NYS Advisory Committee on Judicial Ethics – Campaign account: Opinion 17-23

New York State Advisory Committee on Judicial Ethics

Campaign account

Discharge – Legal bills

Opinion 17-23

Background: An elected full-time judge asks if he may continue to keep his campaign account open and transfer his personal funds to the account so that his campaign committee can continue to pay off outstanding legal bills from the campaign.

Opinion: The Committee concluded that a judge, whose window period has expired, may keep his campaign account open for the purpose of paying outstanding legal bills from his former campaign, where the campaign committee’s sole activities are accepting deposits of the judge’s personal funds and making payments to discharge the campaign’s outstanding legal debt or liability. The campaign account must be closed as soon as practicable once the debt or liability is discharged.