Conference committee reviews Senate changes to House Bill 1377 on campaign finance reform

At a conference committee meeting on House Bill 1377, legislators reviewed Senate amendments that would remake North Dakota's campaign finance reporting system to a continuous, checkbook-style online filing platform and adjust several reporting thresholds and rules.

The measures matter because they change how contributions and expenditures are reported, who must itemize donations, how the state treats funds maintained by out-of-state political committees, and which state-owned properties are off-limits for political activity. Committee members agreed to reconvene with the Secretary of State's office to clarify implementation and software readiness before moving the bill to each chamber's floor.

Senator Rohrs, who presented the Senate's changes, said the bill's primary goal is transparency. "Transparency is the number 1 goal," he said, and described a system that would allow "more logical kind of checkbook style viewing" so reporters and residents can track beginning and ending balances over time.

Under the Senate amendments described to the committee, the state's new filing system (funded in the prior legislative session) would open January 1 for continuous entry, calculate running balances automatically, aggregate small transactions while…