Fleming Calls For Veto Of County Campaign Finance Repeal

Suffolk County Legislator Bridget Fleming said this week that she hopes County Executive Steve Bellone will veto a move by the County Legislature’s new majority to dissolve a campaign finance program intended to help people of modest means run for county office.

Fleming was one of the original sponsors of the legislation creating the Fair Election Matching Fund, which she and others who had supported the creation of the fund in 2017 hoped would make it easier for candidates to wade into a campaign and would tamp down soaring campaign spending and special interest influence.

After years of drafting the requirements and guidelines of the matching fund — which would match fundraising efforts of candidates as long as they pledged to cap their campaign spending and not accept very large donations from interest groups or individuals — the Legislature had seeded the fund with $2.5 million in financing from gambling proceeds at gaming sites like Jake’s 58 and had planned to roll out the matching fund in 2023.

But last week, the new Republican majority in the Legislature voted to repeal the fund legislation and put the money toward public safety programs like technology that can detect and pinpoint the location of gunshots, and money to offset the revenue lost by the removal of red light cameras that have been particularly problematic.

“It was a huge disappointment,” Fleming said of the repeal, which passed mostly along party lines. “This was a very reasonable approach. It wasn’t taxpayer funded, and it would begin to demonstrate that there is a will to get something like this in place and that it can work.”

The fund, Fleming said, was intended to move campaigns away from the full-tilt fundraising that many say has allowed wealthy people to unduly influence public policy, turned campaigns toxic and blocked out those who do not enter a political race with a huge war chest to start.

The fund required that a candidate raise $50,000 through contributions of no more than $250 each. The fund would then match that $50,000, but the candidate would have to pledge to not spend more than $100,000 for a general election race or $150,000 for a primary and general election.

Fleming said that she has had to spend as much as $200,000 each for her county campaigns, without ever facing a primary challenge.

“This was created to take some of the toxic influence of big money out of politics, to get more ordinary people to have a say in local government and reduce the influence of campaign donors,” Fleming said. “They are clearly trying to kill that.”

Legislator Kevin McCaffrey, the presiding officer since the Republican Party took the majority in January, said that his caucus simply thought the money could be better spent elsewhere. They have proposed using about $1.7 million to reimplement “Shot Spotter,” an audio tracking system that helps alert police and pinpoint the location of gunshots — something the county had abandoned in 2019 because the system didn’t work well. McCaffrey says the technology works better now.

Bellone has yet to weigh in on whether he will veto the measure. He had supported its creation and spoke against the repeal during recent debates.

McCaffrey says that if Bellone vetoes the repeal, he believes that the Republicans may have enough support from some Democrats to override the veto and repeal the fund.

“You can’t really say this isn’t taxpayer dollars because it’s all going in one pot and this revenue offsets other revenues, so it’s still money taxpayers will have to put up, and we don’t think that should be part of political campaigns,” McCaffrey said.