The Senate voted April 18 to let legislators and other state elected officials have bigger officeholder accounts and to accept larger contributions to fill them.

Lawmakers use the accounts to pay for a wide variety of expenses, including constituent newsletters, office furniture, travel to conferences and subsidizing student groups’ visits to the Capitol.

The bill (H2505) would let legislators have accounts totaling $15,136 every two years, up from $5,660 currently under a state agency rule that would be erased by the proposed law.

Also, senators and representatives could accept contributions of up to $296 from lobbyists and others, up from $55 currently.

Higher limits would apply to statewide elected officials.

Lawmakers say they have little or no publicly provided dollars for such expenses and that it would put them at a competitive disadvantage if they used private campaign contributions for non-election purposes.

While officeholders are not supposed to use the money for campaign expenses, advocates of public campaign financing say the accounts can be abused and give incumbents an unfair advantage over challengers.

The Senate’s 17-12 vote returned the bill to the House for consideration of changes made by the Senate. A version approved by the House included smaller increases.

The bill also would set a later cutoff date for when lawmakers would have to stop spending the money during election years. The current limit is April 30, but the bill would change that to when a candidate files nominating papers — a deadline that falls in early June.

However, the bill also contains a blanket exemption for out-of-state travel. Lawmakers have complained that the April 30 cutoff prevented them from using money in their officeholder accounts to pay for traveling to national legislative groups’ summer meetings. —

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