Opinion | New York Lawmakers Try to Sabotage Campaign Reform

But if a donor gives more than $250, then no part of the contribution is matched. That was the key element of the agreement reached in 2019. Lawmakers said they would provide an incentive for candidates to hunt for small contributions and to discourage big ones.

All of that would be undone by the bill that emerged late Tuesday. Leaders in both chambers decided to match the first $250 of all contributions up to the maximum level. So if a company executive seeking a state contract makes a $10,000 contribution to a state senator, that contribution would still receive a $2,300 public match. Matching a contribution of that size is a waste of public money and provides little incentive to pursue small donors. If the bill is enacted, candidates will continue to vacuum money from the biggest contributors but will be rewarded for doing so with additional funds provided by taxpayers.

That’s not the only abuse in this bill, which would also make it more difficult to qualify for the matching program, particularly for newcomers. Under the current program, Assembly candidates have to raise $6,000 from 75 residents of their district before they can get a match — a requirement designed to filter frivolous campaigns from the system. The new bill would increase that threshold to $10,000 from 145 residents, a difficult barrier even for serious political novices to overcome.

And that, of course, is why lawmakers are making this change. They don’t want competition.

“They don’t want to be primaried,’’ said John Kaehny, the executive director of Reinvent Albany, a leading reform group that supported the current public match system. “They know the public match will mean they will get more primary opponents, and so they’re making it harder to run. It wrecks the core idea of the program, which is to make these races more competitive.”

As with so many important decisions in Albany, this change is being made at the last minute, a few days before the end of the legislative session, with almost no public debate or explanation. Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, Democrat of the Bronx, did not respond to a request to explain the changes. State Senator Zellnor Myrie, Democrat of Brooklyn, who sponsored the bill in his chamber, issued a statement saying the system would still combat the influence of big money and would become more like New York City’s public match system, which does match some contributions of more than $250. The city’s system, however, has far lower maximum contribution levels for candidates who participate in it.