H.B. 109 sets up the framework for further campaign finance reform. The bill itself specifies caps on various races and punishes those who violate the law with a reasonable punishment. Furthermore the bill more narrowly defines what campaign finance can be used for and, again, adds some teeth to the violation of the law.

First off, this bill (if passed), would narrow down exactly what funds can be spent on. Right now the law states that candidates “may not make any political expenditures prohibited by law,” what this actually means is that unless a candidate is using contributions to buy drugs, they can basically spend it on whatever they please. The new phrasing says that candidates “may use the monies in a campaign only for political purposes;” if it ain’t getting you elected, you can’t spend the money on it. Unfortunately this provision has no teeth as there is no criminal punishment for violating this bill.

Any candidate running for statewide office would have a campaign contribution limit of $15,000. Now this seems extremely high when one considers that federal candidates can only receive, at most, $2,300 from any particular donor – and Senator Hatch and Bennitt represent the same number of people as the Governor Huntsman.

On the flip side candidates for House would have a limit of $200 while Senate candidates are capped off at $500. My only qualm here is that, perhaps the house should be upped by $50 – if only because there are roughly 2 House seats per Senate seat, it only makes sense that they should have a cap of half as much.

It should be noted that violation of any of these limits would result in a Class B misdemeanor.

But these are somewhat minor in my mind, and we should not get bogged down in numbers if only because it makes us take our eyes off of the real topic – real campaign finance reforms. I hope this bill passes and that we see some real reform in our elections.