Managing Prime
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 Posted - 05/09/2008 : 2:35:29 PM
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Retired Politicians Spend Unused Campaign Funds
By MIKE McINTIRE
Published: February 24, 2007
When Michael J. Bragman, a onetime Assembly majority leader, retired from the New York State Legislature in 2001, his campaign committee had about $1 million in the bank. Six years later, Mr. Bragman is still retired, and $400,000 of that money is gone.
Mr. Bragman did not run for office again. But he did pay his wife $24,000 a year to work for a campaign committee that did no campaigning. And he spent thousands more on bottles of wine, meals at a yacht club, Christmas gifts and office rental payments to a company that he appears to control.
Mr. Bragman, a Democrat who represented a district in the Syracuse area for 21 years, offers an unusually vivid example of how New York’s campaign finance laws allow former candidates to keep spending contributions long after their campaigns end. And he is not alone.
A review of campaign expenditures at the State Board of Elections found other former officeholders whose unused campaign cash has been put to uses that their contributors probably never envisioned — and with little or no scrutiny from state regulators. While the officeholders are required to report all expenditures from their committees to the board, purchases can be listed only by general category and, when described, often without much detail.
Eric N. Vitaliano, a former Democratic assemblyman from Staten Island who is now a federal judge, had about $92,000 in his campaign account when he left office in 2002. He decided to give it to a nonprofit charity: the recently formed Vitaliano Foundation, headed by his wife.
Former State Senator Roy M. Goodman, a Republican from Manhattan, who last ran for office seven years ago and is president of a public state agency that oversees the United Nations complex, has spent tens of thousands of leftover contributions on club dues, parties and gifts, filings show. The expenses included $2,257 in 2005 for a lunch at the “21” Club for John R. Bolton, who weeks earlier had been installed as United States ambassador to the United Nations.
And Howard D. Mills, who left the Assembly in 2004 and served as state insurance superintendent until last year, continues to use his old campaign account to make monthly $588 car payments, pay cellphone bills and buy gifts. In December, Mr. Mills, a Republican from Orange County, spent $98.19 at Macy’s.
New York’s campaign finance laws have been widely criticized by public interest groups as being riddled with loopholes that permit excessive contributions from special interests and inappropriate expenses by candidates. Over the years, the Board of Elections has lent its approval to candidates who wanted to spend money on car payments and repairs, baby-sitting expenses and luxury gifts, provided such expenses were somehow connected to political activities.
The law does prohibit candidates from converting campaign contributions to personal use “unrelated to a political campaign or the holding of a public office or party position.” But the elections board has interpreted that to mean that former officeholders can keep spending money on the chance, however slim, that they will one day run again.
Lee Dahglian, a spokesman for the board, said the rules governing exactly what former candidates can do with leftover campaign money “is a little bit of a murky area.”
“It’s hard because the rule is not specific anywhere on this subject,” he said.
In the absence of specific guidelines, the board has generally allowed former candidates to give unused contributions to charities and other campaign committees. Or, Mr. Dahglian said, “They can let it sit if they wish and accumulate some interest because they may contemplate running again for office.”
Mr. Bragman retired after a failed attempt to oust Sheldon Silver as Assembly speaker. He briefly flirted with running for Onondaga County executive but decided not to, and in December 2002 he called a news conference to announce, “The time has come for me to truly retire.” He added that he was weighing what to do with the $1 million he had left, saying he might give it to charity or to other candidates, The Syracuse Post-Standard reported at the time.
Six years after leaving office, he has given away only a small amount of the money. Last year, while his committee spent $94,000, its donations to charity totaled less than $4,000, including $1,000 to the Baseball Hall of Fame and $550 to the North Syracuse Beautification Committee. He has also made an occasional campaign contribution, usually for a few hundred dollars. |
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