Madam Chair Steiner convened the conference committee to consider reconciled language for Senate Bill 1377 and House Bill 2156 and the panel voted to advance the amended measure to the full Legislature on a 5-1-0 recommendation.

Senator Rose, a member of the conference committee, said she was not satisfied with the deal but offered language to move the process forward. "I am not happy with this this is not a compromise I am excited about, but it is also 11:10 on, the final night, and I understand that we need to find a path forward," she said. Rose described a proposal to delay the increase in the itemization threshold from the current $200 to $250: "So I agreed to a 2 year delay on the increase to 2 50. So we would remain at the 200 we are today. The 2 50 would go into effect January of 28, so for the next election cycle. And then the inflator language would start every 10 years from that date."

Under the conference language the committee approved, reporting would remain aggregated by categories rather than itemized entries; the bill directs that the secretary of state prescribe the list of permitted categories. Rose said the bill will "maintain that we're only reporting expenditures in the aggregate, but we will allow the secretary of state to prescribe the list of categories." Committee members also agreed to language clarifying an attorney general opinion on federal political action committees and to make explicit that foreign nationals are barred from donating to ballot measures, an issue the conference said arose from a 2014 example involving a personhood amendment.

Dustin Richard, staff to the committee, told members that the beginning- and ending-fund-balance question raised for statewide candidates would "mirror current law," and that the conference would not implement a wholesale code replacement at this time.

Senator Castaneda moved to add beginning and ending fund-balance disclosures across the board for legislative candidates, arguing the change would create "1 standardized way that we account for stuff in North Dakota whether you're a PAC, statewide candidate or a legislator." The motion to require beginning and ending balances for legislative candidates failed on a 4-2-0 vote; members recorded split support across the two caucuses.

After further procedural motions to place the agreed amendments "in place of" the original language, the committee passed the final recommendation to move the amended bill forward by a 5-1-0 vote. The committee recorded three recorded actions during the session: adoption of the conference amendment language to advance the bill (6-0-0 earlier on a specific amendment), the failed motion to add beginning/ending balances for legislative candidates (4-2-0), and the final due-pass recommendation (5-1-0).

The conference committee kept several existing disclosure features unchanged, including the current itemization practice for contributions (the committee said contributions remain itemized under current law) and the governor's residence language and fine-disclosure language that were part of the House version. Committee members repeatedly framed the package as an effort to maintain transparency while simplifying donor reporting for certain filers.

The committee did not finalize technical code rewrites during the session; staff said they will fold the agreed edits from House Bill 2156 into Senate Bill 1377 and preserve static dates and current code structure where unwinding the code would be infeasible on short notice. Following the votes Chair Steiner thanked members and adjourned the conference committee.

Notes on attribution: quotes and attributions in this article come only from speakers who spoke during the conference-committee discussion and are listed in the speaker whitelist.