Once the election is over and the results are certified, your campaign will continue to have compliance and disclosure obligations with the Campaign Finance Board (CFB). These obligations continue through the completion of your post-election audit or until your campaign has satisfied all outstanding liabilities and appropriately disposed of all assets and terminates with the CFB, whichever is later.
After the election, your campaign may have outstanding liabilities and/or remaining funds. With the completion of your final audit, you could be assessed CFB penalties and/or have a public funds repayment obligation. You might also still have outstanding liabilities. Review the two sections below for specific compliance requirements regarding post-election fundraising and your campaign’s remaining bank balance.
Please refer to the Audit Process page for more detailed information on the post-election audit and the Post-Election Information page for information on permissible post-election expenditures.
Be sure to closely review the Post-Election Checklist & Best Practices section of the Post-Election Information page for details on winding down your campaign efficiently and preparing for the post-election audit process. All candidates must continue to file semi-annual disclosure statements with the CFB until your campaign has satisfied all outstanding liabilities and appropriately disposed of all assets.
Participants Who Received Public Funds
All funds remaining in the committee bank account, up to the amount of public funds received, are considered public funds and must be returned to the CFB.
If your campaign has outstanding liabilities, your remaining bank balance should be used to pay the liabilities as soon as possible. If the amount of your outstanding liabilities exceeds your current bank balance, your campaign should fundraise to pay off your outstanding liabilities. When fundraising, you must continue to abide by the contribution limits and requirements for the election cycle. You can claim eligible contributions raised through December 31st for match if you document and report them timely in the appropriate disclosure statement. Please refer to Chapter 2 of the Handbook for more information.
If you fundraise more than you need to pay your outstanding liabilities, the surplus funds may need to be returned to the CFB. Make sure that you have entered all bills in C-SMART even if they have not yet been paid and that you report all bills and bill payments in your next disclosure statement filing. All outstanding liabilities must be reported timely.
After winding down your campaign and paying all liabilities, you should write a check payable to the “New York City Election Campaign Finance Fund” for the full amount of remaining funds by December 31 of the election year or, for a special election, on or before the last day of the month following the month in which the election took place. If you do so, any funds that you raise afterward will not count toward a potential public funds repayment obligation. Once your final bank balance is submitted to the Public Fund, it cannot be returned, and your campaign will be ineligible for a post-election public funds payment, if otherwise eligible. See the Post-Election Information page for details on post-election public funds eligibility.
Compliance Alert:
If you received public funds, your campaign can only spend post-election on very limited activities associated with winding down and responding to the post-election audit. Review the Post-Election Spending section of the Post-Election Information page for more information on permissible and prohibited post-election expenditures.
Non-Participants and Participants Who Did Not Receive Public Funds
If your campaign has outstanding liabilities, your remaining bank balance should be used to pay the liabilities as soon as possible. If the amount of your outstanding liabilities exceeds your current bank balance, your campaign should fundraise to pay off your outstanding liabilities. When fundraising, you must continue to abide by the contribution limits and requirements for the election cycle and continue to file semi-annual periodic disclosure with the CFB. Please refer to Chapter 2 of the Handbook for more information.
If you have remaining funds after the election, you can:
- Keep the committee and its bank account open for further use for this election.
- If you anticipate penalties or other permissible post-election campaign expenditures, you can keep your campaign’s bank account open with your remaining funds. Be aware that your bank account could accrue bank fees and other automatic charges and that you must enter all bills and bill payments in C-SMART with each semi-annual disclosure due to the CFB.
- Transfer remaining funds to a future committee.
- Under this option, the funds can be transferred to another candidate committee authorized by the same candidate for a future election cycle. Please refer to the Transfers guidance document for more details. The future election cycle committee should not be opened until the start of the next election cycle with the CFB and only after you have satisfied all liabilities and are otherwise ready to close your committee with the CFB.
- Return remaining funds to contributors.
- A best-practice methodology would be “last in, first out” methodology. Be sure to enter the transactions in C-SMART as contribution refunds and report them in your post-election disclosure statements.
- Donate remaining funds to a 501(c)(3) charity.
- Be sure to maintain a receipt documenting the donation and enter the transaction in C-SMART as a bill and bill payment.
Once you have transferred, returned, or donated any remaining funds in your committee’s bank account, properly disposed of all other assets, and paid all outstanding liabilities, you may close your campaign committee with the CFB. At this point, you will no longer be required to file semi-annual disclosure statements with the CFB but will still be subject to a post-election audit.
