In a Buffalo News “Another Voice” essay, Brian Sampson of Unshackle Upstate argues against a major recommendation of the state Moreland Commission. Leave things as they are, he tells us with the subtext: Let the corruption continue. These representatives of wealth, who gain so much from the Albany legislators they so easily purchase, want to save us from public financing of state elections.

In the column he cites, as an example of the horror of public financing, the increased influence the Working Families Party has gained through the New York City program on which the Moreland Commission recommendation is based. Readers should look at the principles of the Working Families Party at www.workingfamiliesparty.org/about/our-principles to see if that increased influence is such a terrible thing. That party represents the interests of those of us in the middle class, the working families of this state.

We have a stark choice: public financing or continued control by the One Percent, as represented by Unshackle Upstate. I choose public financing.

- Roger Cook, Grand Island

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