As a Council Member Ben Kallos chaired the Governmental Operations Committee with oversight over elections and campaign finance. Ben wrote New York City's new full public matching campaign finance system, testified on the state system, and has been an outspoken critic of elections and ballot access in our city.
Our firm can form your committees, help make sure you do everything possible to get on the ballot and receive the public fund you need to win.
Our firm is here to help you get form a committee with the city or state and get on the ballot. We can make sure your petitions are legal, train your petitioners, help make sure your signatures are valid, file with the Board of Elections, and defend your petitions in court to keep you on the ballot.
As Council Member, Ben Kallos, wrote the new full public matching campaign finance system. The new system allows anyone to run on entirely small dollars with every small dollar matched with 8 public dollars. A $10 contribution from a New York City resident becomes $90. With great rewards come great risks, such as personal liability to the city for violations, fines, and funds you may have to repay to the city.
Our team can help you and your campaign every step of the way. From opening your campaign and training your staff to do this on your own to full service where we can take care of it all.
Forming a committee will require a treasurer and we can provide one for you. Raising money can be tough, but we will make sure every dollar that can be matched gets matched. Sometimes a contribution can get matched with a little work and we can do that follow up. A public funds payment with 90% of the money you need to run can get hung up on the smallest detail and we can work with you to take every step necessary to get paid. Win or lose, once the campaign is over you are in for an audit by the campaign finance board and we can work with you to get violations withdrawn, fines down, and even go to trial.
Ben Kallos testified before the committee that created the New York State Public Campaign System. Starting November 9, 2022 for the 2024 legislature and 2026 statewide elections candidates for Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Attorney General, Comptroller, State Senate, and State Assembly will be able to opt-in to the new public matching system. Contributions from within a candidate's district of between $5 and $250 will eligible for matching.
Public Matching Rates
Statewide:
6 public dollars for every $1 donated in-district.
$5 gets matched with $30, $250 gets matched with $1,500.
Legislature:
First $50, matched at 12 public dollars for every $1 donated in-district.
Next $100, matched at 9 public dollars for every $1 donated in-district.
Last $100, matched at 8 public dollars for every $1 donated in-district.
$50 gets matched with $600, $150 gets matched with $1,500, $250 gets matched with $2,300.
Maximum Public Funds for 2024/2026
Governor: $3.5 million for Primary & $3.5 million combined with Lieutenant Governor for General
Lieutenant Governor: $3.5 million for Primary & $3.5 million combined with Lieutenant Governor for General
Attorney General/Comptroller: $3.5 million for Primary & $3.5 million for General
State Senate: $375,000 for Primary & $375,000 for General
Assembly: $175 for Primary & $175,000 for General
Just as in the New York City system, certain races will not receive public funds including races where candidates run unopposed and in non-competitive races candidates will be limited to 25% of the maximum public funds payment.
Qualification is often one of the biggest hurdles whether for incumbents or first time candidates. In addition to getting on the ballot, in order to qualify for public funds candidates must meet two thresholds: donors and funds raised. Only the first $250 of an in-district contribution counts towards the funds raised threshold. For legislative districts representing low-income communities, there are reduced thresholds.
Minimum Thresholds to Qualify for Public Matching Funds in 2024/2026
Governor: $500,000 in funds raised & 5,000 matchable in-state contributions
Lieutenant Governor, Attorney General, & Comptroller: $100,000 in funds raised & 1,000 matchable in-state contributions.
State Senate: $12,000 in funds raised & 150 in-district matchable contributions. ($8,000 & 150 in low-income districts)
Assembly: $6,000 in funds raised & 75 in-district matchable contributions. ($4,000 & 75 in low-income districts)
In addition to the new public campaign finance system, candidates for statewide and legislative office will see sky high contribution limits more than halved in some cases.
Contribution Limits Effective November 9, 2022
Statewide: $9,000 Primary + $9,000 General = $18,000 per cycle
State Senate: $5,000 Primary + $5,000 General = $10,000 per cycle
Assembly: $3,000 Primary + $3,000 General = $6,000 per cycle
Please note that facts and figures provided here are as of December 2020 and subject to change through regulation or law. This information is provided for educational purposes only, please retain our office if you are seeking legal advise.
Our office can help you through every step of the new New York State Public Campaign Finance System and representation before the Public Campaign Finance Board (PCFB) to help you make sure you meet eligibility thresholds, get paid your public funds, and have the resources you need to win.
