A group of Assembly Democrats are having second thoughts about state financing of political campaigns.

Assemblyman William Magnarelli, D-Syracuse, has been joined by co-sponsors Monica Wallace, Karen McMahon, William Conrad, Angelo Santabarbara and Billy Jones in support of A.7598, which would repeal the state Legislature’s 2020 approval of public financing of elections. The state budget approved in early May fully funded the $39.5 million requested by the state’s Public Campaign Finance Board — $25 million to match small dollar donations to candidates and $14.5 million to administer the program — though there were reports that some legislators wanted to delay the program. Public financing is scheduled to begin for 2024 state elections.

Maganarelli and his fellow Democrats put their doubts in writing, though the bill has little chance of being passed by the legislature before the end of the legislative session given the support legislative leadership have shown to public campaign financing both in this year’s budget negotiations and in past years.

“In 2020, a system of public financing for campaigns was created to provide public matching funds for statewide and state legislative candidates,” Magnarelli wrote in his legislative justification. “This system will cost New York taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars over the next Several years to implement. In the 2023-24 state budget alone, $39.5 million was allocated for this system. These funds should be put to other purposes, such as public education, infrastructure and health care.”

Publicly financed campaigns were approved back in 2019 but aren’t scheduled to begin until the 2024 elections. The law initially was written to encourage small dollar donors to campaigns by providing a 6-to-1 publicly funded matching system for donations of $5 and $250 to statewide candidates. Bigger donations wouldn’t have been eligible for the matching taxpayer funds.

Legislation approved at the end of this year’s legislative session changed the system. Despite their misgivings about the system as a whole, the group was split on the legislature’s last-minute tweaks to the system. Magnarelli, McMahon, Conrad and Woerner voted in favor of the changes while Wallace, Santabarbara and Jones voted against them.

If Gov. Kathy Hochul signs the new legislation into law, contributions of up to $18,000 for statewide races, $10,000 for state Senate, and $6,000 for state Assembly would be matched with public funds. The recently approved changes also require Assembly candidates to raise $12,000 from 145 in-district donors, an increase from $6,000 and 75 in-district donors, to qualify for public financing for their campaign. Senate candidates must raise $24,000 from 350 in-district donors, increase from $12,000 and 150 donors.

“What’s this bill do?” Assemblyman Andrew Goodell, R-Jamestown, asked during floor debate. “First of all it eliminates any incentive for small contributions because rather than just match small contributions this says you can get the largest contribution allowed by law and the first $250 will be matched. Under the old law you could only get a contribution of $250 and have it matched. The second thing this did is instead of leveling the playing field, it blew up the chances of an incumbent to be successful because it dramatically increased the number of contributors you had to have to qualify for funding. Now as an incumbent I have a well-established donor base. I already have the databse. I’ve always matched or exceeded these levels. None of my challengers will ever have ever come close to these new higher levels. So what’s that mean? That means with this program incumbents will have almost unlimited funding and their challengers will be frozen out. I almost raised a point of order sir, before you called me out of order for running out of time, because our rules normally require our bills to have an accurate title and this one should be called the Incumbent Reelection Guarantee Act.”