The state Board of Elections voted Wednesday to rein in the power of Risa Sugarman, the enforcement counsel who is in charge of investigating campaign finance law violations. Sugarman blasted the new regulations.

“If these rules go into effect, the division's investigations will be severely impaired,” said Sugarman. “Politically partisan intrusion into the investigatory process will increase substantially. And election law violations will go unchecked.”

The rules adopted by the Board of Elections give the board's Republican and Democratic commissioner’s oversight of subpoenas issued by Sugarman's office. And the board is setting a six month time limit on investigations. Commissioners argued that Sugarman is operating with little transparency and has failed to oversee cases in which candidates do not file financial reports. Sugarman disagreed.

"Enforcement is not neat and simple,” said Sugarman. “And it is not readily reduceable on numbers on a spreadsheet or in columns on a quarterly report.”

But League of Women Voters legislative director Jennifer Wilson said the board has a point about the lack of enforcement by Sugarman's office.

"I don't think it's necessarily going to water it down,” said Wilson. “To the commissioners' point, only a handful of cases have been pursued, so it really can't get any less than that.”

Hours before the vote, Governor Andrew Cuomo in a statement said he opposed the changes. The enforcement counsel was created in the wake of a 2014 ethics law that also triggered the shutdown of the Moreland Commission investigating legislative corruption. Elections Co-Chairman Douglas Kellner insisted the vote was not a matter of Cuomo versus the board and the commissioners recommended by the Legislature. 

"The commissioners are also the governor's appointees,” Kellner said. “We're here to provide for good, bipartisan election administration and I think that's the way to accomplish it.”

But the changes to campaign finance enforcement also come amid a parade of corruption scandals in New York state politics that have touched both the Legislature and the governor's own administration.