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New York Mayor Wants City Charter Revision to Tackle Campaign Finance

NEW YORK — Mayor Bill de Blasio will use the first State of the City address of his second term to announce a plan to change the City Charter as a way to improve the city’s campaign finance system.

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WILLIAM NEUMAN
, New York Times

NEW YORK — Mayor Bill de Blasio will use the first State of the City address of his second term to announce a plan to change the City Charter as a way to improve the city’s campaign finance system.

De Blasio, who was plagued during his first term by ethical questions over his political fundraising and the favors he did for deep-pocketed donors, will announce his plan Tuesday night in his annual address, according to his press secretary, Eric F. Phillips.

The mayor will direct the commission — whose members he will appoint — to lower the limits for allowable campaign contributions to political candidates significantly, Phillips said. Donors currently can give candidates for citywide office no more than $4,950 during a four-year election cycle, while they can give a City Council candidate a maximum of $2,750.

“We need a charter revision commission, we need to go at the specific idea that one of the things that most discourages people is money in politics," de Blasio said Monday night on NY1. “People want to get money out of the political process as much as possible.”

The mayor is also expected to propose a more generous model for public financing of elections, Phillips said. He said the commission will also be directed to consider possible reforms to the city’s Board of Elections and to find ways to promote greater voter participation.

One area that he will not instruct it to examine will be the issue of outside nonprofit groups created to take donations to support an elected official’s policies, like the Campaign for One New York, which was created for de Blasio, and whose efforts were later examined by state and federal investigators. Phillips said it was not necessary because the city had already passed a law limiting donations to such groups.

The path to election reform is somewhat muddled; most rules governing contribution limits and the matching funds program that provides public money to candidates are derived from legislation passed by the City Council. In addition, the Board of Elections is governed by state law, and it was not clear how it might be altered through changes to the City Charter.

Voters would have to decide on any proposals from the commission in a referendum. De Blasio’s commission will seek to complete its work in time for voters to consider them in November, Phillips said.

In calling for a charter revision, de Blasio is using a tactic beloved by his two most recent predecessors, Michael Bloomberg and Rudy Giuliani, who convened charter revision commissions on some six occasions. Those commissions were often criticized as being too closely controlled by the mayor and too narrowly focused — sometimes with the goal of pushing pet projects or political initiatives or seeking policy changes that would have been more appropriately handled as legislation by the City Council.

Before that, a highly respected charter revision commission was created by Mayor Ed Koch and passed by voters in 1989. It led to far-reaching changes in the way city government is organized.

Frederick A.O. Schwarz Jr., the chairman of the 1989 commission, said that he was briefed on the mayor’s proposal by a City Hall aide Monday and approved of the focus on voting and campaign finance changes. “I think it’s an extremely good idea,” Schwarz said.

He said that the key to a successful revision was whether the commission is independent of the mayor. “It’s a good way to say, ‘Here are subjects I’d like you to look at,'" Schwarz said. “It’s a bad way to say, ‘Here is what you have to do.'”

A spokeswoman for City Council Speaker Corey Johnson, who has vowed to lead a more independent Council, noted that the Council is considering its own legislation to convene a charter review commission.

That charter revision legislation would create a different sort of commission, whose members would be appointed by the Council, the mayor and other elected officials.

“We’re a little upset because we would like to make sure that it’s a real charter revision and not something you get called five minutes before the appointments are made,” said Gail Brewer, the Manhattan borough president who worked with the public advocate, Letitia James, to have the legislation introduced.

She said that she would like to see consideration of changes that give the City Council more control over the way money is budgeted and spent by city agencies, among other reforms.

“The issue is, a charter revision commission should be independent, it should be a wide base of appointments from different entities of city government," Brewer said.

De Blasio will announce other programs Tuesday to encourage voting and other types of civic engagement. Those include an effort to encourage people to participate in the 2020 federal census and a program, to be led by a newly created chief democracy officer, to get more people to register to vote. He will expand a program to encourage 17-year-olds to register to vote, and he will provide money to enhance computer security at the Board of Elections.

On Monday, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo proposed adding money to the state budget to provide for a statewide early voting system, in which some polling stations would be open during the 12 days before an election.

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