Free Money

Quick: What did the now deceased rapper Old Dirty Bastard have in common with New York's political class?

ODB, who later changed his moniker to the more presidential Big Baby Jesus, was once in a limousine with an MTV camera crew when he stopped to pick up a welfare check. Turning to the camera, he asked, "Why would you turn down free money?"

New York politicians, political clubs and consultants have taken a similar approach, which is no surprise.

What is remarkable is that the city's so-called good government groups-and its paper of record-are all for the hustle.

Campaign finance reform in New York emerged as a response to the city's hardball local politics in the 1980s, when the Democratic Party bosses of three different boroughs were embroiled in a series of scandals that cost the city millions, badly damaged the public trust and inspired the suicide of Queens Borough President Donald Manes.

The result was charter reform, which reduced the previously powerful borough presidents to figureheads, greatly strengthened the mayor's powers, and introduced one of the only campaign finance programs in an American city-and one of the most extensive at any level of government.

The idea was to free politicians from the undue influence of fat cats and moneyed interests by having the city match in-city campaign contributions from individuals of up to a thousand dollars so long as a candidate agreed to limit how much money he'd collect from any given contributor to that amount, and to limit how much he'd spend on the campaign in total, and to provide full disclosure about donors and submit to CFB audits. Candidates in the program also get profiled in a free voter guide sent to every household with a registered voter, and new this year is participation in mandatory CFB-sanctioned debates.

But if a taxpayer dollar for each dollar contributed helped reduce corruption, just imagine what four free dollars for each dollar contributed would do. Or so went the thinking of our esteemed City Council, which in 1988 raised the ratio to four-to-one (while lowering the maximum contribution to $250), thus ending corruption four times over. In 2001 (the last year with a full set of city races), taxpayers contributed $42 million in matching funds to campaigns.

The program was changed again in December 2004 by the City Council under Speaker Gifford Miller to allow six-to-one matching funds and unlimited spending when (Miller is) running against wealthy, self-financed campaigns (of Mayor Bloomberg).

Gene Russianoff, who represents New York Public Interest Research Group and Straphangers Alliance, among other good government groups, had his NYPIRG hat on when he preposterously proclaimed that such a move was not only "the right thing to do," but that it "could actually save taxpayers money." Unlikely, but optimism corrupts.

While it's hard to see how Bloomberg's self-financing could corrupt him in any traditional political sense of the word, Miller opted out of the program during his 2001 City Council run, in which he faced no serious opposition, so that he collected as much money as he could to contribute to other Council candidates. Once elected, those members helped elect him Speaker, thus his Council run put a down payment on his mayoral run.

Many incumbents have signed on to the program despite running effectively unopposed in order to spread the wealth-and that's how the system is meant to work. "If a participant has minimal opposition, then the law requires that the participant receive matching funds unless the participant indicates to us that he/she does not wish to receive the funds," CFB spokeswoman Andrea Lynn emailed me.

Participants do wish to receive the funds, though.

Charles Barron already received $78,375 from the City to ward off John Whitehead, who raised $11,305 and has not yet received any matching funds. Queens Borough President Helen Marshall already has $57,181 ready to be multiplied four-fold while her opponent hasn't filed so much as a single dollar. Other races have much the same dynamic: Majority Leader Joel Rivera has $102,491 raised, with $21,646 to receive board funds, which should help him defeat Yvette Velazquez Bennett, who thus far has raised $600; Finance Committee Chairman David Weprin of Hollis raised $420,565 with $20,751 that could be matched while challenger Celestina Akbar has raised $245.

There you have Gotham politics in a nutshell: everything fair, legit, in the open and ineffective. And New Yorkers come up with no real choice inside the voting booth.

"The Campaign Finance Board program is full of good intentions, but there are a lot of loopholes," said one Manhattan-based consultant. "There's a lot of taxpayer money going into this and I'm not sure that we're getting our money's worth. It's the cost of good intentions. It was a good idea but did it attract good candidates? Better than the previous crop?"

"While it's hard to justify the expenditure of these public funds," said Neal Rosenstein, NYPIRG's humbly-titled government reform coordinator, "what it does to candidates themselves is that it makes them less beholden to special interests, whether or not they have credible opponents." Well, then.

"To me, that is a loophole," said Councilman Tony Avella. "That sort of defeats the whole purpose of the program." But don't get him wrong-he's still expecting the CFB to send about $68,000 his way, to add to his $111,575 war chest. His opponent has raised $2,520.

New York's Byzantine petitioning laws have proven useful as a means of gaming campaign finance, as the costs of gathering nominating signatures and defending them in court are exempt from the spending cap.

Former City Comptroller Alan Hevesi claimed nearly $800,000 for those costs, an inspired tactic during his otherwise uninspired 2001 mayoral campaign. Gifford Miller now is taking it to the next level by joining N'Sync. Excuse me-by claiming more than $1 million in such costs, roughly 40% of his campaign's entire expenditures to date. And that doesn't include the infamous $1.6 million taxpayer-funded newsletter he sent citywide from the Council.

Lynn, the CFB spokeswoman, is another optimist, telling me that "Following the election, we assume that any money left over in the committee is public funds and therefore the candidate will be required to return the money to the public fund."

What this means in the real world is furious spending-money is passed to other campaigns, to consultants, printers, is given as thank you money to many who have worked on or been associated with the campaign, or who might be in a position to return the favor come the next campaign. You've got to spend it or lose it, after all.

Veteran political consultant George Artz dismissed the notion that there was any political fallout for an incumbent taking taxpayer dollars to run against token challengers.

"No. I don't believe that's true. I think you get the money that you deserve. Who is to say who is not a serious candidate? Every year I'm surprised who gets a good vote."

"I would always advice a candidate to be in campaign finance," he told me.

And to receive public matching funds?

"Yes."

Despite the program's obvious flaws, though, it's remained popular with the city's eat-your-spinach good government groups, including the NYPIRG, Citizens Union and The New York Times.

NYPIRG called the city's law "a model for the nation." Citizen's Union and other groups have urged lawmakers to extend the city's campaign finance program statewide. The Times called the law "the best and fairest way for candidates to run for political office" and has even staked their endorsement on this issue. In 1999, for example, the paper condemned Reba White Williams' self-funded Council candidacy as an attempt to undermine "an excellent campaign finance system and distort the political process."

Process: the sacred cow of good governance. Where rappers are fond of calling out unnamed "sucker MCs," the good government cabal has come out in favor of using taxpayer dollars to offset equally anonymous "special interests" (read: campaign contributors).

That good government groups might be considered a special interest, and not merely a righteous manifestation of what the Public Will ought to be, has gone mostly unnoticed. Who, after all, is against good government?

Apparently, the good government groups.

To turn for a moment to a state race, Citizens Union, which the Times has described as one of the leading voices on good governance, just backed incumbent Brooklyn District Attorney Joe Hynes-his ethical lapses, fundraising from employees, misuse of a government vehicle for campaigning, and his felony conviction rate, the lowest of any DA in the city and two viable challengers not withstanding.

"Every candidate has its pluses and minus," said CU Executive Director Dick Dadey, who must have seen enough candidates to know they are things, not people.

"But you have to evaluate the broad picture and what the incumbent has accomplished in office?This is not to say we don't have concerns about the way he's run his office, but they're not compelling enough," Dadey said, adding that he hopes Hynes would manage his staff "with greater integrity" in the future. Optimism.

In the meantime, Cash Rules Everything Around Me will remain the city's rap anthem, with the good government groups as the over-sincere white boys nodding their heads to the beat.