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As Chair of the Contracts Committee in the New York City Council, Council Member Ben Kallos, oversaw $20 billion of goods and services contracts every year. Recognized as leader in the field, Ben was featured at several conferences including Public-Private Partnerships (P3) and the annual Government Procurement Conference.
Our firm offers a unique understanding of billions of dollars in government contracts, from the top level, down to the agency, and even in some case down to individual items. We are here to help you do business with the City and State of New York.
As Chair of the Contracts Committee in the New York City Council, Ben Kallos oversaw an annual contracts budget of more than $20 billion. You might find your small business represented through a breakdown by industry for human services (40%), much of which goes to faith-based and secular non-profits, $8.3 billion (27%) for standard services, $3.8 billion (13%) for professional services, $3.1 billion (10%) for goods, $2.4 billion (8%) for construction, and $800 million (2%) for architecture and engineering.
Prior to this role, Ben chaired the Committee on Governmental Operations, which oversees the powerful yet little known Department of Citywide Administrative Services, which administers $1.2 billion in city procurement including $173 million in PPE, manages 1.9 million square feet of private office space, the largest municipal fleet in the country with 30,000 vehicles, as well as 27.8 trillion BTU in energy purchases along with energy efficiency improvements at 515 facilities.
In chairing both committees, Ben have gained a unique understanding of billions of dollars in city contracts, from the top level, down to the agency, and even in some case down to individual items. We can help you and your company find new opportunities for growth, and help you bid on hundreds of thousands if not millions in city contracts.
New York City is required to publish public notices for various government actions, the most relevant of which would be related to procurement including solicitations, intent to award, award, as well as pre-qualified vendor lists. Rather than publishing notices in newspapers or relevant trade publications, the City of New York publishes its own newspaper called the City Record. When Ben was elected, interested parties needed to pay $75 for a subscription for a physical paper copy to be delivered to them, then read through pages and pages to find anything relevant. In practice, city agencies go through the motions of publishing, then only invite specific vendors to bid on any given contract. As of 2021, the average number of bidders per contract is only 4.
As Chair of the Governmental Operations Committee Ben Kallos authored Local Law 38 of 2014 to create the City Record Online. Our firm will use the system Ben created to track New York City procurement with you in order make sure you know about relevant opportunities as well as awards to competitors.
Solicitations by government agencies are often written with a specific vendor in mind. A request for proposal may include requirements that preclude certain vendors from bidding that often has no valid relationship with the underlying contract. As a Council Member, Ben Kallos have weighed in on contracts for the selection of ferry operators, parks, and voting machines.
When Ben Kallos was first elected in 2014, he was surprised to learn that he would have to pay for a Westlaw subscription in order to get access to the laws that he was responsible for amending. Furthermore, while the city had an existing repository of laws online, it was not updated regularly, and the publisher required a license in order to use or republish the materials. Ben immediately co-sponsored and passed Local Law 37 of 2014 to require the city to publish the law online without any license restriction and syndication of our laws. When the City Law Department put out the original Request for Proposals it included a provision relating to the resale of city laws which not only favored the incumbent publisher, but was against the new law Ben had passed. Not only that but the RFP was not widely circulated, in fact a vendor that Ben knew was interested in bidding on the project had missed the deadline. Ben immediately brought the fatal flaw in the RFP to the attention of the Law Department and forced them to issue a new RFP that dropped the invalid requirement. The vendor that had promised to actually set the law free ended up winning the contract and you can now find and even bulk download all of New York City laws.
We can work with small businesses even before you go through the costly and burdensome bid process to ensure that the solicitation is written in a way that is neutral so that you have a fair shot at competing for and winning city and state contracts.
As Chair of the Contracts Committee, Ben Kallos, oversaw the New York City’s transition from the Vendor Information Exchange System (VENDEX) to the Procurement and Sourcing Solutions Portal (PASSPort). The new PASSPort system is becoming an end to end platform starting from bid and award, to hosting the lengthy compliance process, to managing invoice and payment. While notices are still required to be published in the City Record, they are also now being posted on PASSPort with notices sent to vendors with existing accounts whose profiles indicate relevant skill, service, or commodity codes.
When Ben became Contracts Chair, he was surprised to learn that access to PASSPort was difficult to obtain with information within the system restricted. Ben worked with the Mayor’s Office of Contract Services to open PASSPort to the public and importantly other vendors who can now see more information through a public access portal.
Our firm can use the public access portal to help you obtain information you need about existing contracts as your condier new opportunities.
