When television advertisements criticizing state government began to appear across New York last week, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo seemed anything but displeased. After all, the group paying for the advertisements, known as the Committee to Save New York, shared many of the governor’s broad goals, like reining in runaway spending and capping local property taxes, and its Web site even included a link to video of his recent State of the State address.
Ruby Washington/The New York Times
Kathryn Wylde, president of the Partnership for New York
City, is a board member of the Committee to Save New York, a state business lobby.
“I encourage people to join that group,” Mr. Cuomo said Thursday, after speaking to an audience in Jamestown, N.Y., about his plans for the year. “I encourage people today to speak up.”
But he has more than a passing familiarity with the committee. It was organized at his urging, after a series of meetings last spring and summer at which the then-candidate pressed business leaders to take a more aggressive role in Albany.
The committee is represented by Dan Klores Communications, a public relations and consulting firm closely tied to the new governor. And the first salvo of advertisements was broadcast just days before Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, began a road tour to highlight his budget agenda and encourage New Yorkers to join him.
For years, labor unions and other special interests have pooled millions of dollars to mount advertising and direct-mail campaigns on budget issues in New York, usually aimed at governors. A joint fund controlled by the state’s powerful health care workers union and a hospital trade association has spent roughly $12 million a year on advertising campaigns to head off cuts to Medicaid spending, while the state teachers’ union spends about $1.5 million a year to advocate for more school aid.
In allying with New York’s newly active business lobby, Mr. Cuomo is borrowing a page from that playbook, and essentially organizing one set of special interests to offset the power of another.
Yet for Mr. Cuomo, who has pledged to seek radically stricter campaign finance laws and deeper financial disclosure in Albany, the effort poses quandaries. The new group is expected to spend at least $10 million in support of him, and, because it is organized as a nonprofit group, it is not required to disclose its donors or budget.
Meanwhile, some of those who have voluntarily disclosed their involvement in the group, like the Real Estate Board of New York and the state Business Council, collectively have billions of dollars at stake in the decisions that Mr. Cuomo will make in the coming year, on issues including insurance and banking regulations and rent control.
“It appears that they are coordinating with the governor and they are doing this to help the governor and maybe even at the request of the governor,” said Blair Horner, legislative director for the New York Public Interest Research Group, a nonpartisan watchdog organization. “We don’t know everyone who’s involved in this. But the ones who have crowed the loudest about it have critically important public policy issues in play this year.”
In a statement issued on Friday, a Cuomo spokesman, Richard Bamberger, said that the administration had consulted with committee members on “relevant issues” but suggested that those discussions were no different from the administration’s discussions with other advocacy groups, including groups like the Public Interest Research Group and the Empire State Pride Agenda, a gay rights organization.
A spokesman for the committee, William Cunningham, said that there was no direct coordination between its operation and the Cuomo administration and that the board had not cleared its advertisements with the governor before running them. In fact, Mr. Cunningham said, there was little need to do so.
“We know what the governor’s agenda is, and we don’t need a lot of guidance,” said Mr. Cunningham, who was an aide to Mr. Cuomo’s father, former Gov. Mario M. Cuomo. “We’ve got a high-powered group that’s hired us to make their voices heard.”
On Friday, after news media inquiries, the committee added to its Web site a list of 16 board members. The group includes Gary LaBarbera, president of the Building and Construction Trades Council of New York; Kevin S. Law, president of the Long Island Association; Kathryn S. Wylde, president of the Partnership for New York City; Rob Speyer, president of the real estate firm Tishman Speyer; and Steven Spinola, president of the Real Estate Board of New York.
Mr. Cunningham said that the group would file whatever lobbying disclosures were required by law, but that the issue of coordination was legally irrelevant.
“We’re not a PAC, and there is no candidate and no campaign to coordinate with,” he said.
The group echoes efforts by other elected chief executives to muster coalitions of supporters outside their traditional campaign committees, which typically report all donors and expenditures. In New Jersey last year, advisers to Gov. Chris Christie set up a nonprofit group called Reform Jersey Now to push his agenda with television advertising, mailers and automated calls.
In New York City, the administration of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has encouraged its allies to set up at least three groups to advocate for his policies over the last few years. One group, Education Reform Now, pushed the state to raise the cap on the number of charter schools in the city, and another, the Campaign for New York’s Future, backed Mr. Bloomberg’s plan to charge a fee on cars traveling in Midtown.
Those involved with the Committee to Save New York insist they are not trying to evade disclosure but to develop a more formal version of the loose alliances that already existed among the state’s regional business associations. The committee’s members would continue to lobby separately on narrower issues, they said, but would speak as one on the issue of lower taxes and reduced state spending. Should Mr. Cuomo break his pledges on those issues, they said, the group would not stand behind him.
