TESTIMONY
Paul Ryan, Executive Director of the NYC Campaign Finance Board on Non-Lobbyist Consultants and Fundraisers for Political Campaigns
2:11:10
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97 sec
The NYC Campaign Finance Board currently lacks comprehensive and usable data on non-lobbyist consultants and fundraisers hired by political campaigns.
- Campaigns are not required to report their consultants and fundraisers to the Board in a systematic or uniform way
- Some consultant details are provided on candidate registration forms, but most campaigns do not provide this information
- Expenditures for consultants/fundraisers are sometimes listed on disclosure reports, but purpose codes like "other" make the data inconsistent
- Implementing regulations on these groups would require manually reviewing expenditure records and cross-referencing invoices to identify covered individuals
Paul Ryan
2:11:10
And if and I'd be happy to share a little bit about what information the company finance board does presently have, and possession relevant to this bill as it's currently drafted.
2:11:20
We're talking about outside of the universe of lobbyists, simply the universe of non lobbyists consultants and fundraisers, we don't really have much of that information.
2:11:31
Not available to us in any sort of comprehensive or usable format.
2:11:35
There's no requirement that committees report their fundraisers or consultants to us in any systematic or uniform way.
2:11:41
We do see some of this information, though, for it.
2:11:44
So, for example, on kenneth registration forms, candidates can, but are not required to identify their consultants.
2:11:51
Some of them do.
2:11:52
Many of them are most of them do not.
2:11:54
We also see some of this information on disclosure reports when campaigns report the purpose of their expenditure.
2:12:00
But the quality and the consistency of campaign reporting of expense purpose codes is gets to put it bluntly pretty poor.
2:12:08
The most commonly used purpose codes for this type of expense are under or consultant or professional or the hardest to deal with for the purpose of administering this type of law other.
2:12:20
Making use of this data as it's presently written in this bill would require manual inspection, I think, particularly of expenditures coded other and perhaps cross referencing with invoices and other documentation to determine whether the activity done by that person paid by the campaign constitutes consultation as defined in the law or fundraising activity defined in the law.
2:12:42
That would be a heavily manual project and It would be a difficult one.