The NY government’s ‘fix’ is in

As we head into 2014, Gov. Cuomo's Commission to Investigate Public Corruption (aka, the Moreland Act Commission) will be continuing its roving investigations into the state Legislature. If its achievements this year are any indication, New Yorkers can expect it to produce little but proposals lacking in imagination, a desire to force taxpayers to pay for the crimes of their elected representatives and contempt for the First Amendment.

The governor convened the commission after his package of ethics reforms failed. Much of its work so far has been to list the illnesses to be treated by the governor's already brewed cure.

Some of what the commission is targeting is uncontroversial, such as eliminating conflicts of interest among legislators and restricting them from directing public money to phony nonprofits.

Unfortunately, the commission and the governor are not stopping there. Common-sense legislation to fight graft is not the main goal of the governor's allies, who hail largely from campaign-finance "reform" organizations. These groups see private campaign spending — that is, participation in the political process — as the real problem, and the commission will spend the next year urging new laws to stop as much of it as possible.

Thus, actual corruption will remain the commission's secondary concern; its foremost agenda item will be the "problems" in New York's campaign-finance system. This, despite the fact that of the 19 scandals that gave rise to the commission, only one concerned campaign contributions.

The commission is now pushing tired "solutions" urged by pro-regulation forces across the country: lowering the amount of money one may contribute to a candidate; increasing public dissemination of the names and addresses of those who dare participate in politics; creating another agency filled with unelected bureaucrats to prosecute peaceful political activity; and pre-emptively showering politicians with taxpayer funds supposedly to make them resistant to bribes.

Of course, those in power could stop corruption by not being corrupt. This is apparently too much to expect, however. Instead, the people must pay by sacrificing their free-speech rights and their money.

There is little evidence to support the efficacy of any of the campaign-finance proposals the commission and the governor will be pushing, however. Contribution limits do little to increase public confidence in government, disclosure drives everyday citizens from politics because they do not wish to have their political beliefs (as well as their names and addresses) broadcast across the world and unelected, unaccountable bureaucracies regulating speech will often target those opposed to the establishment.

Worse yet is so-called "public financing," which is the policy for which we can expect the commission and the governor to push hardest.

Of course, New York City has publicly financed campaigns now, but it hasn't stopped corruption. Instead, this policy will force taxpayers to subsidize the campaigns of the very politicians the commission claims are destroying public trust. It is like someone who has embezzled from a private company getting a bonus.

The commission also does not talk much about the cost of subsidizing politicians but has assured us that, though New York City is the most expensive media market in America, the price "is likely to be very small."

Even if this were true, public financing does almost nothing its proponents promise, and every dollar spent subsidizing politicians is a dollar not spent on roads or police, or returned to overburdened taxpayers.

Finally, everything the commission urges must be weighed against the First Amendment, in which it seems to have little interest. Freedom of speech is such an afterthought for the commission that it does not mention the First Amendment in its Preliminary Report (except when discussing Supreme Court cases it views as obstacles to its agenda).

If the governor and the commission get everything they want in the coming year, it would not stop corruption, because the commission is targeting a symptom — the wrongdoing itself — instead of the disease, which is an intrusive and massive state government. When state government metastasizes to the size of New York's, people will try to manipulate it to ensure that favors go to them and burdens go to others.

Until New York embraces limited government, it risks still more corruption. And no amount of restrictions on free speech or wasting of taxpayer money on welfare for politicians will fix that.

Bill Maurer is an executive director with the Institute for Justice in Arlington, Va.

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