As Chair of the Contracts Committee, Ben Kallos focused on working with Minority and Woman-owned Business Enterprises (M/WBE). New York City provides businesses of a certain size owned by women and people of color a preference in obtaining contracts through its MWBE program. Due to Constitutional strict scrutiny requirements the program is narrowly tailored. An independent study periodically studies the number of businesses owned by women and people of color and compares it to the utilization of those businesses to determine if there is a disparity.
Asian American owned professional service providers such as architects and engineers had started out as covered by the City’s initial MWBE program but had been phased out following the 2009 study when there was no longer a finding of a disparity. However, the most recent study showed that in the absence of an MWBE preference a disparity had reemerged. As Chair and Council Member, Ben Kallos worked with the Alliance of New York Asian Architects and Engineers to pass Local Law 174 of 2019 out of the committee to restore their MWBE preference.
Our firm is eager to help your small business obtain MWBE certification, identify RFPs and prime contractors to business with, and to help you win a representative share of the city and state contract spending.
As a Council Member and Chair of the Contracts Committee, Ben Kallos have weighed in on multiple contracts disputes, often working with private sector partners to deliver better services for the city.
Ben was an early booster of LinkNYC’s free wireless and phone service kiosks. LinkNYC is operated by CityBridge, which is a subsidiary of Sidewalk Labs, which is owned by Google. When few of the LinkNYC tablets that are used to make free phone calls worked, Ben identified communications protocols and designed a platform to monitor service levels in real time. Later on, Ben was particularly disappointed when CityBridge not only failed to make payments, but failed to continue their roll out, as they renegotiated a 2-year extension on their contract. Ben continued to advocate to substitute performance for contractual payments to the city, including in a white-paper I authored with now-Mayor Eric Adams.
In Summer 2020, Mayor de Blasio promised $55 million in free air conditioners to low-income seniors sheltering in place. When residents complained throughout the summer that they hadn’t received their air conditioners, Ben Kallos pulled the contracts for every vendor. The first thing Ben found was that the city was paying one vendor above market rate, as much as $549 for air conditioners and another $203 for installation for a total of $752. At the same time, Ben found that another vendor was only charging $329 for an air conditioner and installation. Working with the Daily News, we found that the lower cost vendor had initially received the bulk of the order only to be forced to drop out of the program because they kept getting incorrect information from the city on where to deliver the air conditioners.
Our firm can help your company navigate your contract so that you can not only get paid but deliver for the people of our city and state.
Originally adopted in 2005, Environmentally Preferable Purchasing sets minimum standards for the purchase of goods over $100,000. However, as of today, the law is applied to few if any contracts, and was completely ignored by Mayor Bill de Blasio, who actually wrote the original law. The legislation Ben Kallos authored and passed through the Council modernizes standards including adoption of EPEAT for technology products and expands the law to cover furniture and textiles. It also forces the city to report on contract solicitations subject to the law. Where an item that should be, is not subjected to the law, the city must engage in a waiver process, that has rarely ever happened.
If your company uses environmentally preferred materials, our firm can help force the city to follow the law so that we can win for you, the city, and our planet.
New York State has more than $26 billion in contracts managed by the Office of General Services (OGS) Division of Procurement Services including 119 contract awards covering 1,563 commodity, service, and technology contracts.
Our firm can help you and your company work through the New York State's procurement process including identifying relevant request for proposals (RFP), bids, award, managing your contract with the state, and getting paid.
As a Council Member, Ben Kallos authored Retirement Security for All to offer auto-enroll IRAs to millions of New Yorkers, co-sponsored numerous New York City laws to protect you human rights, and has represented labor unions both as an elected official and attorney. Our firm is here to help you implement these laws, represent your members, and to help enforce your human rights.
As Co-Chair of the Progressive Caucus, Ben Kallos frequently co-sponsored legislation, spoke at press conferences, at hearings, and on the floor of the City Council, and worked with advocates and industry to negotiate and pass legislation into law.
Using his experience as a Council Member, Kallos can bring knowledge of the legislative history, industry concerns, concessions from the Council, not to mention being able to identify discrepancies in agency enforcement. We can advise clients on compliance and employees on their rights.
Key employment laws co-sponsored or voted on by Kallos in the New York City Council that are overseen by the Commission on Human Rights:
Key employment laws co-sponsored or voted on by Kallos in the New York City Council that are overseen by the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection:
If you would like to learn more about how you and your company can comply with these laws or your an employee or job applicant who believes your rights may have been violated, we are here to help.
