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ing to Squadron. State election law currently places aggregate calendar year limits on the amount of political contributions that can be made by individuals and corporations to state candidates and committees. An individual may contribute up to a total of $150,000 in a calendar year. A corporation may contribute up to a total of $5,000 in a calendar year. Each affiliated or subsidiary corporation, if a separate legal entity, has its own limit, according to the 1996 opinion from the elections board. Squadron and Kavanagh are not alone on their reform mission, as Gov. Andrew Cuomo, state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and a host of good-government groups have expressed their support for closing the loophole. Schneiderman said the board’s past “mistake” has “made a mockery of campaign finance rules.” “The LLC Loophole is an exception that swallows the rule — allowing wealthy individuals to circumvent contribution caps and steer limitless dollars to favored campaigns,” he said. “The real world effect of the loophole is substantial.” According to Squadron, limited liability companies may donate up to $60,800 to a statewide candidate in each election cycle. LLC ownership is not disclosed under the current system, making it nearly impossible to track down contributions to their source. Of all the money raised by state-level
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Witherspoon, who has been covering energy for 40 years at the Journal News and other publications, and Marilyn Elie, an environmental activist opposed to Indian Point. The audience mostly sees Witherspoon and Elie talk to the camera separately in their respective roles, but there are some interviews together where the two discuss how they navigate the issues as a couple. Witherspoon speaks at length about the intricacies of the plant’s internal structure and its political history in the community, as well as raising the looming issue of what to do with used fuel that produces high-level radioactive waste. While the federal government is long overdue in determining a use or permanent home for the spent fuel, plants like Indian Point have begun storing it in pools and dry casks onsite. Elie represents the face of volunteer activists. She is seen organizing protests and
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candidates and party committees in New York, 14 percent is given by LLCs, three times the amount of small-level individual donors. Between 2005 and 2013, LLCs contributed more than $40 million to New York candidates, parties and political action committees according to Squadron. Three days before the BOE vote, a collection of good-government groups, including the Brennan Center for Justice, Common Cause New York, League of Women Voters of New York State, Citizens Union, New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG) and Reinvent Albany, in a letter to Cuomo urged him to pressure the BOE to close the loophole at its April 16 meeting. “Since the board’s decision, individual large donors and corporations from New York and other states have taken full advantage of the LLC Loophole,” they wrote. “As the Moreland Commission discovered in 2013, one entity ‘utilized 25 separate LLCs and subsidiary entities to make 147 separate political contributions totaling more than $3.1 million since 2008.’ Further, because it is often unclear who controls an LLC, the loophole allows large contributors to conceal their identities.” Cuomo has also been outspoken about the loophole, but his efforts to address it in legislation have been called into question because of his own close relationship with LLCs. Citing NYPIRG research, the Gotham Gazette reported that 20 percent of
Cuomo’s $35 million campaign chest in the November election came through the LLC loophole — particularly via Leonard Litwin, a Manhattan real estate developer who gave Cuomo more than $1 million for his reelection campaign. As protesters demonstrated outside the recent BOE meeting with “Democracy is not for sale” signs, board members deadlocked on the issue. “This is not a matter for an administrative agency, the state Board of Elections, to decide,” said Peter Kosinski, the board’s Republican co-chairman. “This is a matter for the state Legislature.” Squadron said the reasoning behind the inaction was perverse considering it was the 1996 BOE decision that created the loophole. Kosinksi was joined in the split vote by fellow Republican commissioner Gregory Peterson. Democrats Douglas Kellner, board co-chairman, and commissioner Andrew Spano, the former Westchester county executive, were in favor of addressing the issue. Kosinski’s view that the matter should not be decided by a state agency was echoed in a letter to the board from Heather C. Briccetti, president and CEO of the Business Council of New York State Inc. Citing procedural and legal technicalities, Briccetti requested that the board deny any proposal that would reclassify LLCs as corporations. “The Business Council’s letter was not tak-
ing a stand for or against, and our position is if individuals want to discuss this as part of the broader issue of campaign finance reform, we would be willing participants in that discussion,” said Business Council of New York State spokesman Zack Hutchins. “As the law stands now, it is a viable mechanism for LLCs to donate to political campaigns,” he said. At The Business Council of Westchester, “I haven’t heard any of our members who are concerned about this one way or the other,” said John Ravitz, executive vice president and chief operatinig officer of the county’s largest business membership group. “To ask a governing board that doesn’t have any legislative power to do this is far reaching.” Ravitz formerly served as executive director of the New York City Board of Elections and represented a Manhattan district in the state Assembly. “When I see resolutions that actually usurp the process it makes me a little uneasy,” he said. “I think it has to be done through a statutory change and not through the election board.” In the wake of the board stalemate, Common Cause New York called on the governor and state legislators to close the loophole before the legislative session in Albany ends on June 17. “The finger-pointing must end, as it is clear that it is now the responsibility of our elected leaders to act,” the group said.
attending public meetings where she and others voice their concerns on the record in front of federal, state and local officials. In a way, their relationship epitomizes the deep divisions over Indian Point — a point further evidenced by contrasting interviews between the plant’s employees and members of the environmental watchdog organization Riverkeeper. Interviews with Phillip Musegaas, an attorney and former program director for Riverkeeper, and clips of activists chiming in at various public hearings serve to highlight the points that using nuclear power is an outdated technology and that Indian Point’s shutdown is wanted by members of the community and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo. The opponents’ efforts have helped delay Indian Point’s 20-year federal license renewals for its two operating reactors, a process the plant’s owner, Entergy Corp., began in 2007. The federal license renewals are contingent on Indian Point first securing a water quality certificate from the state Department of Conservation. The dispute between
Entergy and the state agency on that subject also is addressed in the film. At issue is the plant’s daily use of 2.5 billion gallons of water from the Hudson for its cooling system, a process that sucks in millions of fish and larvae, especially in the summer months during spawning season. Alternative cooling methods have been proposed and challenged at numerous public hearings, including shutting down the plant during the fish migration season, using a wedge-wire screen to keep fish out, and constructing two cooling towers. The next public hearing is scheduled for Sept. 14, when the state will determine whether to throw out the mandatory shutdown option. As the regulatory process continues at the state level, Indian Point’s Unit 2 reactor has been running on an extended license since its expiration in 2013, and Unit 3’s license will be extended after it expires at the end of this year. At the other end of the movie’s spectrum of opponents and supporters are longtime Indian Point employees Brian Vangor, a senior control room operator who has
worked at the plant for 35 years, and Jim Steets, a now-retired director of communications for Entergy. Vangor is one of many who consider Indian Point home. He and other employees interviewed in the film discuss the scrutiny they face from the community and federal regulators and how they make every effort to live up to the expected standards. After all, they said in the film, it is their lives at stake and their families who live in the area as well. Steets, during the post-film discussion, summed up the overarching view of many Indian Point defenders, that “the more you (know) about Indian Point, the better you feel about it.” Jerry Nappi, an Entergy spokesman at Indian Point, said the plant’s participation in the film is part of the company’s commitment to transparency. “We’re pleased that some of our people who work at the plant had an opportunity to talk about their commitment to safety and the high standards by which they operate the plant,” he said.