in mid-April. That program has provided well over 100 million free meals.)

Food pantries have "become a lifeline" for even more New Yorkers under the pandemic, according to Chloe Sarnoff, a public policy analyst at Robin Hood who worked on the report, "but they're really not equipped to sustain this level of need."

"We hear, from the food pantries and partners that we support, that they can confirm unprecedented demand, with lines stretching down city blocks," Sarnoff told Gotham Gazette on Monday, just ahead of the report's release. "Our pantries and the CARES Act, frankly, are what have helped New Yorkers get by through the worst of this pandemic."

There have been widespread calls for additional federal aid, but there has been no agreement since the CARES Act. House Democrats passed a $2.2 trillion stimulus package, known as the HEROES Act, which has failed to gain traction in the Republican-controlled Senate or the Trump administration.

The pandemic has ransacked the city economy. Initial unemployment claims, down from a peak of 185,000 claims in April, are still three times the pre-pandemic volume with 21,000 new claims filed the week of November 7, according to the latest data published by City Comptroller Scott Stringer. Recipients of federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) vouchers, or food stamps, topped 1.7 million in September -- 224,000 more New Yorkers than in February.

While food pantry use increased steadily from March through October, from 12% to 32% of city residents, the report states CARES funding from four sources helped stave off rising food hardship for many New Yorkers: in addition to payments from PUC, the CARES Act extended unemployment payments by 13 weeks and made it more accessible to part-time workers and independent contractors; it also included one-time checks of $1,200 to eligible adults, and $500 for children under 16. By the end of July, those benefits had largely expired.

Over September and October, 51% of those experiencing food hardship had visited a pantry in the 12 months prior, double the proportion at the end of 2019. Of SNAP recipients, two-thirds visited a food pantry in New York City, also nearly twice the rate as it was ten months before. The figures indicate that existing safety net programs may not be enough.

"For SNAP recipients, you see people really just stretching. Stretching the benefits over the course of the week, over the course of the month, and those benefits are expiring earlier," said Sarnoff. "I think you see people turning to their family and friends in times of need, turning to their community organizations."

City government has taken some steps to address the food crisis, through the Mayor's Office of Food Policy, like the free "Grab & Go" meal program offered at hundreds of sites throughout the city and free deliveries to people who cannot leave their homes. "I hear from pantries all across the five boroughs that they are facing a surge in need like that reflected in this report, and the City is taking steps to support any way we can, providing fresh produce and other food items through our Pandemic Food Reserve Emergency Distribution program," wrote Mayor's Office of Food Policy Director Kate MacKenzie in an email to Gotham Gazette.

"We also know that there are many New Yorkers who are food insecure but who do not go to pantries, and that means pantries can't be the solution alone," MacKenzie wrote.

A spokesperson for the Mayor's Office of Food Policy said the city government is committed to funding emergency food programs but is itself in desperate need of another federal aid bill and cooperation on USDA regulations.

Food pantry use is also increasing at a faster rate than SNAP enrollment, which could be the result of barriers to entering the program, according to the authors of the study. Sarnoff said that, "at a minimum," Robin Hood is calling for Congress to increase the maximum SNAP benefits by 15%, which would translate to $27 more a month for the average New York City recipient, and an additional $43 million a month citywide, on top of what is already coming to city residents. The program has a lot of "bang for your buck," according to Sarnoff, because funding for food stamps tends to go directly back into the economy.

The report is based on data from Robin Hood's "Poverty Tracker," a long-term study of poverty indicators, which has run jointly with the Columbia's Center for Poverty & Social Policy and its Population Research Center since it began in 2012. The project surveys the same representative sample of 4,000 New Yorkers every three months to measure disadvantages through a range of lenses.

The study notes that prior to the pandemic Black and Hispanic New Yorkers surveyed were three times as likely to experience food hardship as their white counterparts. Immigrants and less educated New Yorkers -- the same New Yorkers more likely to lose jobs because of the pandemic -- were more likely to face hardship than U.S.-born and high school- and college-educated residents. Roughly 50% of Black and Hispanic New Yorkers faced food hardship pre-pandemic, according to the findings, compared with just 15% of non-Hispanic white people.

The city, grimly, focused Census outreach at food pantries as they became hubs in numerous communities across the city.

"While it's been devastating to see just the desperation and the food insecurity as a result of the pandemic, we've been able to ensure that we are helping New Yorkers in need complete the Census in that way," said Amit Bagga, then-deputy director of the city's Census office, at a September press conference.

In the big picture, the all-encompassing nature of poverty means that support in other areas, like eviction moratoriums and housing subsidies for people struggling with rent, would also improve the city's hunger outlook.

"New York's second [covid] wave is rising, the crisis is far from over, but the protections really aren't lasting," Sarnoff said.

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by Ethan Geringer-Sameth, reporter, Gotham Gazette
     

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