Competing bills before the Legislature’s Legal and Veterans Affairs Committee try to draw a new line to determine when citizens must report their political activities to the state. Neither gets it right entirely, but both have elements of a solution within them.

The issue affects Maine groups that take part in the debate around a ballot question but are not political action committees under the current definition. When these groups spend more than $1,500 on a ballot question, Maine requires them to file a limited account of their financial activity through what is called 1056-B reporting.

The Maine Ethics Commission held hearings on one such group last fall, the Maine Heritage Policy Center, which had argued that it did not need to file under 1056-B. The commission ultimately found that it did, but the group’s argument that the law was vague and the complainant’s argument that the law was inadequate were both correct.

The two legislative proposals to improve this system divide the political parties, with Republicans backing LD 490, which drops the financial standards for reporting and relies on a standard of express advocacy to trigger reporting requirements. Democrats are backing LD 508, which raises the $1,500 threshold to $3,000 and makes clear that in-kind contributions and staff time on a ballot issue count as expenditures.

The goal of these reporting requirements should be to encourage fair and open public participation in the ballot process. This includes both avoiding rules such as onerous reporting requirements that would discourage participation, but also making available information on substantial expenditures from advocacy groups. If a major corporation is behind the funding of an initiative, members of the voting public should be able to find out about that and use the information to help guide their vote.

Carl Lindemann, who brought the complaint against the Heritage Policy Center, raises an additional twist. He argues that a shift has taken place in campaigning from traditional paid political advertising to more sophisticated public relations through news stories and related coverage, a change LD 508 would account for in its broader definition of expenditures.

But with such a definition, it is hard to see why the state would distinguish between 1056-B organizations and PACs. Maine has no limits on PAC contributions, so dumping a rule that defines a PAC as having “as its major purpose advocating the passage or defeat of a ballot question and that solicits funds” and putting all groups over, say, $7,000 or $10,000 in campaign expenditures into the PAC category neither limits speech nor presents an undue burden to the organizations.

The required reporting could be confined to campaign-related revenues and expenditures and fall under the reporting deadlines of current PAC law. There may be a federal tax concern with nonprofits forming PACs, but that is surmountable, and, in any event, a $10,000 threshold would address much of that potential problem.

The key for legislators is to keep the rules as straightforward and clear as possible, coupled with an unambiguous requirement for major participants in a political debate to report who is paying their way.