Group complains that the "Public Hearing To examine the abuses within New York City’s taxpayer funded political campaign system and the implications for state taxpayers if the system were to be expanded statewide” won’t really be that public or much of a hearing
A letter from Fair Elections group urging Senate Elections Committee Chairman Tom O’Mara, a Republican, and Sen. Diane Savino, an IDC member, to include their testimony at the scheduled hearing has apparently been rejected.
According to a report earlier today, “[w]itnesses both in favor and against public financing will be able to testify at the hearing”; and State Senator O’Mara was quoted, as follows: “We are having witnesses on both sides of the issue. We’ve got a representative from the New York City campaign finance board as well as the state Board of Elections.... There will be a couple of witnesses in support of the campaign financing system.” (See “Fair Elections Mails On ‘Sham’ Hearing” by Dan Reisman, 5/6/13, YNN Capital Tonight [http://capitaltonightny.ynn.com/2013/05/fair-elections-mails-on-sham-hearing/]).
Alternative programming to the hearing on public financing is already in the works, with Bill Mahoney of NYPIRG and a member of the Fair Elections group planning a news conference on Tuesday to shine a light on the thousands of violations of election law that have gone unenforced.
UPDATE / FOLLOWUP: The Republican-Independent Democratic Conference “public hearing” on public financing of elections seems to have been conducted under rules and conditions that would have worked equally well for “Star Chamber Proceedings.”
ReplyDeleteNick Reisman followed up on last night’s “heads-up” about this "public hearing" with a report on how it actually all went down today in Albany (See “O’Mara: ‘Not Enough Time’ To Hear Everyone” by Nick Reisman, 5/7/13, YNN Capital Tonight [http://capitaltonightny.ynn.com/2013/05/omara-not-enough-time-to-hear-everyone/]). Basically, because the Republicans and IDC members had chosen a small room for their “hearing,” not all interested groups could get in to hear what was going on, much less have an opportunity to speak. It was so bad that late-arriving members of the press had to be specially escorted into the "public hearing" because so many of the other interested members of the public had been kept out because of "overcrowding."
In addition, the time allotted, approximately four hours, had been expected in advance to be too short to allow all the groups seeking time to testify to have an opportunity to do so.
What makes everything seem so much worse is the attitude expressed by some of those conducting the hearing, like the Senate Elections Committee Chairman, Republican Tom O’Mara and Senate Republican Spokesman Scott Reif, that indicated it was part of some inchoate plan that certain interest groups not have a chance to speak on the record at this meeting.
Republicans in the New York State Senate need a lesson on what "public hearings" are supposed to be all about --- gathering testimony and exhibits from interested members of the public about proposed legislation. If the issue is something as important as the proposed expansion of public financing of elections to elections statewide, many more than four hours need to be allocated for testimony from witness and the placing of other exhibits into the record.