{"id":36518,"date":"2012-02-11T09:52:58","date_gmt":"2012-02-11T16:52:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=36518"},"modified":"2012-02-13T10:07:47","modified_gmt":"2012-02-13T17:07:47","slug":"disagrement-still-threatens-campaign-disclosure-bill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2012\/02\/disagrement-still-threatens-campaign-disclosure-bill\/","title":{"rendered":"Disagreement still threatens campaign disclosure bill"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Roll<\/a>

Photo by AMagill\/flickr.com<\/p><\/div>\n

Sponsor\u00a0Peter Wirth\u00a0says\u00a0he doesn\u2019t like the legislation in its current form; its House shepherd, Nate Gentry, says he\u2019s ‘concerned with some of the attorney general\u2019s inclusions.’<\/h4>\n

A bill aimed at ensuring campaign-finance transparency has been so changed by Senate committees that it has lost much of the support that propelled it out of an interim committee by a unanimous vote.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s personally painful for me to stand up against a bill that I put so much work into, but it\u2019s just become too burdensome,\u201d said Steven Robert Allen, who took over last month as director of public policy at the ACLU of New Mexico<\/a>. He was deeply involved in crafting the bill in his previous role as head of Common Cause<\/a> in the state.<\/p>\n

Changes to the bill, some requested by the Attorney General\u2019s Office, have added language about donations that critics say is vague and confusing; nonprofits railed against requirements that they use separate bank accounts for donations or be forced to reveal donors’ names; and changing the tracking period from election cycles to calendar years raised eyebrows.<\/p>\n

(Here is Senate Bill 11\u00a0as introduced<\/a>, as\u00a0amended by the Senate Rules Committee<\/a>\u00a0and as amended again by\u00a0the Senate Judiciary Committee<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Representatives from half a dozen groups, including the American Cancer Society<\/a>, the Native American Voter Alliance and New Mexico Voices for Children<\/a> expressed their displeasure with the amended bill in a Senate Judiciary Committee meeting Thursday, saying they support the bill as it was introduced.<\/p>\n

Allen was among those who had been working to strike a balance.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you take too small of a bite of this apple, then groups trying to do hit pieces don\u2019t have to disclose their donors, but if you take too big a bite then you also swallow up general talking about government, which is a core constitutional right embedded in the First Amendment,\u201d Allen said.<\/p>\n

Changes upset balance of interim committee compromise<\/h3>\n

Sponsor Peter Wirth<\/a>, D-Santa Fe, said he doesn\u2019t like the bill in its current form. Its House shepherd, Nate Gentry<\/a>, R-Albuquerque, said he\u2019s \u201cconcerned with some of the attorney general\u2019s inclusions.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t want to be too onerous in the sense that we don\u2019t to discourage people from political speech,\u201d Gentry said.<\/p>\n

The attorney general\u2019s chief counsel, Stuart Bluestone, disagrees with criticism of the changes to the bill.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think that when reasonable and fair-minded people look at this, that you\u2019re going to be using this as a way of inhibiting free, open and robust speech on the issues of the day,” he said.<\/p>\n

Wirth and Gentry worked together on the bill in the interim Courts, Corrections and Justice Committee<\/a> (its final report is\u00a0here<\/a>) after disagreements between lawmakers, campaign-finance reform advocates, nonprofits and the Attorney General\u2019s Office doomed similar legislation last year.<\/p>\n

The interim committee came to a compromise that was hard-fought and perhaps tenuous. Now the changes to the bill have upset that delicate balance.<\/p>\n

Concern about super PACs, other spending<\/h3>\n

As NMPolitics.net has reported<\/a>,\u00a0recent court decisions have rendered New Mexico\u2019s\u00a0Campaign Reporting Act<\/a>\u00a0\u201cunenforceable,\u201d in the words of Allen, which is why he, Wirth and others have been working so hard to find a solution. Without strong disclosure laws in place, some worry the swing state could be flooded with undisclosed spending on ads this year. In addition, the attorney general is still trying to deal with\u00a0the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals’ 2010 ruling\u00a0upholding a lower court\u2019s rejection<\/a>\u00a0of his attempt to force two nonprofits to register as political committees.<\/p>\n

Senate\u00a0Majority Leader\u00a0Michael Sanchez<\/a>, D-Belen, who voted for the bill in the Judiciary Committee, said he hopes\u00a0\u201cthe advocates will understand this is just the first step, and if we need to amend it next year and take them out or\u2026 figure out a way to protect them, we can do that.”<\/p>\n

\u201cNobody likes it, everybody swallowed hard on it, but we know we have to do something because of the super PACs,\u201d Sanchez said.<\/p>\n

Wirth said he hopes the bill can be improved on the Senate floor or if and when it makes it to the House of Representatives. But with the session ending Thursday, time is of the essence.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe started in a position that the nonprofits liked and the attorney general hated, and now we\u2019re somewhere in between\u2026 but I\u2019ve got to get it out of this,\u201d Wirth said, explaining that he\u2019s OK with the bill leaving the Senate in rough shape \u2014 as long as it can be fixed in the House.<\/p>\n

On the Senate calendar today<\/h3>\n

The legislation may face a difficult debate on the Senate floor, where there is lingering resentment over mailers sent by some nonprofits three months before the 2008 primary. The groups said the mailers weren\u2019t electioneering, but a handful of lawmakers whose constituents received the mailers lost their seats. That controversy led to the failed attempt by the AG and secretary of state to force the nonprofits to register as political committees.<\/p>\n

The bill is on the Senate calendar today. If it passes the Senate it still needs to be heard in House committees and on the floor there. If the House makes changes then both versions of the bill will need to be reconciled in a conference committee.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a short-session problem at this point,\u201d said Vicki Harrison, the new executive director at Common Cause New Mexico.<\/p>\n

Bluestone said work toward compromise continues.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019d like to have full agreement on this,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019d love to see a bill that is a compromise measure that has everybody\u2019s support, and that\u2019s why I say we\u2019re continuing to look at it and hopefully we\u2019ll still be able to make some improvements to it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gov. Susana Martinez<\/a> has stayed out of the debate. She agreed to put the topic on the agenda for the legislative session but has so far declined to take sides.<\/p>\n

The Governor\u2019s Office hasn\u2019t had a chance to review the changes to the bill and isn\u2019t commenting now on what she would or wouldn\u2019t sign, Martinez\u2019s spokesman Scott Darnell wrote in an e-mail yesterday, but he said she will carefully consider any legislation sent to her.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A bill aimed at ensuring campaign-finance transparency has been so changed by Senate committees that it has lost much of the support that propelled it out of an interim committee by a unanimous vote.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2527,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[156,223,109,107],"class_list":["post-36518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-2012-election","tag-campaign-finance","tag-ethics-reform","tag-roundhouse"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2527"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36518"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36518\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}