NYC COIB Caps Contributions to Elected Officials’ Legal Defense Funds

The New York City Conflicts of Interest Board (COIB), the agency that administers, interprets and enforces the city’s ethics laws, has issued an advisory opinion (AO 2017-2) that caps donations to a legal defense at $50 per individual — except for family members, who can contribute unlimited amounts.

CIOB issued the opinion after it “received requests for advice from public servants to help establish legal defense funds.”  There has been media speculation that one of the public servants who sought COIB’s advice was Mayor Bill de Blasio, who recently said that he planned to form a legal defense fund to pay the legal bills incurred during the various investigations of his fund-raising tactics. (Those investigations concluded without any charges being brought.  Read my earlier post on this here.)

In its opinion, the COIB found that “that contributions to legal defense funds for public servants are no different from gifts directly to the public servant and thus are subject to the gift restrictions of Chapter 68 of the New York City Charter, the City’s conflicts of interest law, and related Board Rules.”

Consistent with prior advisory opinions, the COIB found that the $50 cap applies even if the person or entity making the contribution does not have any business before the city.  The COIB said that in such cases, it “will presume that the public servant is being offered contributions only because of his or her City position.”

Mayor de Blasio has promised not to use any public funds to pay for his legal defense, so the COIB’s action significantly limits his ability to raise funds.

Read news coverage of this story from the Daily News, the Gotham Gazette, the New York Times, Crain’s, the Wall Street Journal and (behind a paywall) Politico NY.