State Affairs committee advances measures on filing fees, campaign merchandise reporting, transparency and ratepayer protections

The Idaho House State Affairs Committee advanced several items on Monday, introducing two rule‑setting (RS) drafts, sending one bill and one resolution to the House floor with a due‑pass recommendation and introducing a ratepayer protection proposal.

Representative Stephanie Mickelson of Bonneville County asked the committee to introduce RS 32292C1, which would raise filing fees for candidates. “What you have in front of you is an RS that you had seen before … and what we did was we simply moved the filing fees up,” Mickelson said, listing higher fees for U.S. Senate, congressional, statewide and judicial offices.

The committee also introduced RS 32571, presented by Representative Joe Alfieri of District 4 in Coeur d’Alene. Alfieri said the RS would allow campaigns to report sales of campaign merchandise such as hats or T‑shirts as bulk receipts rather than reporting each individual transaction, so long as each sale is $200 or less and the campaign reports the aggregated amount to the Secretary of State. “You bring hats to an event, you sell your hats at $20 apiece, you report it as a bulk transaction,” Alfieri said. He added that the RS does not eliminate reporting to the Secretary of State and that campaigns would still report the aggregated receipts.

Committee members asked…