Expand campaign finance reform

To the editor:

The key to making progress on the issues that matter most to New Yorkers is unrigging our political system.

For far too long, corporate and big money interests have held an outsized influence over candidates and elected officials — but this year, there is a historic opportunity to change that.

The state legislature recently created the Public Campaign Financing Commission, a nine-member body that is tasked with recommending campaign finance reforms that will probably become law.

We need the members of the commission — Mylan Denerstein, Jay Jacobs, DeNora Getachew, John Nonna, Rosanna Vargas, Crystal Rodriguez, Henry Berger, David Previte, Kimberly Galvin — to take their mandate seriously and recommend changes that will make candidates and elected officials beholden to regular voters.

Specifically, I urge the commission to lower the cap on campaign contributions and create a small dollar-matching system.

This would increase the power of small donations, by matching them 6-to-1.

We need our politicians to depend on small donors to secure funds, not corporations and the top 1 percent. These reforms are a move in the right direction.

Linda Gazzola

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