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HELENA - There are now 900 introduced bills with around 100 or so already having been killed by committees. By the time the legislature ends, we should have somewhere around 1,500 bills having been introduced or having been drafted and had a hearing. We are now coming up to the general bill title deadline. This means that bills that deal with policy without having dollars connected to them have to be passed through the chamber they started in by next week in order to transfer over to the other chamber in time, so look to see an avalanche of bil...
Things are off and running now at the legislature as an avalanche of policy bills are hitting committees and receiving hearings. In the infrastructure committee, we have just finished hearing all the projects in the Long-Range Building Program (HB5) and in the coming week we will be hearing water, wastewater and bridge projects from all over the state. I have scheduled the committee to vote on all the rest of the infrastructure bills on Feb. 7 in order to move them through the process as quickly as possible, so we are close to finishing our com...
HELENA - Things have started to pick up this week in the Legislature as committees have started taking executive action on the bills they have been hearing in committee and the Appropriations Subcommittees are in full swing. There are around 450 bills now moving their way through the legislature, dealing with everything from public defender fees and medical marijuana reform to the amount of plastic straws a business should be allowed to hand out. Most of these bills that move through the various committees will end up dying in committee, but...
HELENA - The Legislative Session is up and running here in Helena. The first week is usually fairly calm as all of the individual committees organize themselves and legislators begin putting text to their bills and start getting them scheduled for committee hearings. One of the first things we did was pass our rules under which we will operate during the session. You have probably heard a lot of the back and forth in the media when it comes to the rules, but that happens every session. In the end, we came up with a set of rules that everyone...
Thank you to the people of House District 92 for giving me the opportunity to continue serving you in the State Legislature. I really love working for the people of this district and I look forward to going to back to Helena in January and building on the work that we accomplished last session. I sincerely appreciate all the people who knocked on doors, hosted our campaign signs, made phone calls and donated to our campaign. I also want to thank Lee Bridges. Lee and her team ran a great race and I think it’s a large part of the reason why we h...
In addition to helping write and pass a responsible, balanced budget, fighting against the $300 million in tax increases that will be proposed next session and passing property tax relief for Montana Seniors, there are a number of other topics we need to tackle in the next Legislative Session. We need to reach an agreement that would allow us as a state to get resources on fires as soon as they start without having to wait for someone in Washington or Helena to sign all the correct paperwork. While I am pleased that Democrats, this campaign...
In my previous letter, I talked about what we did in the last legislative session. For the next two letters, I wanted to talk about what I plan to do if re-elected to continue serving you in the Legislature. First and foremost, we need to repair the damage to the State Budget from the Special Session. We need to repair the Health and Human services budget, that’s case management, that’s early intervention, disability services and Medicaid Reimbursement rates. We also need to repair the Higher Education budget. The good news is that the Gov...
Absentee ballots are out! Its been a long campaign year and while my opponents’ staffers have now decided to send out attack ads lying about my record, I am still proud that our race for HD92 has for the most part been a really civil race. Campaigns are hard. People on both sides put their heart and soul into trying to get their candidate elected and sometimes they feel like attacking their opponent is the best way to elect their candidate. I am proud that throughout this campaign and the 2016 campaign, I have never put together a single a...
In the last couple of weeks, we have all seen the videos of Liberal protesters screaming and throwing bottles at cars outside of the Supreme Court chambers and the Capitol. Senators home addresses and phone numbers being released and followed up with death threats. Sen. Corey Gardeners wife was sent a death threat with a video of someone being beheaded. Videos of Democratic legislators and activists telling groups of protesters to harass Republican legislators at home and where they eat, “don’t let them have a moment of peace” was the common pi...
Medicaid expansion through I-185 is a bad deal for Montanans and presents serious issues for future legislative sessions and state budget discussions. In 2015 when Medicaid expansion was passed, there were months of heated debate between both sides. It was eventually passed but only after both sides agreed to include a “sunset clause” that provided a statutory appropriation through 2019 and would require the 2019 legislative session to re-approve the program. This was done so that the legislature could take a serious look at the pro...
We have come to expect that the Federal Government does not do its job. When it comes to State Government, we expect the opposite. We expect our State Legislature to get things done, to work together to tackle serious problems affecting us as citizens. I ran to represent you in 2016 because it seemed like our state government had lost touch. Instead of creating an environment where small business can grow, the legislature had created one where small businesses were forced to jump through a seemingly never-ending set of hoops and red tape....
Politics these days can be brutal. On the airwaves people act as if disagreeing on some particular policy is grounds to hate one another but that hasn't been my experience representing the people of House District 92. When I first ran to represent this district, one of the things that I fell in love with was the way that people treat each other. Sure, we have real, stark differences when it comes to our individual political view's but we never let that get in the way of treating one another...
This last Friday, House Bill 2 (The State Budget) passed out of the Appropriations Committee and is on its way to the House Floor for debate. At this point in the process, it looks to be in good shape. We all knew going into this legislative session that the budget was in a bad place and that there would be a lot of work to do to bring it back in line with revenues. That meant that really tough choices had to be made and they were. Subcommittees went through each other and their own sections of...
HELENA - Things have been moving pretty quickly here in the Legislature as we move towards transmittal. Since the beginning of the session, I have been working on a set of veteran legislation focusing on ways to help that part of the veterans community which is experiencing a surge in suicide. Last week, my primary bill HB538 had its hearing and was tabled in House Human Services. Unfortunately, a significant lobbying effort which was brought about not because of problems with the bill, but...
HELENA - Things are starting to move on the budget side here at the Legislature and I wanted to share some information with you as we move forward. First, explaining a bit about the process and then including a quick update on where we are at with infrastructure. The legislature has two budget committees, House Appropriations and Senate Finance and Claims. The first stage of the state budget is these two committees breaking down into six subcommittees. Subcommittees on General Government,...
For those of you who I have not yet had the pleasure of meeting, my name is Mike Hopkins, the Republican candidate running for House District 92. We have come to expect that the Federal Government does not do its job. When it comes to State Government, we expect the opposite. We expect our State Legislature to get things done, to work together to tackle serious problems affecting us as citizens. Unfortunately, it seems like our state government has lost touch. Instead of creating an environment where small business can grow, the legislature...
As candidates, we all have to make a choice as to what kind of campaign we want to run. Recently, mail from my opponent has been sent out blatantly lying about my positions, from public lands to education. I take these lies as a compliment, as I imagine that my opponent’s campaign staff would not be lying about my record if they were not worried about their chances of winning. When I knock on doors in House District 92, I do not even mention my opponent. My campaign is focused on providing a vision for my home states future. I talk about how w...
We have a lot of serious decisions to make as a community this November, besides crucial legislative races across the state, we will have a number of initiatives to vote on. One in particular, the Montana Animal Trap Restrictions Initiative (I-177) seeks to prohibit trapping on all public lands in Montana. Trapping is a Montana way of life and has been for the entirety of the state’s existence. For years now, special interest environmental groups (who are the primary funders of the Missoula Democrats) have done everything in their power to dest...
MISSOULA - Mike Hopkins from Missoula has filed to run as a Republican for House District 92. House District 92 includes the areas surrounding Seeley Lake, Bonner, Potomac, Condon, East Missoula and Clinton. Currently representing House District 92, David "Doc" Moore has decided not to seek reelection. "I knocked on doors for Doc Moore's campaign and I am proud to call him my friend. With his decision not to seek reelection, I want to make sure that the people of House District 92 have a...
