Lobbyist Disclosure Legislation Shelved in Committee

A  proposal that would have required that lobbyists file more detailed information on their spending and what bills they were discussing with lawmakers will not make it to the floor of the New Mexico House of Representatives.

NMiF correspondent Gwyneth Doland reported on the lobbyist bill for KUNM and New Mexico in Depth:

The goal was to give citizens an easy way to find out how much special interest groups pay to influence lawmakers, said the bill’s sponsor, Jeff Steinborn, D-Las Cruces. ” For the first time in the state of New Mexico, a citizen could go and find out how much that interest group pays to influence lawmakers,” Steinborn told the committee. “Right now citizens don’t know anything and have no basis for understanding the influence of the army of lobbyists here,” he said.

The reforms amounted to an “overreach” that would have required “way too much information” from businesses, said Alamogordo Republican Yvette Herrell, chairwoman of the House Regulatory and Public Affairs Committee.

“If we were to list every single piece of legislation that we’re involved with it would probably be 95 percent of all of the bills in front of you,” Bryan Wachter, a lobbyist for the New Mexico Retail Association, told the committee.

Read the full story here

People, Power and Democracy
A reporting partnership between New Mexico PBS, KUNM and New Mexico In Depth