Originally working out of the Buffalo office during law school, Ben Kallos was hired as an Associate at the New York office of Gorlick, Kravitz, and Listhaus. In this role I supported collective bargaining and removing criminal elements from labor organizations using trusteeships, conducted elections, and served ERISA funds. Ben's ERISA work included advising on prohibited transactions, facilitating solicitations, bids, and awards, drafting executive compensation agreements, defending employment matters, as well as ensuring employer payments to the funds.
It is in this role as an ERISA litigator that Ben worked with auditors to obtain digital copies of audits in order to automate the process by creating a knowledge management system. This started with automatically determining of damages, generating demand letters and Federal complaints, and even handling much of the discovery process. Due to Federal question on all ERISA matters, Ben practiced exclusively in the Federal Courts. Ben was also able to identify bad decisions in case law, that Ben actively worked to change, winning my clients additional payouts based on my new theories of law. Ultimately, the work of multiple associates was given to Ben as he managed all new ERISA cases for the firm.
Ben is particularly proud to have worked on the Delphi Bankruptcy, where the firm represented the International Union of Operating Engineers. The membership of the local unions had dwindled to single digits at some job sites. Our role in the litigation was to prove that Delphi had failed to even communicate with these small bargaining units prior to seeking to be relieved of their pension obligations under Chapter 11.
More than 1.5 million private-sector workers in New York City do not have access to retirement plans through their employers. As an ERISA attorney and Council Member, Ben Kallos led an 8-year effort for “Retirement Security for All” which would auto-enroll employees through employer payroll deduction into a municipally facilitated low-fee individual retirement accounts.
Ben Kallos started by authoring and introducing legislation in 2015 with Public Advocate Tish James to implement the program. In 2016, Ben and Tish worked with a national coalition of state and city governments to advocate before the White House and the Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA) to secure new regulations for states and municipalities. In 2017, Steven Bannon in the White House prioritized stopping our legislation on a top ten list on his whiteboard. Among the first acts of the 115th Congress was the passage of House Joint Resolutions 66 and 67 that rolled back the regulations they had won. While the regulations, simply confirmed that ERISA did not pre-empt state or city facilitated IRAs, New York State and City attorneys didn’t want to risk litigation with the Justice Department in the notoriously strict 2nd Circuit. With a new White House in 2018, Governor Andrew Cuomo passed a state-sponsored IRA and Ben re-introduced his auto-IRA legislation. In September 2019, Cuomo still hadn’t even begun steps to implement a state IRA, so the Council held a hearing where Ben brought one of the only existing state facilitated auto-IRAs, OregonSaves, along with national experts to testify at the City Council.
On May 11, 2021, Ben's “Retirement Security for All” auto-enrollment IRA was signed into law. The would apply to employers with 5 or more employees who do not currently offer a retirement option to employees, though smaller employers will have the option of joining. Once implemented, employees over the age of 21 who do not already have access to retirement through their employer would have 5% automatically deducted from their payroll. Employees would be able to drop their enrollment and withdraw initial funds or adjust withholdings up to the Federal maximum of $6,000 (or $7,000 at age 50 or above). The auto-IRA would be portable between employers and likely even jurisdictions. The auto-IRA would be low-fee to participants and no-fee for employers. The “Retirement Security for All” Law that I wrote was almost immediately adopted as a state law.
Our firm is here to help businesses both big and small implement this new policy to minimize your liability while helping employees save for retirement.
Starting when he first ran in 2013, Ben Kallos refused money from real estate developers and has been a critic of elected officials who do, something that has led to regulatory capture of New York City by the real estate industry.
As a Council Member, Ben Kallos, protected the landmarks law, reformed the Board of Standards and Appeals, supported the first community-led rezoning that stopped Billionaires row at 2nd Avenue, and led a borough-wide rezoning to stop supertalls in residential neighborhoods above 59th Street,.
In his second term starting in 2018, Ben chaired a City Council Land Use Subcommittee where he authored legislation to force developers to disclose financial relationships with politicians, questioned the transfer of city-controlled property to real estate developers who donated money, and uncovered that the city was giving away mansions as "affordable housing." By 2019, Ben's independence and leadership had frustrated real estate developers, leading the Council to dissolve the committee.
Ben Kallos has been recognized as one of the politicians who calls the shots on real estate by the Commercial Observer. Our firm is here to help you and your community fight real estate developers, protect your community, and fight to keep you and your neighbors from being displaced from your neighborhood.
