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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 - 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...
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...
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,...
