linked New York Times September 8, 2019 editorial "Better Government for New York"
hyperlinked link, now vanished

Commissioner Jacob's September 9, 2019 e-mail (9:58 am)

CJA's September 9, 2019 e-mail (11:21 am)

Commissioner Jacob's September 9, 2019 e-mail (11:48 am)

CJA's September 9, 2019 e-mail (12:23 pm)

Commissioner Jacob's September 9, 2019 e-mail (2:38 pm)

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click here for:
VIDEO -- see part 2, at 15 minutes

"My name is Elena Sassower.  I am director and co-founder of a non-profit, non-partisan citizens’ organization called Center for Judicial Accountability.

Public campaign financing might be the next best thing since sliced bread.  However, how you are going about it is unconstitutional. To see so many legislators come before you today is obscene because it is their responsibility to deliberate, to hear from the public, to ask opinions of experts, and to make the evaluation and enact the legislation.  There is no excuse – and this is the 2019 legislative session when, supposedly, we have a full-time legislature, fully-functional, because they have gotten their committee-based pay raises.   

I have handed up to you a sheet which examines what has happened in the 2019 legislative session.  There is a Senate Elections Committee and there is an Assembly Committee on Election Law.  Neither of them had any bill on comprehensive campaign finance, public finance.  There were two bills in the Senate Elections Committee.  One was on district attorney and supreme court justices -- public campaign financing for their campaigns. And the other was for public campaign financing for constitutional convention delegates – which is not going to be for another 18 years.  Neither of those bills moved out of committee.  They were not even discussed in committee. They sat in committee.  There was no bar to the Senators deliberating, discussing, holding hearings on those bills and introducing the Governor’s bill, which didn’t belong as part of the budget.  But, in any event, the same scenario is in the Assembly, as well.  The bills for public campaign financing, there were two, limited to the attorney general race.  Fusion -- no bills, okay.  There was a hearing held on March 20^th, by the Senate, with participation by Assembly members on public campaign financing and small donors.  They had no bill.  The hearing went for 4-1/2 hours.

You should be asking the experts as to their constitutional opinion as to the constitutionality of what’s been going on.

Thank you."

Below are the materials handed up to the Commissioners --
9 copies

1.
"A Call for Scholarship, Civic Engagement & Amicus Curiae Before the NYCOA"
New York Law Journal (letter by CJA Director)
August 21, 2019 (print edition)

2.
"Where Do You Go When Judges Break the Law?"
The New York Times, October 26, 1994, $16,770 paid ad  (Op-Ed page)

reprinted in New York Law Journal, November 1, 1994 (p. 9) for an additional $2,280

3.
"Restraining 'Liars in the Courtroom' and on the Public Payroll"
New York Law Journal, $3,077 paid ad

August 27, 1997 (pp. 3-4)