Amends, repeals, and adds to existing law to provide for campaign finance transparency.
House Bill 399 is a comprehensive overhaul of Idaho’s campaign finance laws. It creates a new Chapter 3 in Title 74, titled the Campaign Finance Transparency Act, and replaces much of the existing campaign finance framework with new rules for candidates, political action committees, political party committees, and other persons making election-related expenditures. The bill expands disclosure requirements, requires online reporting to the secretary of state, and sets detailed rules for campaign accounts, political treasurers, contribution tracking, and expenditure reporting.
The bill also adds new restrictions and transparency requirements for election-related activity. It prohibits foreign nationals from making contributions, independent expenditures, or electioneering communications; requires public communications to identify who paid for them; requires certain polls to disclose the sponsor; and imposes special reporting rules for electioneering communications and independent expenditures. It further regulates candidate coordination with outside spenders, limits personal use of campaign funds, and creates a new section addressing synthetic media in campaign communications, allowing candidates to seek injunctive relief or damages when deceptive AI-generated audio or video is used in election-related messaging.
The bill would substantially rewrite Idaho’s campaign finance statutes by repealing large portions of existing law in Chapter 67, Title 66/67 references, and relocating campaign finance regulation into new provisions in Title 74. It would impose new contribution limits for candidates, new monthly and 48-hour reporting obligations, new disclosure rules for political committees and party committees, and new enforcement authority for the secretary of state, county clerks, prosecutors, and courts. It also adds a separate reporting requirement for payments to signature gatherers for ballot initiatives and referenda, affecting initiative and referendum campaigns as well as candidate and committee activity.
Based on the bill text and the absence of recorded committee testimony or votes in the provided materials, the overall sentiment appears to be pro-transparency and pro-enforcement. The bill’s stated purpose is to promote openness and public confidence in government, and its structure reflects a broad effort to increase disclosure and tighten campaign finance oversight. Because there are no transcripts or vote records included, there is no documented opposition or support to characterize beyond the bill’s own framing.
The most likely points of contention are the bill’s breadth and the extent of its regulatory reach. Potentially controversial provisions include the new contribution limits, the prohibition on candidate coordination with independent spenders, the foreign-national ban, the reporting obligations imposed on nontraditional speakers and entities, and the synthetic media section, which creates a private right of action and liability for certain digital content. The bill also reaches political party committees, labor-related funds, urban renewal commissioner elections, and signature-gathering payments, so affected parties could include candidates, PACs, political parties, media vendors, petition circulators, and online platforms. No specific objections are recorded in the provided context, but these are the provisions most likely to draw debate.