Common Cause NM Weighs in on Passage of Campaign Donation Caps

Steven Robert Allen of Common Cause New Mexico -- who worked his butt off at the Roundhouse advocating for ethics and campaign finance reform this Session -- released the following statement this morning on passage of SB 116 by the New Mexico Legislature:

At 3 AM this morning, the New Mexico House of Representatives passed SB 116, a bill to limit campaign contributions to candidates, political action committees and political parties. A few hours later, the New Mexico Senate concurred with several amendments to the bill. This means this major piece of ethics reform legislation is on its way to the desk of Governor Richardson. If, as expected, the governor signs it into law, New Mexico will join 45 other states in restricting the influence of huge donations on the political process.

The legislative leadership in both chambers deserves an enormous amount of credit for pushing this bill through to the governor. This is a major step forward for New Mexico. In future sessions, we will need to address broader campaign finance reforms—especially an expansion of public campaign financing to statewide executive races. For now, though, we should be thankful this important measure has passed.

A lot of legislators worked very hard on this reform, including the sponsor, Senator Peter Wirth; long-time campaign finance reform advocate Senator Dede Feldman; Representative Al Park, who defended the bill on the House floor for two-and-a-half hours in the wee hours of the morning; Senate Majority Leader Michael Sanchez, who removed a troublesome sunset clause from the bill; House Majority Leader Ken Martinez, who pushed through several useful improvements in House committees; and Speaker Ben Lujan, who agreed to bring up the bill in the hectic closing hours of the session. In addition to these legislators, countless volunteers deserve credit for this bill’s passage. Many people put in a lot of hours, attending committee meetings, writing letters to newspapers in favor of this reform, and visiting with and calling their legislators, to usher through this legislation.

The 2009 legislative session, which ends today, should be considered a success for ethics reform advocates. In addition to contribution limits, the legislature sent a bill to the governor that would open up conference committees, the meetings in which legislators from both chambers meet to reconcile differences between bills that passed both the Senate and the House. Both chambers also began allowing webcasting of floor proceedings, allowing New Mexicans to access audio streams of the House as well as both audio and limited video of the Senate online.

Also see our previous post on passage of the contributions cap.