Promoting cleaner, fairer elections by modernizing voting and establishing effective campaign finance laws has been a central part of Brian Kavanagh’s work. He chaired the Assembly Subcommittee on Election Operations, and authored and passed many bills in that house that the Republican Senate blocked for years, including early voting, voter registration improvements, and campaign finance reforms.
With the change in Senate leadership in 2019, he joined colleagues in enacting comprehensive election reform as the first act of the new legislative session. His bill closed the notorious “LLC Loophole,” one of the most egregious failings of New York’s laws, which allowed virtually unlimited contributions to political candidates, often with contributors’ true identity hidden. The national organization Fair Vote has presented Brian with its Champion of Democracy Award.
Brian has also been an advocate for transparency in the ways the legislature does the people’s work. He co-chaired the Assembly Workgroup on Legislative Process, Operations, and Public Participation, which reformed significant aspects of the Assembly’s rules and practices.