Allen said it has become common practice over the past 10 years for some legislators seeking leadership posts to raise large campaign accounts and make large donations from those accounts to fellow party members — clearly with the intent of getting those legislators to vote for them for leadership.

The Deseret Morning News reported last month that legislators raised $827,000 last year — by far mostly from special interests, and in a non-election year — and spent about $270,000 of that on themselves, paying for all kinds of things from car repairs to clothing to just giving themselves money for wages lost during legislative work. While some of that personal spending may seem suspect, other expenditures were more clearly tied to their legislative jobs — like buying a new home computer.

"I'm not trying to draw any lines" about what could be personal use of campaign funds, Bell said. Ultimately, that distinction would be made by the legislator, with his constituents watching. Bell's bill will say that legislators can't use their campaign accounts for "personal use" — without a clear definition of what that is.

Bell's lobbyist gift bill will lower the current $50 legislator-naming level to $15, he said. No gifts would be banned, but any gift valued at more than $15 in one day would be accompanied by the accepting legislator's name listed in the lobbyist's filing.

Of the $270,000 given to legislators in 2007, 60 percent of the spending carried no lawmakers' names because it was under the $50 reporting level, and Bell said more disclosure is necessary.

But on the other side, Bell wants to exempt one major part of lobbyist reporting — donations made in hosting the annual summer legislative sight-seeing tours. Upward of $100,000 was spent "hosting our visits to Davis and Salt Lake counties last summer," said Bell. And he believes most of those entities dutifully reported those expenditures.

If the Legislature charged the state for those internal visits, constituents and the media may say taxpayer dollars were going on a junket, and the valuable trips may be stopped. Instead, said Bell, that specific event should just be exempt from reporting, so it doesn't appear "unfairly" that individual legislators are profiting from lobbyist gifts, when in fact all legislators, local citizens and businesses benefit from the legislative trip, he said.

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E-mail: bbjr@desnews.com