New plan for infrastructure introduced

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 framework of fiscal discipline around the bonding conversation in the legislature. It sets limits in state law for how much debt the state can have at any one time and creates rules dictating that the state must take care of its existing infrastructure, paying for maintenance and repair on current facilities before it builds anything new.

It creates a system that will transfer a specific amount of money, based on a percentage of state revenue, into a program that will use a mix of cash and bonds to pay for infrastructure projects which will be proposed, not as a bag of wants from the Governors office, but a six year (three legislative session) plan to prioritize needs in the state and systematically implement repair and replace aging infrastructure throughout Montana.

This program is contained across three bills that will make their way through the legislative session. This first bill (HB533) is the policy portion of the plan and needed to make it through the process now as it is considered a general bill and as such, must make the transmittal deadline.

The next two bills will be put forward shortly. One of those two bills will contain the first list of infrastructure projects that will go into the new program to get it started. This “Project Bill” will include infrastructure projects from across the state, helping to clear out the backlog of projects that have built up over the past few sessions and will also include the appropriations for the program.

The program was conceptualized and built by looking at best practices from surrounding states and fashioning a made-in-Montana version of those best practices. I don’t think I would be overselling it to say that it is more than likely to be the most important piece of fiscal policy that the legislature will discuss this session other than the state budget. I think that, once passed, it will be a huge benefit to the state going forward.

If you have any questions you can call/text me anytime at (406) 531-1775 as the process for these bills move forward and as always, thank you for allowing me to represent you in Helena.