December 20, 2004
A Database to Combat 'Pay to Play'
By MIKE McINTIRE , NY TIMES

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The city intends to use computer data to track campaign contributors who have municipal contracts, the first step toward fulfilling a goal, approved by New York City voters in 1998, of limiting the political influence of companies that do business with the city.

Using data already collected by the city's Vendex system, a computerized repository of information on companies doing business with municipal agencies, the Bloomberg administration wants to create a searchable database open to the public on the Internet, city officials said yesterday.

Ideally, the database would be linked to data on contributors that is already available on the Web site of the Campaign Finance Board, the officials said, making it possible to do a single search for campaign contributors with city contracts.

In a letter sent Thursday to the City Council, the chairman of the Campaign Finance Board, Frederick A. O. Schwarz Jr., said the "issue of potential influence peddling when candidates accept contributions from those doing business with the city is one that requires serious attention." The board has lacked a comprehensive way to track contractors who contribute, he wrote.

"This effort will enable the enforcement of disclosure and possibly other restrictions on contributions from those doing business with the city," Mr. Schwarz wrote, adding that the board intended to hold hearings beginning in January "to ascertain the extent and scope of the problem."

The move by the board is the first since Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg revived efforts to regulate contributors who "pay to play," an initiative that has mostly languished since voters approved a referendum six years ago that directed the finance board to crack down on the practice.

At that time, the board said that there was no practical way to enforce rules against the practice, because it was not possible to identify contributors who did business with the city.

Mr. Schwarz's enthusiasm for an issue that Mr. Bloomberg has endorsed repeatedly in recent months is the latest twist in the complicated relationship between the mayor and the Campaign Finance Board.

Last December, the board angered the mayor by proposing to greatly increase the amount of public matching funds available to candidates who face wealthy, self-financed opponents, like Mr. Bloomberg, who spent $74 million of his own money during the 2001 election.

The mayor accused the board of negotiating the proposal in secret with the council speaker, Gifford Miller, himself a potential mayoral candidate and a distant cousin of Mr. Schwarz.

The Council eventually adopted a version of the board's proposal that raised the maximum amount of matching funds available in high-spending races to $6 from $5 for each dollar raised in the form of $250 contributions. Mr. Bloomberg vetoed the legislation, and last week the Council voted to override his veto. Earlier this year, Mr. Bloomberg submitted legislation to the Council that would place a $250 limit on contributions to candidates for city offices from people doing business with the city. That proposal made little progress, though, and the board seemed cool, noting that it faced the same technical hurdle as in 1998: lack of access to data on municipal contractors.

Now, that obstacle is being moved aside, said William T. Cunningham, the mayor's communications director. Campaign Finance Board representatives met recently with officials of the city's Department of Information Technology and the Law Department, Mr. Cunningham said, and it is expected that a database could "conceivably be ready sometime during the 2005 calendar year."

"I think it is a very good step forward, in terms of achieving what the voters said they wanted in 1998," he said.

After Mr. Bloomberg's office made public Mr. Schwarz's letter yesterday, the Council's communications director, Stephen Sigmund, said the Council intended to "continue to work with the Campaign Finance Board to further strengthen the city's public financing system."