On Monday, April 23rd NBC's popular show Heroes returns from a brief hiatus.  That same day also happens to be the 3rd annual Reform New York Day of Action.  It almost seems fitting that these two events would share the same day because sometimes it seems as if only a superhero could fix what's wrong with New York.

New York has some of the worst campaign finance laws in the nation, some of the most absurdly uncompetitive legislative district lines and our legislature has been called the most dysfunctional legislature in the union.  

New York's Governor Spitzer, who ran on a platform of reform in 2006, will make the keynote address at Reform NY Day 2007.  Hopefully, with his Gubernatorial powers to assist us we will be able to defeat dysfucntion and champion good government.  Click here to learn more about Reform  NY Day 2007.

So, I pose this question: what kind of "government reform super powers" can you think of?  Here are a few ideas:

• "Super Re-apportionment": the ability to draw compact, contiguous, AND competitive district lines.


• "Freedom of Information"-vision: the ability to see through opaque layers of government bureaucracy to see what's really happening in the statehouse and with your tax dollars.


• "Campaign Contribution Shrink-Ray": the ability to shrink campaign contribution limits and close loop-holes.

Civic and Voting Rights Groups sent a letter to Nassau County Election Commissioners and Nassau County Republican and Democratic Party Leaders--covering Senate District 7 responding to recent reports in the media regarding proposed  widespread identification challenges to voters on the rolls for tomorrow’s special election in Nassau County.   The Brennan Center for Justice, Common Cause/NY, DEMOS, League of Women Voters/NYS and NYPIRG urged ElectionOfficials to take special care to ensure that the rights of voters under federal and state law are scrupulously  protected in this hotly contested race.”

Based on media reports, Nassau County Republican Party Chairman Joseph Mondello is quoted as stating that “Our poll watchers and election inspectors will  challenge people to show some kind of identification as to who they are…They  have a right to ask for identification to make sure you are John Smith. Our people have been cavalier about this in the past.  This time, in this  election, we’re dearly concerned.”  (The New York Times, 2/3/07.)

The groups fear that this means that there could be wide-spread or blanket challenges, which will have a chilling effect on voters going to the polls and casting votes and result in delays at the polls.  The groups cite to federal and state laws that protect voters from blanket challenges and limit the circumstances under  which identification must be produced.

Common Cause has offered up its toll-free hotline number at 1-800-300-8707 as a place for voters to register complaints.

Common Cause/NY and a diverse group of organizations from across the state joined today to decry New York's exorbitant campaign contribution limits. The already sky high contribution limits will automatically increase today according to the consumer price index, as they do every four years.

The new limits will allow over $94,000 to be given to political parties and over $55,000 to candidates for statewide office; up from $84,400 and $50,100, respectively.

Here's the coverage on the AP wire.

This past Wednesday New York Governor Spitzer and State legislative leaders announced a bill to help fix the state ethics rules in New York State.  Common Cause/NY has long called for substantial ethics reform and pointed to the various flaws in the existing statutes.  While there are number of good provisions in the package we are a concerned with a few of the changes proposed. 

Specifically, the legislation would create a new state agency, the Commission on Public Integrity, and do away with two existing agencies, the Temporary Commission on Lobbying and the State Ethics Commission.   

Despite having “temporary” in its title the Lobbying Commission has existed since 1977 and has largely been viewed as one of the more effective public integrity watchdogs in New York State.  Through a combination of independence and aggressiveness the Lobbying Commission has levied millions of dollars in fines and penalties and butted heads with many public officials; including Governors Spitzer and Pataki and the legislative leaders. 

Because of this effectiveness Common Cause/NY and other good government groups are dismayed that proposed ethics package would significantly alter the way lobbying is regulated in New York State.  Here are some of the changes that concern us.

• It would give the Governor a majority (7 out of 13) of the appointees to the new commission—currently no one political figure makes a majority of the appointments to the Lobbying Commission.
• The new commission’s executive director would effectively serve at the pleasure of the Governor (a majority of the commission) and would have to seek the approval of the commissioners to act on an investigation.  Currently, the executive director has the authority to initiate investigations unilaterally.
• The new commission will not be able to keep the funds that they levy via fines and penalties.  This means that the Commission’s budget will be at the mercy of those they are charged to oversee.

This has been a truly exciting week for government reform in New York.  On Wednesday New York Governor Eliot Spitzer fresh off of his Monday inaugural address made his first State of the State address before a joint session of the New York State Senate and Assembly.  In his 6,000+ word speech Governor Spitzer laid out an ambitious agenda for his first year in office.  However, before he got to the tax cuts, education funding, and health care reform the new Governor laid out an ambitious and ground shattering array of government reforms.  First among them was a pledge "to replace the weakest campaign finance laws in the nation with the strongest."   Besides calling for lower limits, closing of loopholes and limiting contributions from lobbyists he also called for full public financing.

The Governor didn't stop with campaign finance reform he also called for lobbying, election, judicial selection, and several other key reforms that Common Cause and other good government groups have been advocating for decades.  I should have a clip of the government reform section posted on YouTube by tomorrow morning.

The good news doesn't end with Spitzer, however. More good news for reform in New York and Spitzer's full remarks on government reform after the jump....

Live, from New York it's the NYPIRG/Common Cause New York Voter Help Line!  Dozens of volunteers are answering phones, looking up poll sites, tracking complaints and having fun.  So far we've heard complaints of broken machines, missing signature books and cranky poll workers--and it's only 9:30 AM!!  However, it appears things are going smoothly for the most part, at least in New York City.  More info after the jump...

Yesterday the New York State Assembly released a 2,675 page PDF detailing some $52 million worth of spending on member items (commonly known as “pork” spending) which they euphemistically referred to as "legislative initiatives" on their website.

This PDF, coming in at almost 3.5 megabytes, is somewhat unwieldy, to say the least.  Though prepared with an eye-pleasing CGOmega font the document only has one project per page.  Printing this compendium of secret spending could therefore cost you over 5 reams of paper.  So, your friendly Common Cause/NY staff has moved the data into a handy spreadsheet and done some preliminary analysis on who is getting the funding, who is administering the funding and how much these mysterious “legislative initiatives” are costing taxpayers.  Click here to download the spreadsheet as a compressed zip file.

Some quick facts and background after the jump…

Today, Common Cause/NY released a comprehensive new study on the "soft money" loophole in NYS entitled, The Life of the Party: Hard Facts on Soft Money in New York State.  The report examines the use of an egregious loophole in New York State's Election Law which exempts certain contributions given to political parties from all contribution limits.  This money, known as "soft money," is given to political parties' "housekeeping" accounts, and these contributions may be of unlimited size.  

Click here to download the report and here to download the press release.