Public Funding May Go Up For Underdogs

Envisioning another free-spending candidate steamrolling an underfunded opponent, the city's Campaign Finance Board is pushing a plan to pay a "significant amount" of cash to office-seekers if their richer rivals duck out of board-sponsored debates.

The panel's chairman, Frederick A.O. Schwarz Jr., endorsed the idea at a City Council hearing yesterday at which lawmakers scrutinized a series of campaign finance proposals the board issued in September.

The extra money would serve as compensation for the lost chance to confront an opponent directly. It could give the lesser-funded candidate "a chance to use other means to reach the public," Mr. Schwarz said, such as airing a televised ad or sending out campaign literature.

"We think it's a good idea," Mr. Schwarz said after the hearing. He did not specify the compensation level, saying lawmakers would have to determine that.

The idea comes a year after Mayor Bloomberg drew heated criticism when he skipped a debate at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, one of two administered by the Campaign Finance Board. The billionaire mayor opted out of the board's program to receive public matching funds and thus was not legally required to attend its debates.

Mr. Schwarz said the board needed to create added incentives to get nonparticipating candidates to show up at its forums.

The idea did not generate much interest among council members, who focused yesterday on other proposals from the finance board. It did garner support from the Citizens Union, a leading civic group. "I think it is a very good idea worthy of serious consideration," the organization's executive director, Dick Dadey, said. He added that there was a need for "new and novel ways" to strengthen the campaign finance program, which critics said was undermined by Mr. Bloomberg's decision to spend nearly $85 million last year in trouncing his Democratic challenger, Fernando Ferrer.

Mr. Bloomberg spent his own money on the race and didn't raise a dime from outside sources. Although he ducked the Harlem match-up — leaving Mr. Ferrer and the Conservative Party candidate, Thomas Ognibene, to stand next to an empty lectern — the mayor participated in one board-sponsored debate and in a second, unaffiliated forum.

Civic groups had already been searching for ways to bolster the program after Mr. Bloomberg spent $73 million to win in 2001, but those calls became more urgent when he exceeded that amount last year in an election that was never close, Mr. Dadey said.

Another former opponent of the mayor, Mark Green, said the board's proposal was not enough. "It's a good but small idea akin to throwing a 10-foot rope to someone drowning 40 feet off-shore," he said. Mr. Green, a former public advocate, lost to Mr. Bloomberg in 2001 by about two percentage points after being outspent by a nearly five-to-one margin.

A mayoral spokesman, Stuart Loeser, declined to comment, saying the mayor's office had not yet seen Mr. Schwarz's testimony.

Mr. Bloomberg is prohibited by term limits from running again, but new rules affecting self-financed candidates could apply to Richard Parsons, the Time Warner chief who has been the subject of mayoral speculation. Asked about the debate proposal, a spokesman for Mr. Parsons, Edward Adler, said, "We can't answer that. He's not running for mayor."

The chairman of the council's Government Operations Committee, Simcha Felder, was lukewarm to the idea of compensating candidates whose opponent skips a debate. "I don't think the debates make any difference," he said. "I don't think it's fair."

Mr. Felder, who represents Borough Park, Midwood, and Bensonhurst in Brooklyn, said that for council races, as opposed to citywide races, debates don't always generate much interest, so the need to persuade high-spending candidates to participate is not as great.

The finance board's proposal would have to be part of legislation passed by the council.

Lawmakers spent most of yesterday's hearing discussing a proposal to regulate political contributions by people "doing business" with the city. Mr. Schwarz warned lawmakers that if they did not act to restrict such donations, the finance board would. A proposal to limit "pay to play" donations by contractors and developers was one of the board's chief recommendations in its September report on the 2005 elections. "We will act, but we really hope the City Council can make a major contribution here," Mr. Schwarz told the committee.

The Bloomberg administration has urged the board to simply issue regulations on its own, but Mr. Schwarz was adamant yesterday that legislation is preferable, saying after the hearing that the board would act only "as a last resort."

Mr. Felder said he supports regulating "doing business" contributions, but the details of a bill have yet to be worked out.