After decades of sponsoring local political debates and publishing voter information guides, the League of Women Voters will close its New York office this month because of mounting financial problems, organization officials said recently.
Barbara Barr, chairwoman of a committee overseeing the transition of the League of Women Voters of the City of New York to a group of members at large of the state organization, said the city group owed creditors and utilities more than $25,000 and could no longer afford the $1,300 monthly rent at its midtown Manhattan headquarters. She said the office had been on the verge of closing for nearly two years because the league’s expenses, which total about $5,000 a month, had outpaced its fundraising. “We’re broke in the New York City office,” Barr said. “Unless there is a sudden windfall of money, we have no choice but to close. We can’t just tell creditors, `We’re the League of Women Voters, so we’re not going to pay you.”‘
Traditionally, the organization’s funds have come from membership dues–$50 a year from 700 people–and sales of “They Represent You,” a guide to national, state and local political officials that is distributed throughout the city. The group also publishes “What Makes New York City Run,” a guide to government procedures and politicians. But such publications may not continue to be updated, as they have been after each election, because the group cannot pay the printing costs. “It’s an old story,” Barr said. “It takes money to make money.”
An outgrowth of the suffragist movement, the national League of Women Voters was founded in 1920 to help educate women politically and encourage them to vote. Barr said that the New York chapter, which was founded in the 1960s, had sought grants and donations from corporate foundations but that its requests had largely been denied. “The people who are members of the league are not fundraisers. As soon as we say we’re involved in politics and we’re non-partisan, the people who give money shy away.”
To keep the office open, at least for a few months, Barr said, the group needs to raise at least $50,000.
In recent years, as women became a larger percentage of the voting population, the national and state offices of the League of Women Voters stepped up their political profiles. In this year’s presidential election, the group joined Conde Nast and Oldsmobile in an advertising campaign that encouraged women to take a friend to the polls. And the group is credited nationally and locally for helping win congressional support of the motor-voter bill, which allows residents to register when getting or renewing a driver’s license or applying for welfare or disability benefits.
In a sign of the hardship in New York, the only paid staff members, three part-time clerical workers, were recently let go. They had been responsible for managing the main office at 45 E. 33rd St. and training volunteers to operate the league’s popular telephone hot line.
This year alone, Barr said, volunteers answered more than 24,000 calls seeking information about everything from voter registration to the city charter. “People call us because they know they will get a live person and not some computer,” Barr said. “We’ve frankly been so focused on researching candidates and answering voters’ concerns that we have not been out there letting people know that we aren’t a government organization and we don’t have buckets of money to fall back on.”
The league is seeking a rent-free site to continue the hot line. But unless a site is found soon, Barr said, the hot line, too, will shut down.
Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said the group’s financial troubles were most unfortunate for New York voters. “The league has always stood for government done right,” Schumer said, “and they’ve proved to be a pretty good watchdog without having an ax to grind. They gave whatever issues they got behind greater impact because it wasn’t coming from the right or the left.”
With the forthcoming mayoral and City Council elections, said Mark Green, the city’s public advocate, the group’s problems have come at the worst time for voters who will be looking to sort through the candidates. “There are a whole lot of groups that ask candidates to speak and debate,” Green said. “But the New York league held the premier role because it was nonpartisan and so well-regarded by voters.”
Barr said she believed that at least part of the current crisis might have been avoided had the league fought harder to woo younger volunteers and people skilled at drawing donations. “We’re a declining membership, not a growing one,” Barr said. “The league’s being non-partisan I think has hurt us in recruiting young people. They want to endorse candidates. Our reputation as a deep study group that sometimes spends years looking at issues is not sexy to them.”
The New York members, most of whom are 60 or older, will become at-large members of the state office, although it remains unclear what, if any, role they will play in city elections.
But some longtime members vow they will continue to meet even without an office, said Rose Yalan, a member since 1974.
“I don’t know that we will get done all the things that we have in the past, the guides and publication, but we still have a strong network with people who care about government,” said Yalan, who is a regular voter-registration volunteer. “We’ll meet and discuss things in our homes if we have to.”
