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To the people and voters of Seeley Lake, I thank you for the opportunity and honor of representing you in the Montana Legislature for the past eight years. Under Montana Law, I am ineligible to run again this year but, fortunately, there is a candidate who can and will serve the people of Seeley Lake very effectively. Rep. John Fitzpatrick, who currently represents Deer Lodge and Granite Counties, is now running in a new district which adds Powell County and Seeley Lake to the remainder of his old district. John Fitzpatrick served with me on...
During the 2020 election, voters in House District 92 voted to legalize the sale of adult-use marijuana in Montana. Although the Libertarian in me supported legalization, I had not campaigned for or against the initiative, knowing that if approved, it would require legislation as the language in the initiative made it vulnerable to being overturned in court. During the 2021 Legislative session, I authored House Bill 701 (HB701). It passed with large bipartisan majorities and allowed for the...
Going into the last Legislative session, the Republican majority delivered across the board. We implemented the first phase of our tax cuts to put money back in the pockets of workers and situate Montana's economy to better compete with our neighbors. This includes HB191 which was the first property tax relief for seniors living on a fixed income in 20 years (This was a constituent bill from Potomac!). This also included HB663 which uses revenue from adult-use marijuana taxes to fund our...
In recent weeks the Montana Legislature has advanced bills to support critical infrastructure and conservation projects across the state. Starting with House Bill 632, Republicans committed to investing the latest round of federal COVID relief dollars in infrastructure, telecommunications and economic stabilization which will support our economy for future generations. While it was fiscally irresponsible for Congress to pile up more national debt, we invested the funds wisely. Several other...
Things have been pretty crazy in the Legislature. We finished up the budget in House Appropriations and it will have moved across the House floor by the end of the week. The budget is in really good working order. We have been coordinating with Senate Finance and Claims to put the finishing touches on it. We said we would hold the line on State spending, delivering to the people of Montana a conservative budget that covered our essential services without any tax increases and that's exactly...
When I was the Business Manager and a Senator with the Associated Students of the University of Montana, we treated all student groups equally even if we had disagreements about their missions. However, during my tenure as a University of Montana (UM) student, I saw a troubling trend of calls for restricting free speech and associations begin to pop up on campuses both nationally and in Montana. In recent years we have seen free speech restricted to certain zones, harassment of student groups...
We have just crossed the 30-day threshold here in the legislature and are approaching our "General Transmittal" deadline. This will be the deadline by which all general policy bills that do not include an appropriation or deal with raising revenue will have to have been passed by their committee and across the floor to the other chamber, otherwise they will effectively be dead. Now it's the legislature, so technically nothing is really "dead" until we leave Helena but for the most part, all...
Things are finally in full swing in the Legislature. The appropriations subcommittees are starting to wrap up their work. After they finish, the full Appropriations committee will come back together and start putting the budget together. Revenue is hard to estimate here with the pandemic and the policies coming out of government and leaving a lot of unknowns out there. But on the budget side we have a pretty good idea of where we are heading. We think that we will be able to reach our target of...
It's week three here at the Legislative Session and things are off and running. For the last 16 years, the bureaucracy in Helena has been told from on high that the best way for them to affect positive change in the lives of Montanan's was to be intimately involved in most of the decisions we make as individuals, towns and communities. You see it every time you interact with government, these days it almost feels like you need to get a permit to sneeze. We are looking to reverse that trend in He...
HELENA - The Republican and Democratic caucuses recently met in Helena to elect those who will serve in leadership roles during the next session and at the same time, the Revenue and Transportation Interim Committee met to set the "starting point" revenue estimate upon which we will build Montana's next budget. Then, once leadership was elected, they met and decided on committee assignments as well. The House of Representatives will be run by our new incoming Speaker of the House, Wylie Galt...
If you got a mailer attacking my opponent, for the record that is not from me, and I disavow it. I do not do attack mailers, never have and never will. The interest earned off the current principle of the Coal Tax Trust Fund currently funds over 15 different programs in Montana. Those dollars back up Montana’s retirement systems, Montana’s schools, Montana’s Agriculture and infrastructure across the state just to name a few. Every session legislators try to spend that principle on all kinds of things, but Democrats in the legislature have done...
As an elected official, you just have to get used to the fact that people will lie about you. Like it or not, its just a part of the way campaign seasons work currently. But I feel like lying about people’s families for political gain is a line in campaigning that we should not be crossing. It has got to be one of the lowest forms of campaigning ever. It’s also not going to work. Folks in House District 92 know me. They know that we have one of the most successful and independent records of any legislator in Helena. That we have secured bet...
With the state/county plans for beginning to reopen Montana and Missoula’s economy now public, we know over the next few weeks we will start to see businesses reopening and commerce returning. It’s hard while we are still in the midst of our response to COVID-19 to see accurately whether the choices that have been made at the city, county, state and federal level have been the correct ones. But I think there are a couple things so far that we can say for sure. First, to the extent that we have kept folks in at risk populations and those who...
