Reporters’ Notebook: Bills Receipt, Clean Water Funding, and Court of Appeals

The Reporters’ Notebook features bite-sized stories and updates from New York Focus reporters on the topics they cover. It’s our way of keeping readers updated about the subjects they care about between the time it takes to publish our longer, more in-depth articles.

Jump to: Bills Receipt | Clean Water Funding | Court of Appeals

Pricey Bar Tab at Probed Bills Game

For over a year, state ethics regulators have been investigating a complaint alleging that New York’s top politicians and lobbyists — including Governor Kathy Hochul, Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, and Assembly Majority Leader Crystal Peoples-Stokes — abused their power while attending an NFL game in 2023.

Now, records obtained by New York Focus detail a nearly $1,700 food and drink bill incurred by the 16-member party inside their luxury suite during a match between the Buffalo Bills and Dallas Cowboys at Highmark Stadium.

Among other charges, the guests’ tab included $135 for “Maker’s Mark,” $128 for “Titos,” $170 on chicken wings and tenders, and $80 for “warm cookies.”

The receipt may well be inconsequential to the broader ethics investigation. But it does raise questions about the strength of New York’s campaign finance laws, according to a government reform expert.

Peoples-Stokes paid the entire bill using her campaign account, according to her campaign filings — labeling the payment as “constituent services.” Her office did not respond to requests for further information.

New York has notably loose laws concerning campaign spending. State politicians can generally spend donations freely as long as there’s some connection to holding office or their campaign and the spending is not solely for their own financial benefit.

Peoples-Stokes could argue that attending an event with politicians and business officials benefited her constituents, said John Kaehny, executive director of the government reform group Reinvent Albany.

“But where do you draw the line? Because a luxury box at a Bills game seems far afield from the purpose of making a campaign contribution,” he said.

Those lines have been blurred for quite some time: Years back, former Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno spent $1,300 of his campaign funds on a swimming pool cover, arguing that the spending was legal because he used the pool to entertain other politicians.

Assemblymember Dov Hikind held office for 35 years before retiring in 2018. He then used his campaign account to fund trips to Germany and Texas, as well as to make auto lease and insurance payments — even though he was no longer in government. He argued the spending could aid him in a future (as yet unrealized) run for public office in New York.

“Every time you allow campaign funds to be used for things other than for the nuts and bolts of campaigning, you are moving campaign funds closer to being legal bribery,” Kaehny said. “You’re allowing that money to be used for more purposes that functionally enrich the elected official.”

New York Focus reported last May that the state’s ethics oversight body, the Commission on Ethics and Lobbying in Government, was investigating politicians’ use of a state-owned suite for the Bills–Cowboys game.

State officials at the game were required to donate a minimum of $177 per ticket received to charity. The cost of renting out such a suite, however, is vastly more for members of the general public.

Under state law, public officials are not allowed to use their positions to gain “unwarranted privileges” for themselves or others.

According to official guidelines, suite tickets are supposed to be used for economic development, public, or charitable purposes. The Hochul administration has argued that by tweeting out a photo from the game, the governor boosted public awareness of Western New York. —Chris Bragg

Clean Water Funding Boost Gets Bipartisan Backing

At Tuesday’s nearly 12-hour long budget hearing on environmental, climate, and energy issues in Albany, legislators mostly followed familiar lines of questioning.

Democrats grilled agency heads on why they weren’t doing more to meet the state’s climate mandates. Republicans worried about the cost of meeting those mandates, which they blamed for driving residents and businesses out of New York.

But there were a few notable areas of bipartisanship. From conservatives to some of the top sponsors of climate legislation, at least five lawmakers questioned the pace of the state’s shift to electric trucks, which all seemed to agree was rushed — a point that the trucking industry has worked hard to impress in recent lobbying.

And then there was clean water funding. Governor Kathy Hochul included $500 million for clean water infrastructure in her budget proposal this year, after having unsuccessfully attempted last year to cut that number in half. Environmental advocates are pushing to increase the figure to $600 million. They might have an unlikely ally in Republican Edward Ra, ranking member of the Assembly Ways and Means Committee, who has otherwise blasted Hochul’s “most costly budget ever” as “gambling on future solutions while leaving taxpayers hanging on a financial cliff.”

Ra asked fellow lawmakers to back additional water funding to replace lead pipes, which plague the state’s aging housing stock.

“Constituents are now learning that they have lead service lines. Many are concerned, would like to replace them, but they are learning it comes at great cost,” Ra said. “So I would appreciate the support of not just the Department [of Environmental Conservation] but my colleagues to hopefully maybe go up to $600 million or something in this budget with regard to clean water infrastructure.”

Matthew Simpson, a fellow Republican whose district includes parts of the Adirondacks, said many communities in his district wouldn’t be able to upgrade their water systems without state support. It can cost millions of dollars to upgrade a system serving as few as 100 people, he said — far more than those residents could pay for on their own.

“This funding is critical and it’s critical to get it out the door so [projects] can move forward,” he said. —Colin Kinniburgh