A conference committee considering Senate Bill 1377 advanced a package of compromise changes late in the session and voted to recommend the bill with the amendments, while a separate proposal to require beginning and ending fund balances for legislative candidates failed.

The committee, chaired by Chair Steiner, voted to move the Rohrs proposal as outlined by staff member Dustin Richard; the first motion passed 6-0-0. Later, a motion to add beginning and ending fund balances for legislative candidates failed on a 4-2-0 vote. The committee then approved a "in place of" recommendation that incorporates the amendments agreed in committee; that recommendation passed 5-1-0.

Why it matters: the bill bundle revises how campaign contributions and reporting thresholds will operate for state elections, addresses disclosure of fund balances, clarifies who must report, and updates several technical provisions. Those changes affect candidates, political action committees and ballot-measure committees ahead of the next election cycle.

Senator Rohrs, who introduced the compromise language, said, "I am not happy with this this is not a compromise I am excited about," and added the changes were proposed to find a path forward late in the session. Rohrs described the main elements of the package: a two-year delay before raising the reporting threshold from $200 to $250; applying the $250 threshold beginning in January '28 for the next election cycle; a decennial inflator that starts from that date; maintaining aggregate-category reporting rather than itemized line-by-line reporting while allowing the Secretary of State to prescribe the list of categories; and language clarifying that a federal political action committee that participates in a North Dakota election in one cycle but does not participate again should not be required to continue state filings.

The package also clarifies that foreign nationals are expressly prohibited from contributing to ballot-measure committees; committee members referenced a 2014 example involving the personhood amendment as a reason to tighten the language. The proposal preserves previously agreed fines and the "fine disclosure" provision discussed earlier in the session; committee members referred to that provision as the "shaming" or fine-disclosure language.

Representative Vedder moved an amendment to require beginning and ending fund balances for legislative candidates to make reporting consistent across committee types; Vedder said the requirement would "get closer to having one standardized way that we account for stuff in North Dakota." The amendment was debated and then failed after roll call: Senators Rohrs, Barta and Castaneda and Representative Schauer voted yes; Chair Steiner and Representative Vedder voted no.

Committee members discussed a technical concern raised by Representative Steiner and others about Secretary of State software: if the Secretary of State builds a site that allows optional itemization, the committee wanted to ensure that voluntary itemization would not subject small donors or transactions to public-record requests when the statute requires only aggregated categories. Rohrs said the committee would exempt opt-in itemization from open-records exposure because the bill requires only categories and not itemized records.

Staff identified that the conference work would take the House-passed language from House Bill 2156 and move agreed changes into Senate Bill 1377 without performing a full code replacement; committee members agreed to leave current code sections intact rather than attempt a broader statute reorganization during the conference.

Senator Barta urged further work after the session, saying the package represented "a missed opportunity to truly demonstrate to our constituents in the state that we are open." Representative Schauer, who moved the initial committee motion to accept the Rohrs proposal as outlined by Dustin Richard, said he would support moving the product out of committee so the full membership could vote.

Formal actions recorded in the meeting: the committee passed the Rohrs-drafted package as outlined by staff (motion by Representative Schauer, second by Senator Rohrs; vote 6-0-0), rejected a Vedder amendment to add beginning/ending balances for legislative candidates (motion by Representative Vedder; vote 4-2-0), and approved a "in place of" recommendation to move the bill forward with the agreed amendments (mover: Senator Rohrs; second: Representative Vetter; vote 5-1-0).

The committee adjourned after approving the recommendation.