Amends, repeals, and adds to existing law to revise reporting requirements for lobbyists and to revise campaign finance requirements for candidates.

This legislation makes a number of changes to Idaho’s campaign finance reporting system, primarily relating to reporting requirements. The goal of these changes is to provide a more uniform standard of $500 in total contributions or expenditures for when candidates and political committees are required to begin reporting, replacing the highly variable monetary trigger points that exist in the law today. This legislation also consolidates all campaign finance reporting requirements into two sequential sections – one section for all regular (monthly and annual) reports, and one section for all timed (2-day) reports, replacing the many sections dealing with reporting that are currently scattered across this chapter of code. It also closes a loophole that has allowed political committees that are filed with the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) to spend significant money on state and local political campaigns in Idaho, while avoiding the disclosure of this spending, or their donors, until months after the elections are over. It does this by changing the current blanket Idaho reporting exemption for all political committees filed with the FEC, narrowing it to exempt only those political committees that do not make expenditures relating to an Idaho measure or candidate election, except for federal elections. There are also smaller technical corrections and modernizations relating to lobbyist reporting.