House votes to ban contributions from lobbyists, contractors

After two days of turmoil, over four hours of heated debate and lots of procedural wrangling, the House on Tuesday passed a major piece of ethic legislation. HB 118 would ban campaign contributions from lobbyists and big state contractors from giving money to state-wide candidates and political parties.

The bill now has less than 48 hours to try and get through the Senate.

“It has a good chance,” said sponsor Rep. Jose Campos, D-Santa Rosa, “it’s a good bill.”

The debate became heated at times and House Republicans at one point requested a ‘call of the House,’ meaning the chamber doors are locked and those members are not allowed to leave until it is lifted.

As it stands now, a lobbyist can collect money from several clients and then “bundle” them into a contribution to a candidate. But because of the bundling, the public–and sometimes the candidate–don’t know exactly where the money came from.

“I think it would better to make things more professional and not have contributions from lobbyists,” Rep. Brian Egolf, D-Santa Fe, said during the debate.

Supporters of the bill say it will allow everyone to know who’s giving money to whom. While lobbyists would not be able to directly donate, lobbyists would be permitted to deliver un-bundled donations from their clients.

The 46-24 vote came after Rep. Janice Arnold-Jones, R-Albuquerque, tried to move a substitute that  would have prevented bundling of contributions from lobbyists’ clients and exempted lobbyists’ from the ban.

”Our constituents are absolutely furious about pay-to-play,” she said, pointing a number of state scandals and arguing “there is nothing, absolutely nothing in this bill that would’ve stopped that.”

Those who have a state contract worth over $250,000 dollars would also be banned from making contributions. But opponents of the measure argued the bill would drive the political money in the state underground and not prevent the pay-to-play scandals it aims to stop.

They argue the recent pay-for-play concerns had to do with companies who sought state contracts after making sizable donations to candidates, and again said HB 118 wouldn’t stop it.

Opponents also argued that the bill wouldn’t stop contractors from using a third party to make the contributions to candidates or parties.

HB 118 has had a long fight to this point. House committees revised it and also required it be combined with a similar bill.  Tuesday’s vote came after the bills sponsor stopped debate on Monday to revise the bill again.