After your final audit has been completed, your campaign may still have outstanding liabilities, be assessed penalties, or have a public funds repayment obligation. This guidance details options your campaign has for paying these items once your CFB audit is complete. Candidates who are not running for a CFB-covered office in the next election cycle must use Options 1 or 2.
Option 1: Direct payment by the candidate and/or treasurer.
The candidate and/or treasurer can directly pay any penalties the Board has determined they owe using their own personal funds. In addition, the candidate may use personal funds to pay any public funds repayment amount(s). Please submit a check payable to the “New York City Election Campaign Finance Fund” when paying penalties or repaying public funds.
Option 2: Fundraise using the committee that incurred the liability.
As long as you have not closed your committee with the CFB, you can use it to raise additional funds. If you have already closed your committee's bank account, you must open a new one and disclose the new account to the CFB using the CFB Portal.
All fundraising must comply with the Campaign Finance Act and Board Rules that were in effect for the election cycle during which the debt, penalty, or repayment obligation was incurred. For example:
- You must comply with the contribution limits applicable to the election cycle in which the committee was used. Contributions are aggregated with contributions previously received by the original committee from the same contributors.
- You may not accept contributions from prohibited sources, such as corporations (including limited liability corporations), partnerships (including limited liability partnerships), and unregistered political committees. If you accept a post-election contribution from a political committee, you must confirm that the political committee is currently registered with the CFB.
All transactions must be reported to the CFB in subsequent semi-annual (January and July) filings. You must maintain the required backup documentation for all contributions, but you do not need to submit it to the CFB.
Compliance Alerts:
- A campaign may have to repay public funds. This occurs most often if the campaign has:
- Properly documented qualified expenditures that are less than the amount of public funds received.
- A final bank balance that after permissible post-election expenditures exceeds the campaign’s outstanding liabilities.
- If a campaign received public funds, its final bank balance up to the amount received is considered public funds.
- A ccampaign’s final bank balance will be calculated based on the remaining bank balance on January 11 in the year following the election. However, if a participant returns the campaign’s final bank balance to the CFB on or before December 31 of the election year, they will be considered not to owe any more public funds, even if the campaign engages in fundraising afterward. NOTE: If the CFB determines as a result of your campaign’s post-election audit that your campaign does not have enough qualified expenditures, you may be assessed an additional public funds repayment amount larger than your final bank balance.
- Public funds cannot be used to pay penalties. A Program participant can therefore pay penalties only after the return of the final bank balance and/or after any other required public funds repayments. See Chapter 8 of the Handbook and Board Rules 9-01 and 9-02 for more information on repayments.
Option 3: Fundraising Using a Segregated Bank Account
(Note: this option is available only for candidates who are registered for the next citywide election cycle.)
If you already have a committee for the next citywide election cycle registered with the CFB, you should set up a segregated bank account for that committee, in accordance with Rule 7-07(b), to raise funds to pay off debt, penalties, or a public funds repayment obligation incurred by a previous election committee. Segregated bank accounts help candidates avoid a reduction in future public funds eligibility. In the absence of a segregated account, certain types of expenditures, including paying off debt from a previous election, will result in a deduction in the amount of public funds you may receive for your next election. When these expenditures are paid using a segregated bank account, the campaign avoids the public funds deduction.
Anyone contributing to your segregated account must confirm in writing, using the Contribution Card for Segregated Bank Account template, that they understand that their contribution will be used only for limited purposes and will not be matched with public funds. You may accept contributions for a segregated bank account as part of your current election cycle committee’s regular fundraising efforts—there is no need to conduct separate fundraising events. The election cycle’s regular contribution limits apply. If a single contributor gives to both your regular committee account and your segregated account, the combined amount of the contributions may not exceed the limit for the office you are currently seeking.
All expenditures related to the segregated account, including fundraising expenses, must be paid from your current election cycle committee’s regular bank account. The segregated account may be used only for depositing contributions and repaying debt from a previous election (see also other types of limited expenditures listed in Rule 7-07). Expenditures to raise funds into the segregated account will not be considered qualified expenditures, but will count toward the current election cycle’s expenditure limit.
Warning: Failure to comply with any of the rules governing segregated accounts, including the rule against commingling funds deposited into the segregated account with funds raised for any other purpose, may result in a reduction in the amount of public funds you are eligible to receive and the loss of the advantages of a segregated account.
Candidate Services Tips:
- Review Chapter 6 of the Handbook for more information on segregated bank accounts.
- Contact your Candidate Services liaison prior to opening a segregated bank account.