Fiscally responsible budgets, strong conservative fiscal policy, the first comprehensive infrastructure package for Montana in over a decade, protecting our Second Amendment rights and fighting to keep taxes low in Montana. These are some of the things I promised to get done if I was elected to serve you in the Montana Legislature. After representing the people of House District 92 for the past two sessions, we have a real record of getting things done and getting them done with bipartisan...
The 66th Legislative Session has come to an end. Out of all the Legislative Sessions I have seen, this has been the most productive. When I first got involved in politics, the State Budget was growing on average between 8-12 percent per biennium. For the second session in a row, we were able to pass a conservative budget that repaired the damage from the special session, taking care of our essential services without necessitating tax increases. In 2017, the budget grew by 0.6 percent over the...
HELENA - We are coming up on our last week here in the Legislative session. During the 2018 election, I said that if you elected me to represent you in Helena that I would chair the states infrastructure committee and work to shepherd a complete infrastructure package through the legislature. With one week left to go, the legislature has passed HB5 (Long Range Building Program), HB6 (Renewable Resource Grant Program) HB7 (Reclamation and Development Grant Program) and HB11 (Treasure State Endowment Grant Program). Now with the recent passage...
The Legislative Session is coming to an end. I have heard rumors that Republican and Democratic leadership are thinking we might be done by Easter but we hear that leadership wants us to be done early every session and it usually doesn’t work out. The State Budget is now back in the House and should come up for a vote on the Senate’s amendments to the budget at the end of this week. Our next update on the revenue estimate will come on April 20th. Once we see the update, it will be our final look at the estimate before the end of the ses...
HELENA - Monday was the final day for general bills to transmit back to the chamber they originated in, so any policy bills that weren’t returned to the House or the Senate, depending on where they started are now dead. Moving forward, most of the work on the House side will be reviewing appropriation/revenue bills from the Senate and processing House bills that come back with amendments from the Senate. Most of the big policy bills are still working their way through the process. As we come down to the end of the session, we will have one m...
HELENA - This week was the final week before transmittal, meaning that every bill that started in one chamber, had to pass through to the other chamber in order to stay alive. So at this point, any bill that started in the House and has not passed over to the Senate is dead. There are less than 30 days left in the Legislative Session, most of our work from here on out will be processing bills from the Senate and confirming or rejecting amendments made to House bills by the Senate. The final piece of the state’s infrastructure package, the S...
HELENA - Last week, the State Budget passed out of the House and is now on its way to the Senate Finance and Claims committee. As Finance and Claims begins having hearings on the budget, the legislature will receive another update on the State’s revenue projections and we will have a better idea of what we are working with, allowing us to all but put the finishing touches on the budget for next two years. In the same week, the House voted on and passed out almost every single one of the normal infrastructure bills. I say “almost every sin...
Things are starting to pick up again here at the legislature after transmittal. House Committees are starting to hear all of the Senate bills that were sent to the House during transmittal. Most of the “Big Issue” bills, from tax increase bills to Medicaid Expansion, have been drafted and are set for hearings if they haven’t already had one. This next week, we will move the big budget bills through the House Floor. The State Budget (HB2) is set to be heard on the House Floor on Tuesday. After the budget moves through the House Floor we are p...
While it was technically transmittal break, the legislature was still chugging along. Members of Appropriations met and held hearings on all of the sections of the state budget (HB2). The Legislature gets updates on the state’s revenue estimate every month. We organize the schedule for the state budget so that as it reaches each step of the process, we get another revenue update and gain a clearer picture of what the revenue is going to look like as we put the budget together. It’s easier to build a budget up than it is to cut a budget dow...
We have now finished the 45th Legislative day and are officially halfway through the legislative session in Helena. Most members of the Legislature have a week or so break as the general bills are all transmitted over to the opposite legislative chamber. I will be staying in Helena in order to get infrastructure ready for when the Legislature returns, and members of the House Appropriations committee will be back early on Thursday in order to start the committee hearings on the full state budget. In the first half of the legislative session,...
We are coming up on transmittal week. Any general bill that has not had a hearing, passed through a committee and whichever chamber it originated in by the end of this week will be dead. Committees will be in overdrive and every House Floor Session will have 20 or so bills on it. Things will be moving fast and we should see some interesting bills being put in at the last minute. We also announced our new plan for infrastructure this week and the first bill of the new plan had its hearing in House Appropriations. The new program places a strict...
We are two weeks out from the deadline for General Policy bills in the legislature. These are policy bills that do not have any dollars associated with them. Every committee has been having full hearing schedules trying to work through them all and either pass or fail them before the deadline. This also means that you can count on seeing a substantial increase in the number of bills coming alive this week as legislators try to get their bills through the process in time. Any bill that deals with money, whether it is appropriating dollars or dea...
