ALBANY - The identifies of deep-pocket donors to a private lobbying group working for the past 18 months to promote the agenda of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, will remain secret, a state ethics agency determined today. The donors include Buffalo-area contributors who gave nearly $1 million.
The state Joint Commission on Public Ethics adopted proposed rules requiring large donor disclosure information to be in effect as of July 1, not retroactively to last year when the law was adopted, as some government watchdogs had wanted.
The decision means the names associated with the more than $17 million raised by the Committee to Save New York - including at least $800,000 from Western New York - will not have to be disclosed.
The Committee to Save New York last year spent $12 million on efforts largely to back Cuomo's policy and fiscal agenda. In just its first year in existence, the committee spent more than any other group on what the state defines as lobbying in Albany.
Most of the donors have remained secret, though some names have trickled out in media accounts, including $2 million from gambling interests and an assortment of real estate concerns.
The Buffalo News in May reported that the Buffalo Niagara Partnership, which is on the Manhattan-based lobbying group's advisory board, bundled $800,000 in contributions from various Western New York interests to the committee.
The committee formed a month after Cuomo's election in 2010, and has so much money on hand that it ran television ads this spring promoting the governor's state budget positions even after deals had already been struck by Cuomo and lawmakers at the Capitol. How much the group's stateside advertising campaign has affected public opinion polling on policy matters, or the governor's popularity, is anyone's guess.
The ethics commission, formed as part of a 2011 deal backers promoted for bringing new sunshine to Albany's cottage industry of influence, on Tuesday said the first time big donors to lobbying groups will have to be identified is next January. The disclosure period will cover donations of more than $5,000 made between July 1 and the end of this year.
A spokesman for the committee did not immediately respond for comment.
But a spokesman for the governor sought to portray the positive impact of the 2011 law - more disclosure - than the issue of the committee's donors.
"For decades, the source of not one dollar given to these groups was required to be disclosed,'' said Josh Vlasto, the Cuomo spokesman. "Thanks solely to the governor's ethics bill passed by the Legislature last year, New York state now leads the nation as it is the first and only state to require disclosure from these lobbying groups."
Buffalo Niagara Partnership officials declined to say who from Western New York gave money to the committee, though several large Cuomo donors contacted recently by The Buffalo News said they made no contributions to the group. The money from Buffalo interests was collected for the Manhattan-based committee in early 2011.
