Since the 2010 Supreme Court ruling, critics see an amendment as the only path to curb the unlimited flow of money from corporations and labor unions for candidate advocacy.

A state House committee voted to recommend postponing any definitive action on the bill that included language “recognizing the need for a United States constitutional amendment to address the Citizens United ruling and related cases.”

Senate Bill 136 would establish a committee to review related constitutional amendments pending in Congress and examine the ruling’s effect on New Hampshire elections. It was unanimously approved by the Senate in March.
The activists have broad support in the public: More than 3 out of 4 Americans believe the Citizens United ruling should be overturned, according to recent polling by Bloomberg Politics.

Lindsay Jakows, a campaign organizer for People For the American Way New Hampshire, said passage of SB136 would have placed New Hampshire on a growing list of states calling for a constitutional amendment “to get big money out of elections.” She called the vote a “delay tactic” and vowed to continue fighting on the bill’s behalf.

It will go before the full House in January, when the 400-person body will decide to accept or reject the committee’s report. If the report is accepted, as is typically the case, the current Legislature would take no further action on it.

Ten members of the House’s Legislative Administration committee voted, 7-3, along party lines – with Republicans against and Democrats for – except for Rep. James MacKay, a Concord Democrat.

Rather than recommending the bill be passed or killed, the vote was to refer it for “interim study,” essentially punting it to the next session of the Legislature. MacKay said he saw that as the bill’s best chance for survival given the current makeup of the Legislature.

“If that went on the floor as ‘ought to pass,’ it would have been killed without a question because we just didn’t have the votes,” he said. “I certainly support getting rid of the vast amount of money, so my logic was to say let’s go with the interim study, which will take us into the next session, which will be after the next election.”

He added: “My hope is (Democrats) very well might be in the majority. It would be a whole different vote on the subject.”

Committee Chairman Rep. Richard Hinch, a Merrimack Republican, commented ahead of the vote that a motion to mark the bill as inexpedient to legislate “would likely prevail” and that “referring it for interim study shows a respect for the bill and for the committee members’ intent to maybe want to do something with this.”

As it stood, Hinch said, the bill “needs some more work.” He noted that its text included an impossibly short report-back date of Nov. 1. However, Democrats countered that the date could have been easily amended.

MacKay said the interim study decision means the bill will go back to the same committee ahead of the 2017 session, and the committee members will then decide whether to carry it forward. Even if the committee then votes against the bill by saying “no further legislation,” a representative at that time could submit a different bill with the same intent, he said.

In the meantime, he said, the committee will hold onto the bill for “further study. Of course, that’s peculiar because we didn’t study it for the past year.”

(Nick Reid can be reached at 369-3325, nreid@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @NickBReid.)