My name is David McCabe and I am a high school student interning at the New York office of Common Cause. I will blogging over the next few weeks on the topic money in politics, sometimes on a national scale but sometimes more local. My first topic is local, the current roundtables being held by the state senate on the topic of campaign finance.

Although Governor Spitzer highlighted it as a major priority, the issue of campaign finance wasn't ultimately addressed in the most recent legislative session. In many ways contributing to this problem are the roundtable discussions being held by the State Senate. Before the dramatic and ugly end, The NYS Senate tried to shift the pressure they were under by first calling for "public hearings" on campaign finance, then settling for closed, biased roundtable sessions. Senators Bruno and Griffo called these discussions to see if there was even a reason that the senate should debate campaign finance, strange, because they have been negotiating a campaign finance package for months, making these discussion more of a stalling tactic than anything else. Unfortunately, they chose to call these discussions at the end of the last legislative session, after they had already walked away from talks on the campaign finance package.