On Thursday, Feb. 21, the NYC Campaign Finance Board "celebrated" 20 years of the city's "matching funds" campaign finance system and their own existence as administrator and enforcer. But instead of taking the opportunity to pat themselves on the back for being great administrators/enforcers (which they are) or as conservators of a great program (which it isn't), they did something extraordinary.

They held a day-long conference, comprising six panels comprising people with a wide variety of experiences, perspectives, and opinions. It seemed that they were truly interested in an expansive discussion and debate over where to go next and what changes to make in the current system.

Unfortunately, I didn't get word about the conference until it had already started, so I missed most of the first half. I came in during the latter part of the third panel discussion, which featured representatives from the Brennan Center, the JEHT Foundation and Public Campaign.

See more about the rest of the conference after the break.

After lunch was the "Keynote" address by Dennis Burke, who spearheaded the successful "Clean Money, Clean Elections" effort in Arizona, and documentarian Marlo Poras. The subject was her film "Run, Granny, Run" about a 94-year-old woman who had walked across the country to support campaign finance reform, and then challenged NH Senator Judd Gregg in the 2004 election -- and got about 40% of the vote, helping to move NH from red to blue.

Then came a panel on public financing of federal elections. This panel featured former Senator Bob Kerrey, Representative Chris Shays, former FEC member Robert Lehnerd and John Samples of the Cato Institute (the poor guy said a lot of things, but nobody's really sure what he was talking about). Shays gave an impassioned defense of McCain-Feingold, explaining how the FEC has gutted the bill illegally (sometimes I wonder if Shays could be brought over to the party of goodness and light).

The final panel talked about independent expenditures in campaigns. Kelli Conlin of NARAL New York talked about where such expenditures can be a good thing -- their campaign in 2000 to show that Senate candidate Rick Lazio was anti-choice while pretending to be pro-choice being an example. LeeAnn Pelham of the L.A. City Ethics Commission and Larry Noble, who has worked for the FEC in the past, gave us a great overview of the problems of independent expenditures, and what can and cannot be done, especially in light of U.S. Supreme Court decisions.

On the breaks, people were talking about the ideas discussed at the panels, which says a lot about how informative and evocative the panels were. I've been to a bunch of conferences like this, but none has achieved the high level of debate and tremendous amount of information this conference accomplished.

Congratulations to the NYC CFB!