If you liked it, Beyonce notes, you shoulda put a ring on it. If you support public financing of campaigns, you shoulda put a price tag on it.
The latter sentiment was shared by several advocates I spoke to after Gov. Andrew Cuomo's executive budget presentation Tuesday, when he delivered this line: "With this budget I am also proposing a public financing system, because I think it's inarguable but that the amount of money in politics has created a number of difficult issues."
This elicited a rather pallid burst of applause, perhaps because the fans of public financing in The Egg's Hart Theatre were mulling over the contrast between Cuomo's concern over the amount of money in politics and the fact that he currently has more of it ($33.3 million) than anyone else and was two days away from heading to a Los Angeles fundraiser to collect more.
Or maybe they were waiting for him to say how much such a system would cost. After all, most things come with a price tag in a budget proposal. And the question is a subject of fierce debate.
Last spring, I taxed my math-addled brain by doing a comparison of the cost estimates put forward by state Senate Republicans, who oppose the use of taxpayer funds for electioneering, and the Washington, D.C.-based Campaign Finance Institute, a "non-partisan, non-profit research institute" supportive of public financing.
Both sides based their calculations on a bill backed by Assembly Democrats that used New York City's public matching system as the template for a statewide model. Candidates who opt in would have to attract a certain threshold of donors and dollars before becoming eligible for public matching, which would augment every $1 raised with $6 of public funds, up to a certain sum. Candidates would also have to follow strict donation and spending limits.
The Senate GOP put the four-year cost of such a system — one race for governor, attorney general and comptroller as well as two sets of Assembly and Senate races — at $333 million. The CFI said the same four fun-filled years would cost between $104 million and $162 million.
To boil down the competing methodologies: The GOP estimated that all candidates who opted into the system would "max out" the funds available to them by raising a sufficient number of small contributions; the CFI, however, extrapolated its statewide predictions based on the fact that only about half of New York City's candidates have opted in and maxed out.
The same week I wrote up the comparison, Cuomo said he wanted "a closer scrub on the numbers, and what it's actually going to cost." Two months later, he rolled out his own campaign financing plan, once again using New York City as the template. The Budget Division estimated it would cost roughly $40 million per year for a four-year cycle — comporting with the CFI's numbers almost perfectly.
So why didn't Cuomo drop that sum into his budget presentation?
Administration sources said he didn't need to because the spending plan allocates no money for public financing in the fiscal year that begins in April, and that the budget is constitutionally constrained to make no allocation that lasts longer than two years.
Fair enough. But if there's no money for public matching in next year's budget, what's the proposal doing in the proposed budget?
Realists would note that the GOP will never go for a statewide public financing system and that the mere inclusion of it in the budget is enough, as symbolism and as a poker chip to be bargained away for something more achievable.
Others suggest Republicans might go for allowing a sort of public financing pilot program in the 2018 race for state comptroller. Democratic Comptroller Tom DiNapoli has supported such a system, and as far back as June 2011 he proposed creating a 6-to-1 matching system and strict spending limits for the 2014 comptroller's race.
The GOP probably wouldn't shed any tears over the prospect of being banished from the comptroller's office by public matching: Since 1955, only a single Republican has held that office (Edward Regan, 1979-1993).
And in political dog years, 2018 can seems as distant as 2218.
cseiler@timesunion.com • 518-454-5619