Baby sitters, cars and season tickets

For New York’s state legislators, campaign contributions help make the living oh so easy

Donors to state legislators do more than finance political campaigns. They also help their favorite politicians live larger, travel farther and buy a finer cut of meat.

They underwrote the purchase of Assemblyman Sam Hoyt’s personal cars and $14,000 in meals over six years.

In the last election cycle, state legislative candidates spent most of their campaign contributions not on television advertising or direct mail but on “other.” That’s the category to record money spent on golf, globe-hopping, flowers, gifts for workers and friends, meals, baby sitters for children, even the care of a cat.

Under the catchall of “other,” legislators also buy tickets to other candidates’ fundraisers; they donate to charities; cover expenses for their aides; and jot down tens of thousands of dollars in unitemized costs - those less than $50 that are known to them and their campaign treasurers but are not publicly disclosed.

Campaign accounts are often used to raise a lawmaker’s lifestyle beyond the level provided by the nation’s second-best salary for state legislators - $79,500 a year - plus thousands in stipends and an allowance of roughly $130 for each day in Albany. All told, the compensation for many members swells toward, or beyond, six figures.

Baby sitters and cars

When his children were young, Hoyt said, he felt campaign dollars should cover the cost of a baby sitter when he and his wife attended political events. He, too, buys season tickets, to Buffalo Bisons games. He used his account for 80 percent of the cost of an Oldsmobile Intrigue and later a Ford Taurus since, he figured, 80 percent of their use was job-related.

Hoyt said he asked around and learned the purchase of a car with campaign money was legal under the rules, so the $312 monthly payment for the Olds, and $218 a month for the Taurus, came from the campaign fund.

Handy dollars

Campaign dollars come in handy. Driving back from Albany in 2003, Hoyt and his chief of staff at the time took rooms at the Turning Stone Casino’s hotel in Verona rather than fight their way through a winter storm, he said. The campaign account paid for that. He said many of the $14,000 in meals involved either working lunches with constituents or spreads for his interns. The Bisons tickets he tends to let others use, he said.

Campaign cash helps legislators reach or enjoy warm destinations.

Assembly Majority Leader Paul A. Tokasz, D-Cheektowaga, has used his account to cover travel costs or related expenses in Salt Lake City, Phoenix, Santa Fe, N.M., Miami Beach, Naples, Fla., Los Angeles and San Francisco, plus Washington, D.C., Denver, Seattle, Boston and Chicago, among other places.

“I think each legislator makes an individual judgment,” Tokasz said. “Sometimes people overstep their bounds in terms of the use of campaign funds. I think what we are talking about here with my trips are really professional-development trips.”

Common Cause says that more than 55 percent of the campaign contributions made by individuals in New York’s 2002, 2004 and 2006 election cycles would have been illegal on the federal level because they came via checks written for more than $2,100, the federal limit for individuals giving directly to candidates.

There is much more… Excellent article by Matt Spina

They are so irresponsible with our tax dollars, it’s no wonder they are this way with campaign contributions. They all feel they are above everyone else so they do as they please. It’s disgusting. Is this what you want done with your contributions?

Flying around the world, eating where we could only dream of eating and buying cars, all on someone elses cash. They never had it so good.