As two probes into his fund-raising efforts loom, Mayor de Blasio buckled under pressure from the City Council and signed a law Thursday that restricts fat donations like those that filled the coffers of his shuttered, scandal-scarred advocacy group.
The measure, which limits the amount of cash a candidate-aligned nonprofit could raise, directly addresses the practices of the de Blasio-controlled Campaign for One New York, which has raised more than $4.4 million since 2014 and is now the focus of a federal investigation.
The law prohibits lobbyists, entities or donors with business before the city from giving more than $400 to nonprofits tied to elected officials or their staffers and also requires all of those donations be disclosed.
CONY has received massive, unlimited donations, including $100,000 from a shell company tied to the Two Trees real-estate firm, $35,000 from the Broadway Stages film company and $75,000 from Wendy Neu, one of the guiding forces behind the anti-horse-carriage movement. Unions also pumped tens of thousands of dollars into CONY.
The proposal, one of 22 bills de Blasio signed into law to impose tighter campaign-finance restrictions, was pushed by Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito and other council members.
De Blasio held a tight smile throughout much of the bill-signing ceremony Thursday in the City Council chambers, occasionally joking about all the legislation before him.
“I’ve never seen so many bills in one place. It’s an avalanche of bills, a tsunami of bills,” he said as several council members gathered around. “It feels like I’ll be doing this for the rest of my life.” He refused to answer questions after the event.
De Blasio is facing two corruption investigations — one a state probe into Team de Blasio’s efforts to help Democrats win the state Senate in 2014, and another into CONY’s fund-raising and the mayor’s own campaign committee.
Grand juries have been convened in connection with both investigations.
Government watchdog groups applauded the new laws.
Dick Dadey, the director of watchdog Citizens Union, called the measures a “historic day for campaign finance.”