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![handle is hein.brennan/alycplqt0001 and id is 1 raw text is:
BRENNAN
CENTER
TO: New York Public Campaign Financing Commission
FROM: The Brennan Center for Justice
DATE: October 29, 2019
RE: UPDATED Analysis of Commission's proposed legislative qualifying thresholds and
recommendations.
We write to share our data-based analysis of the qualifying thresholds you proposed for legislative
offices in your October 14 working meeting, and to provide recommendations for improvements. The
proper setting of qualifying thresholds is crucial to the success of the program. The thresholds must not
be too high for viable candidates to meet. In a small donor matching program - where, unlike in a block
grant program, candidates can only receive as much public funding as they are able to earn by raising
matchable contributions - protecting the public fisc does not require setting high thresholds.
Our most important findings and recommendations are:
1) You should identify a uniform threshold that is attainable by viable candidates in all districts: no
higher than $4,000 for Assembly districts and $9,600 for Senate districts. Professor Malbin of
the Campaign Finance Institute has conducted an independent analysis that supports these
recommended thresholds.' It is critical that you specify these uniform thresholds in your
legislation, so that, should your district income-based adjustments not survive for whatever
reason, your current baseline thresholds will not then apply to districts where they are too
high to achieve.
2) Your proposed baseline qualification thresholds of $7,500 for Assembly candidates and
$18,000 for Senate candidates would, if applied throughout the state, be far too high for many
districts, and could prevent many viable candidates from being able to participate. Professor
Malbin's independent analysis reaches the same conclusion.
3) [NEW] Your proposed district median income-adjusted thresholds are too high for many viable
candidates in the relevant districts to meet. Professor Malbin's analysis also supports this
conclusion. If you decide to move forward with the district median income-adjusted approach,
the threshold for the baseline districts should be no higher than $5000 for Assembly districts
and $12,000 for Senate districts. The amount for the two lower adjusted thresholds should be
no higher than $4,000 for Assembly districts and $9,600 for Senate districts (the same as our
recommended uniform thresholds).
We provide details, below.
I. Commission's Proposed Qualifying Thresholds
You proposed baseline thresholds that are adjusted downward in legislative races for certain districts
with lower median incomes. These are the baseline qualifying thresholds, to be raised in amounts
between $5 and $250 from each donor:
1 Malbin, Michael J. and Glavin, Brendan, Campaign Finance Institute, to the New York State Public Campaign
Financing Commission, memorandum, October 28, 2019. Qualification Thresholds: Analysis of a Serious Flaw with
the proposed approach and a recommended alternative that relies on within-district donors for legislative
candidates.
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