When the City’s zoning laws were first enacted in 1916, in order to avoid triggering the takings clause of the United States Constitution, the City created the Board of Standards and Appeals (BSA) to grant “relief” from the zoning code. A land owner in New York City may chose between the standard land use process for a zoning change or apply for a variance to a specific site through the BSA. As local Council Member, Ben Kallos, appeared before the BSA on numerous matters, opposing overdevelopment and supporting applications to build or expand new educational facilities.
Ben appeared before the BSA in opposition to projects where developers misrepresented facts and created loopholes to get around the zoning code. Ben was also able to negotiate win-wins for schools and the neighborhood to win community support for projects on numerous occasions. Chapin received approval to build several additional stories over their existing school within existing height limits. Spence received approval to build a new freestanding athletics facility while agreeing to make their space available to neighboring public schools. Marymount received approval to build a new campus on 98th Street while agreeing to create special program to serve low-income communities of color in the surrounding East Harlem community. Following his appearances, Ben actually wrote and passed multiple laws to better regulate the BSA.
Our firm is here to help the community fight out-of-scale and otherwise illegal projects being considered by the BSA. Our firm can also help educational institutions who are serious about moving forward with the community to navigate that process and the BSA.
As Council Member, Ben Kallos was recognized for supporting Landmarks and historic preservation. This was in part because, Ben was successful in his fight against legislation that would have weakened the city's landmarks law. Since then Ben has been at numerous Landmarks Preservation Commission hearings in support of designations, voted in favor of designations as a member of the Landmarks subcommittee in the Council, and continued to be a champion for the landmarks and preservation community.
Our practice can help individuals, community groups, and property owners through getting buildings or districts evaluated, appearing before the Landmarks Preservation Commission. We are here to help you and your community move through the landmarks process to protect your neighborhood's history.
Ben Kallos has negotiated and passed multiple zonings and rezoning through the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP) for individual applicants in his district, including one where he was an applicant, and even led the most recent rezoning for the entire borough of Manhattan.
Ben is an outspoken critic of super tall towers for the ultra-rich on Billionaires' Row and real estate developers getting favors for political donations.
Ben has experience organizing the community to fight a proposed 950-foot super tall tower for billionaires. Ben joined the first of its kind community-led rezoning to stop super tall towers and the community won their rezoning forcing the building to halt construction. The rezoning stopped Billionaire’s Row from expanding beyond 2nd Avenue on Manhattan Eastside. However, one site applied to be grandfathered by the Board of Standards and Appeals. When that happened, Ben appeared as co-counsel for oral arguments before the Supreme Court.
When another developer proposed a 510-foot skyscraper with only 25 stories propped up on a 150-foot empty mechanical void, Ben worked with the community to defeat the “Jetson’s Tower” on stilts. Ben also led a rezoning to stop supertall towers from being built with empty spaces called “mechanical voids” that had grown as high as 160 feet tall. Ben was able to pass the rezoning for the Upper East and West Sides of Manhattan that banned the use of empty mechanical voids that allowed for buildings to have mechanical spaces of unlimited height.
Our firm is here to help communities move their zoning proposals forward and stand up to rezonings that would displace people from the neighborhoods that they've invested their entire lives in.
On East 88th Street a real estate developer proposed a 4-foot-wide-lot so they could build the tallest tower in the neighborhood with 32 stories at 521-feet tall, leading Ben to file a complaint along with State Senator Liz Krueger and Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer that shut down the project until the developer changed the size of the lot.
On East 91st Street a developer proposed demolishing a playground on public housing land for a skyscraper that was widely opposed by elected officials including Ben. Public housing residents with support from Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney, Borough President Brewer and Ben were able to stop the project.
Just because a developer or elected official says a project is "as of right" or a "done deal" doesn't mean they are right. Our firm can help determine whether a developer is following applicable laws. On numerous occasions, when projects that don't seem right are put under scrutiny and challenged, it turns out that they are unable to move forward as originally proposed.
On New Year’s Day 2014, Ben negotiated a $500 million expansion of the Rockefeller University over the FDR Drive, with $15 million in improvements to the East River Esplanade, along with an agreement to open up a new bio-tech incubator. In the years that followed Ben was able to secure $9 million in funding from the City for the bio-tech incubator.
Ben also negotiated an expansion of Hospital for Special Surgery and secured their additional investment of $1.8 million into renovating the East River Esplanade from 70th to 78th Streets. Our firm can help you and your community set the narrative and win real community benefits.
Our firm can work with you and your community to help win real benefits for the community from changes to the building's impact on the neighborhood, to composition and income threshold for affordable housing, to investments in nearby schools, libraries, parks and non-profits.
