The website for the City’s Campaign Finance Board (CFB) – the agency charged with giving millions of taxpayer dollars out to candidates running for citywide office, including more than $2 million to Mayor Bill de Blasio, has been down for over 24 hours.
CFB spokesperson Matt Sollars blamed the problem on a manhole fire, but a Con Ed spokesperson said there were no reports of a manhole fire that would affect that location. The CFB is located at 100 Church Street in Lower Manhattan.
“I called our people and we don’t have any reports of a manhole fire at that location,” said Con Ed spokesperson Alfonso Quiroz, adding it is highly unlikely a manhole incident would cause a website to go down unless there was a power outage in the budiling.
The FDNY also said no manhole fire, explosion or outage was reported at or near that address yesterday.
There is no way the CFB website has been hacked, Sollars insisted, sticking to the manhole story.
The website went down on a day the CFB authorized a second round of public funds payments in the 2017 elections totaling $1,361,289 to 39 candidates who qualified for the matching funds program. In addition to the payments approved on August 3rd, the Board has now approved payments totaling $8,107,725 to 70 qualifying candidates.
New York City’s matching funds program provides participating candidates with public funds at a rate of $6-to-$1 for the first $175 contributed by city residents, for a maximum of $1,050 in public funds per contributor.
The CFB told reporters looking for information on who received public funds to check their Twitter handle and they sent out a press release at 2:25 p.m. to reporters on who received public financing.
Their website is still down as this was posted. When logging onto it, users are given a notice that the connection is not private.
The website includes, among other details, figures on who donated money to which campaigns, how much money was donated and to who and how candidates have spent money thus far.
