A pair of bills designed to reform the state’s ethics laws received key committee approval today and will likely be voted on by the full House on Monday.
House Bills 142 sponsored by Speaker David Ralston, R-Blue Ridge, would ban all lobbyist spending on individual lawmakers, return the ability of the state ethics commission to adopt regulations and require citizen activists who represent an organization to register as lobbyists.
HB 143, also sponsored by Ralston, would require lawmakers to file a report early in the legislative session detailing campaign money raised and spent in the days before the Legislature convenes.
Both bills passed committee without opposition. Rules Committee Chairman John Meadows, R-Calhoun, who has great power to determine when bills are debated on the House floor, said his intention is for the ethics package to be voted on in the full House on Monday.
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