The House approved this morning a proposal to limit campaign contributions for the first time in New Mexico.
The Senate has already approved the proposal, but minor changes the House made to Senate Bill 116, sponsored by Dede Feldman, D-Albuquerque — including its effective date — mean the bill must go back to the Senate for concurrence before it can head to the governor for a signature. The Senate is scheduled to convene at 8:30 a.m. and the session ends at noon.
The 49-17 House vote in favor of the bill followed more than two hours of debate in the early hours of the final morning of the session. Several attempts to amend the bill on the House floor failed, but minor amendments had already been made in House committees.
Rep. Al Park, D-Albuquerque, who carried the bill in the House, said during this morning’s debate that the contribution-limits bill is one of a number of ethics-reform proposals that should be enacted, including creation of an independent state ethics commission and changes to the Governmental Conduct Act.
“I think there’s 100 different things that we need to do,” Park said during debate on the bill. “… Ethics reform is not one piece of legislation — it’s a myriad.”
Much of the debate — and many of the proposed amendments — centered on a concern expressed by some that limiting contributions to candidates, political action committees and parties would drive political money to the nonprofit sector. That was one of many concerns raised by Rep. Janice Arnold-Jones, R-Albuquerque, who proposed several amendments that failed.
“I think this is certainly a good first step, but it is at best, at best, imperfect, with many, many holes in it,” Arnold-Jones said during debate on the bill. She ended up voting for it.
The bill would limit contributions to non-statewide candidates for office to $2,300 per election from any entity except a political committee, which could give $5,000. It would limit contributions to statewide candidates for office, political action committees and political parties to $5,000 per election from individuals and groups. There are two elections — a primary and a general — in each election cycle.
New Mexico is currently one of five states without some type of campaign contribution limits.
In 2007, the House and Senate both approved contribution-limit bills, but there were some differences. They failed to reconcile those differences before the session ended, so the proposal died.
The current proposal, as approved today by the House, would take effect on Nov. 3, 2010 — the day after the 2010 election. That’s so the limits start on the first day of an election cycle. The state is currently in the middle of the 2010 election cycle.