Testimony of Jessica Wisneski

Legislative Director of Citizen Action of New York before the

New York State Senate Democrats Interactive Ethics Forum
May 4, 2011

Good afternoon and thank you for this opportunity to testify before you today. My name is
Jessica Wisneski and I am the Legislative Director of Citizen Action of New York, a statewide,
grassroots membership organization that fights for social, economic and racial justice. Our
organization primarily focuses on the issues of public education funding and K-12 education
reforms, consumer focused health care and health insurance issues, promoting a restructuring of
a fair and progressive tax policy for New York State and many federal issues around supporting
our nation’s social safety net. However, we believe that to empower every day residents of New
York to impact public policy that directly affects their lives, we must have a robust, open,
transparent and healthy democratic process in our state and federal government.

For this reason, our organization has focused much of our “government reform” work on
promoting and fighting for passage of a system of public campaign finance for all statewide and
legislative races in New York State. Although I understand that this forum is specific to many of
the ethics proposals currently introduced by you and your colleagues, Citizen Action and our
thousands of members across the state believe that the number one issue regarding the ethics of
elected officials is addressing the unfortunate need to collected private donations, usually very
large private donations, in order to even run for elected office. We feel that there can be and
often is, a major conflict of interest when corporations and individuals who have a direct stake in
the laws passed or killed by elected officials, give large sums of money to the elected officials to
win their seat. Receiving campaign contributions at a fundraiser down the road one evening, and
voting on a bill that directly effects that contributor the next day, in our opinion, is one of the
most unethical acts happening today in Albany. It is a shame, and must be changed.

All of the bills listed on the docket today, we generally support. And I leave it to my collegues
also present today, who have much further expertise to talk about the specifics of those bills.

We particularly think that Senator Liz Kruger’s bill S2333 that forfeits pentions of those
members of the legislature “who violate the public trust by using their positions to unlawfully
enrich themselves with taxpayer money, or scheme to defraud the taxpayers they are supposed to
serve, should not continue to receive benefits from the State of New York,” certainly makes
sense. Indeed, we might consider those forfeited funds going into a public campaign finance
fund to promote funding for such a system.
We also think there should be much consideration given to S3053, the bill that: “Requires
additional disclosures from lobbyists including: campaign contributions to elected officials;
existing business relationships or associations with public officials; and the names of family
members of a public official to whom the lobbyist, or his or her employer, paid compensation of
over $500 in the preceding calendar year and the amount of compensation paid; provides for the
disposition of campaign funds.”

Finally, we also strongly support Senator Addabbo’s bill S1565 that Prohibits political
contributions by businesses that have been awarded state contracts.

Many of these bills are really “no brainers.” In fact, many of these bills are incorporated into
public financing of elections systems that are now in use all over our country including Arizona,
Connecticut and Maine.

We strongly believe major steps need to be taken to overhaul the ethics and campaign finance
systems of our state. We believe strongly that we should not be looking at just piecemeal
reforms, or band-aids on a very broken system. Citizen Action would like to see the New York
State Senate and Assembly, as well as Governor Cuomo put forth a package of overhauls that
would impact a candidate at the point they enter their campaign, and sets them on a path of high
ethical standards throughout their career as an elected official.

We strongly urge the New York State Legislature to enact the bills being discussed here today,
but to also go much further by passing comprehensive campaign finance reform legislation that
includes a system of public financing of elections. Ethics Reform, the great need for an
independent redistricting commission to ensure elected officials are not choosing their voters, but
their voters are choosing them, and a public financing, not private/special interest-financed,
campaign finance system are all critical, long overdue reforms that our legislature should enact.
Thank you for the opportunity to share our views with you today.

For more information contact Jessica Wisneski at 845.901.0264 or

jwisneski@citizenactionny.org