The District Legal Challenge to NY Public Campaign Finance Board

April 2025, White Plains, New York. The District Pac filed a legal challenge to the New York State Public Campaign Finance Board’s method for calculating “surplus.” Central to New York’s $400,000,000 public financing of political campaigns is the claw-back of unspent campaign dollars through the Board’’s calculation of “surplus” against campaigns. The calculation of surplus also serves as a mechanism to determine “what” expenditures of tax dollars are permissible and which must be returned to the state. The Board has determined that campaign dollars “transferred” by a publicly funded candidate to political committees and political parties are legitimate expenditures of public campaign dollars, that are not subject to being clawed-back by the state.

According to The District, this is an egregious abuse of NY tax-payer dollars and is a clear violation of the spirit and intent of the Public Campaign Finance Law. Political parties and political campaign committees must not receive taxpayer dollars, under the cloak of a regulatory scheme.

Imagine that a candidate raises $5,000 in small private donations and then receives NY tax dollar public matching funds in the amount of $20,000. Then imagine that this candidate transfers $25,000 from his/her campaign to the local Democrat, Republican, Socialist, or Communist Party committee, or to the Conservative Senate Campaign Committee. Under the Board’s ruling the candidate would have $0.00 left in its campaign coffers, with no' “surplus” to be repaid to the state. Under this scenario, the local political party or political committee is the happy recipient of $20,000 taxpayer dollars.

The Public Campaign Finance Board’s ruling will foster the re-birth of machine politics, and will erode public confidence in our elections, and our institutions.

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