With our democracy under threat from growing corporate wealth and authoritarianism, New Yorkers are organizing to protect free and fair elections. But attacks on our democracy by powerful, unaccountable forces extend beyond the ballot box.
We’re seeing an increase in dark money transferred from corporations to shadow entities, allowing big business and billionaires to lobby government officials behind the scenes. Known as astroturf groups, these secretly funded entities operate with little transparency and are designed to mislead lawmakers and the general public into thinking there is more grassroots support for a cause than there actually is.
Take Amazon, which is opposing the City Council’s Delivery Protection Act (Intro 518), legislation that would require the company to take responsibility for its drivers and treat them as employees. Since the bill was re-introduced in February, Amazon has funneled $5 million to a little-known entity called Five Borough Jobs Campaign to lobby against it. That’s more money than the state’s biggest corporate lobbyist spent all of last year.
But New Yorkers watching the ads that $5 million bought have no idea it’s all coming from Amazon. By hiding behind shadowy groups like Five Borough Jobs Campaign, Amazon has created a misleading narrative that the opposition is coming directly from “small businesses.”
It isn’t surprising that Amazon opposes the Delivery Protection Act. If the bill is passed and becomes law, Amazon would be held accountable for the dangers its delivery operations pose to New Yorkers and its workforce. Currently, Amazon happily subcontracts out the risks and liabilities of last mile delivery, the last leg of the system that gets packages to customers’ front doors. This lack of accountability has created dangerous streets for residents and high injury rates for workers.
Now, new disclosures for Five Borough Jobs Campaign show that this astroturf group hasn’t received a single contribution from a small business to lobby on its behalf. In fact, Amazon’s $5 million made up 97% of all its contributions in 2026. But these funding disclosures, no matter the amount, are made public only twice a year. So for six months, Amazon has been able to chase down councilmembers and run ads during the NBA finals, all while pretending to be a small business.
New York can shine a spotlight on this dark money. City law already requires that election mailers reveal their top donors. Why not do the same for corporations trying to manipulate our legislative process?
Five Borough Jobs Campaign should not be allowed to operate in the dark and spend outsized sums without revealing who is writing the checks. It’s in New Yorkers’ best interest that our elected leaders know who they’re communicating with, and we should amend our lobbying laws to protect the public and officials from these deceptive practices.
The city should add a new astroturf lobbying definition for disclosure: Paid efforts to simulate grassroots lobbying. Lobbyists engaged in astroturfing should have to report funding sources above $25,000 every two months, just like they do with all their other lobby disclosures. And the law must have strong enforcement. The corporation funding the effort, paid lobbyists, and consultants should be subject to fines proportional to the amounts spent.
If Amazon wants to make the case to the City Council that they should vote no on this bill, so be it. That’s democracy. But Jeff Bezos is no local small business owner, and New Yorkers and the lawmakers who represent us deserve to know the truth.
Lerner is the executive director of Common Cause New York. Moore is the executive director of ALIGN: The Alliance for a Greater New York.