Thomas P. DiNapoli, the state comptroller, is the first to admit that what he plans to do is hypocritical.
But it is true: After decades spent calling for the public financing of political campaigns, Mr. DiNapoli, a Democrat, says he will opt out of a public financing system that New York lawmakers have just enacted, in time for this fall’s elections.
Then again, Mr. DiNapoli says the new system is a badly written, sloppy piece of legislation that was obviously rushed into effect — “a Frankenstein monster,” he calls it — and he fears that it may actually have been designed to fail, by lawmakers who either do not really believe in, or do not understand, public campaign financing at all.