JUNEAU -- A bill that would require corporations to disclose their political expenditures inched forward in Juneau on Monday, but hurdles still remain for the measure even as the 2010 elections loom.

The bill would bring some transparency to the loophole opened in January by the U.S. Supreme Court when it ruled that states and Congress couldn't ban corporate and union money from elections, as Alaska had done for years.

The Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the bill Monday, where chairman Hollis French, D-Anchorage, described it as a response to the court's decision "opening up what many of us believe are floodgates with respect to independent expenditures for and against candidates up until the day of an election."

The Supreme Court declared that corporations and unions had the First Amendment right to support or oppose a candidate or ballot issue. The decision threw out longstanding federal and state laws that held that the big treasuries of corporations and the smaller ones of unions shouldn't be allowed to sway elections through advertising and other forms of campaigning.

Only two people spoke at the hearing Monday, and both strongly favored the bill. French said he would move it for a committee vote "soon."

But once out of his committee, he said, the measure faced at least a "bump" at its next stop, the Senate Finance Committee, a chokepoint where bills have been stacking up.

Even if it passed before the end of the legislative session next month and were signed into law by the governor, it is "highly unlikely" the Alaska Public Offices Commission would have time to implement it by the August primary election, said the commission director, Holly Hill. The Anchorage municipal election is even sooner, April 6.

The first witness, Matt Wallace, executive director of the Alaska Public Interest Research Group in Anchorage, described the Supreme Court decision as "catastrophic."

"That decision didn't invent the problem of big-money influence in politics -- we all know that big money too often can buy access and influence in politics, and that, in a large part, explains a lot of the cynicism that many citizens feel toward politics in general," Wallace said. But the decision "did make the problem much, much worse," he said.

Senate Bill 284 would force corporations and unions to report their expenditures. It would also require them -- and the sometimes shadowy "front groups" that emerge with attack ads before an election -- to have disclaimers on all their commercials disclosing their officers, location and top five contributors. Both aspects of the bill "would help to mitigate unlimited corporate and union spending in our elections," Wallace said.

Marilyn Russell of Fairbanks, president of the League of Women Voters in Alaska, said the bill would "combat corruption and undue influence."