A month before last year’s presidential election, New Yorker staff writer Jeffrey Toobin told the site’s readers what many New Yorkers already knew: “The state with one of the worst records on voting rights is the nation’s great citadel of liberalism: New York.” Since then, another state legislative session has passed in the great citadel of liberalism, and, although Gov. Andrew Cuomo highlighted some proposed voting reforms in his State of the State addresses, none of the major reforms became law. Now, some lawmakers are hoping that Cuomo pushes harder for those same voting reforms in 2018 – and reforms campaign finance law while he’s at it. “It’s long, long past time that we closed the LLC loophole,” said state Sen. Liz Krueger, a Democrat on the Elections Committee. “It’s the worst-kept secret in Albany. Every year we pay lip service to reform, and every year we kick the can down the road.”
The “LLC loophole” allows limited liability companies to avoid the state’s campaign contribution limits. Cuomo included closing the loophole as one of his 2017 State of the State proposals, saying in a release that such a reform would “even the playing field so that rich and poor New Yorkers alike have their voices heard in our political process.”
But that proposal failed to become law in 2017, just as it failed in previous years, when Cuomo also called named it as a priority. Notably, Cuomo has benefited from the loophole, getting free rent for his campaign office and reportedly raising at least $1 million from other LLCs.
Full Article: City & State – Dems hope to close loopholes, open voting.