State Board of Elections Assesses the 2014 Pilot Public Financing Program

The State Board of Elections (SBOE) has issued a report assessing the state’s ‘pilot’ public financing program. The pilot program made public funds available to qualifying candidates in the 2014 race for state Comptroller, but no candidates actually qualified to receive public funds.

The pilot public funding program was included in the 2014 state budget. It was the , reflecting a compromise between campaign finance reform advocates who sought a full system of public matching funds for all state elective offices and the Senate Republicans, who opposed the creation of such a program.

The statute that established the program (Chapter 55 of 2014) requires the SBOE to report on the program. The law expired at the end of 2014, which means that any new public matching funds programs (pilot or otherwise) will require a legislative enactment.

The report is brief, noting that “No public funds were paid to a candidate by New York State.”

Its analysis of the effect of the public matching funds program notes that the “the 2014 program was to be implemented nearly 3½ years into the election cycle for this campaign.”

The report notes that “the State Board was prepared to administer the entire program” despite its “extremely short implementation timeframe.” It also notes the challenge of making recommendations to improve a program for which no one qualified to participate.

In addition to some administrative changes, the report calls for at least two years within which to implement the program and for funding to pay for software for claim submission and payment auditing.

Read more on this from the State of Politics blog.