{"id":4233,"date":"2009-02-12T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-02-12T18:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/2009\/02\/omnibus-bill-would-only-kill-ethics-reform-again\/"},"modified":"2009-02-12T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2009-02-12T18:00:00","slug":"omnibus-bill-would-only-kill-ethics-reform-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2009\/02\/omnibus-bill-would-only-kill-ethics-reform-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Omnibus bill would only kill ethics reform, again"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This year\u2019s plan to ensure no significant reform is approved: Put all the proposals into one bill to rally opponents of various pieces of legislation behind a common purpose — voting down one bill<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

In 2007, Rep. Mimi Stewart<\/a> introduced an ethics reform bill that would have made 13 different changes to the state\u2019s Campaign Reporting Act<\/a>, including enacting contribution limits, giving the secretary of state subpoena power to investigate potential violations of the act and implementing tougher reporting requirements.<\/p>\n

At the time, one legislator said to me something to the effect of, \u201cShe\u2019s putting all the eggs in one basket. If she would split these up, some would pass. Together, they\u2019re all going to die.\u201d<\/p>\n

Predictably, 2007\u2019s House Bill 821<\/a> did die. Two years later, New Mexico still has no campaign contribution limits.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why the current proposal by a number of lawmakers to lump several ethics-reform proposals into one omnibus bill would be laughable, if it wasn\u2019t so sad. As Stewart\u2019s bill proved two years ago, putting so many different proposals together in one bill only gives more individual lawmakers reasons to vote against the entire basket of eggs because they don\u2019t like the color or shape of one of them.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t Washington, where dollars for bridges to nowhere get added to controversial legislation to legally bribe lawmakers into voting for it. In Santa Fe, binding together a number of contentious proposals only increases the number of opponents of the bill.<\/p>\n

If I didn\u2019t know better, I\u2019d be tempted to think the omnibus bill was an attempt to kill ethics reform once again. Oh, wait — this is Santa Fe. Of course that\u2019s what the omnibus bill is about.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not entirely clear which proposals will be folded into the omnibus bill. According to the Albuquerque Journal<\/a>, the House Voters and Elections Committee<\/a> tabled several bills last week, including one that would place limits on campaign contributions and another that would ban state contractors from contributing to state political candidates. There\u2019s also been talk of including the proposal to create a state ethics commission in the bill.<\/p>\n

But no omnibus bill has been presented publicly.<\/p>\n

The nonprofit factor<\/span><\/p>\n

There\u2019s another indicator that this is an attempt to kill ethics reform. Senate Majority Leader Michael Sanchez<\/a>, D-Belen and no friend of reform, told The Santa Fe New Mexican\u2019s Steve Terrell that the omnibus bill might include a proposal to require nonprofits to disclose their contributors, according to Terrell\u2019s blog<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also been discussion about somehow limiting donations to nonprofit groups. House Majority Leader Ken Martinez<\/a>, D-Grants, pushed that idea during a meeting of the Voters and Elections Committee last week. And there\u2019s already a bill sponsored by Bernadette Sanchez<\/a>, D-Albuquerque, that would broaden the definitions of \u201cpolitical committee\u201d and \u201cpolitical purpose\u201d<\/a> in the state\u2019s Campaign Reporting Act in an apparent attempt to make the act apply to nonprofits.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s history behind that. The secretary of state and attorney general are attempting to force two nonprofit groups to register as political action committees or pay steep fines because of mailers the state officials say were political in nature but the nonprofits say were related to a coming special session of the Legislature. The nonprofits have filed a lawsuit<\/a> in an attempt to stop the action by the state agencies. It\u2019s a lawsuit both sides agreed to so the courts can resolve the dispute.<\/p>\n

This is a seriously controversial issue in the Legislature — even hotter than the already contentious ethics-reform proposals being discussed. Whether the state can force nonprofits to release their donor lists is questionable. And the state can\u2019t limit the size of donations nonprofits can take in. The attorney general and secretary of state have the right approach — letting the courts decide. The Legislature should do the same.<\/p>\n

If these groups crossed a line, then they\u2019ll have to register as PACs, and their political activity would be subject to the contribution limits that would be placed on PACs in several bills under consideration by the Legislature. If the groups haven\u2019t crossed a line, they can go about their business.<\/p>\n

Trying to regulate nonprofits in a way that may or may not even be legal — and putting such proposals into an omnibus bill that includes other reform proposals — will put pressure on progressive lawmakers to vote against the bill, even though progressives tend to be the biggest champions of most of the ethics reform proposals that are going to be lumped into the bill.<\/p>\n

That alone would ensure the bill\u2019s death.<\/p>\n

\u2018We will get nothing\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

Rep. Jeff Steinborn<\/a>, D-Las Cruces and the primary sponsor of the campaign contribution limits bill<\/a> that\u2019s most likely to pass the House, said it best at the same Voters and Elections Committee meeting at which Martinez made his comments last week.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy fear is that if we\u2026 say it has to be all or nothing, we will get nothing,\u201d Steinborn said.<\/p>\n

Doing nothing would leave New Mexico as one of only a handful of states around the nation that don\u2019t have contribution limits, an independent ethics commission and legislative conference committees that are open to the public. There are many elected officials in Santa Fe who want to continue the status quo, but the citizens of the state have made clear, in polls and by tossing out several reform-opposing lawmakers in last year\u2019s election, that they\u2019re ready to join the rest of the nation in enacting some basic reforms to help create a more ethical government in Santa Fe.<\/p>\n

Perhaps lawmakers should listen to the citizens they purport to represent.<\/p>\n

By way of disclosure, I also write for the New Mexico Independent<\/a>, which is owned by the Center for Independent Media<\/a> in Washington. When the group was starting up its New Mexico news site earlier this year, the Center for Civic Policy<\/a>, one of the nonprofits at the center of the dispute described in this column, helped it locate funding sources. The Center for Civic Policy has never tried to use that fact to influence anything I have written.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This year\u2019s plan to ensure no significant reform is approved: Put all the proposals into one bill to rally opponents of various pieces of legislation behind a common purpose — voting down one bill In 2007, Rep. Mimi Stewart introduced an ethics reform bill that would have made 13 different changes to the state\u2019s Campaign […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4233","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4233\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}