The Moreland Commission should be applauded for its common-sense recommendations for comprehensive campaign finance reform in New York. Months of investigation and a range of expert testimony convinced commissioners that only major changes, including lower contribution limits, robust enforcement and, critically, a voluntary small-donor matching system, can clean up a state government that's a national symbol of pay-to-play politics at its worst.
Opponents of reform ignore the most important reason for overhaul of New York's campaign finance system: Widespread (but too often perfectly legal) corruption pervades a system dominated by politicians' dependence on big money.
A public financing system, at the cost of less than a penny a day to each New Yorker, would begin to address the enormous disparity between big and small donors.
Arguing that we should "stop thinking about 'big' and 'small' donors as monoliths that can somehow be balanced against one another," as reform opponents Jeffrey D. Milyo and David M. Primo did in their commentary ("Public financing no cure-all," Dec. 12), requires ignoring reality. As the commission found, there is a clear distinction between these donors, and it is at the heart of what is broken in Albany.
If enacted, the reforms will allow candidates to win elections by relying on small contributions from their constituents, instead of requiring special interest money to have a chance. We shouldn't underestimate how significant that could be.
Lawrence Norden is deputy director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law.