A special House ethics committee took steps Monday to ban lobbyists from contributing to campaigns for legislative and state offices and endorsed a program for public financing of legislative campaigns.

Those proposals and several others are expected to become bills filed as early as today, when legislators return to Raleigh to start a new session. In addition to working on the state budget, lawmakers are expected to take up a series of reforms stemming from House Speaker Jim Black's legislative and campaign activities.

Black, a Mecklenburg County Democrat, created the study committee and made several suggestions that it later endorsed.

"It's a comprehensive package," said House Majority Leader Joe Hackney, an Orange County Democrat and committee co-chairman. "If adopted, they would be important improvements in the way we do business."

The lobbying reforms would:

* Ban nearly all gifts by lobbyists. Exceptions include permitting them to pay for meals at public events, or providing gifts worth $10 or less per legislator on a given day.

* Expand the waiting period for lawmakers to become lobbyists after they are out of office from six months to one year.

* Prevent lobbyists from serving on a state board that regulates a client's activities.

The N.C. Professional Lobbyists Association has endorsed a ban on gifts, perks and campaign contributions by lobbyists. Some lobbyists say a ban on contributions by lobbyists would cause their clients to step up giving to lawmakers.

The project for publicly financed legislative campaigns would allow up to two such elections in both the House and Senate. Legislative candidates and their challengers in select districts, along with legislative leaders from both political parties, would have a say on which districts would be selected.

Two other proposals emerged from recent controversies in legislative primaries. The committee endorsed a ban on corporations, insurance companies, labor unions and professional associations donating to issue-oriented political groups for advertising or mailings related to a specific election. One such group, controlled by former Rep. Art Pope of Raleigh, used money from his company to pay for mailings that helped defeat Republican Rep. Richard Morgan of Moore County and some of his allies.

Such a ban already exists for campaign committees for individual candidates.

The committee previously endorsed legislation that makes it a felony for elected officials and their appointees to lie on financial interest statements, bars contributors from writing campaign checks with the payee line blank, and requires disclosure of contributions by cash or money order that exceed $50.

Senate leaders say they are working on a reform package, but they have yet to disclose what it entails.

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