Session week 10: we're midway there

Session week 10: we're halfway there

By Thursday noon, 1,121 had been introduced and Governor Greg Gianforte had signed 38 bills.

This week we're breaking down what made it over the submission deadline, what failed, and where the session is going next.

Republican leaders tout two bills that have already been signed. Expanding where people can carry hidden firearms (House Bill 102), including in government buildings, banks, and on college campuses. This has long been a priority for the GOP, especially as Democratic governors vetoed previous bills to expand so-called constitutional broadcast rights.

Republican Governor Greg Gianforte also signed a bill to limit COVID-19 civil liability for businesses (Senate Act 65). This was a key requirement in getting rid of the nationwide mask mandate that kept many Republican voters and lawmakers busy for months.

We're seeing fairly rapid movement in a handful of bills that would lower office equipment, capital gains, and personal income taxes (House Bill 303, Senate Bill 184, and Senate Bill 159). Gianforte and GOP lawmakers say these proposals are critical to achieving the pre-meeting goals, which are aimed at stimulating the economy after some cool-down during the pandemic and making Montana more business-friendly.

Bills sponsored by the GOP to improve the broadband internet infrastructure (Senate Act 51) and to expand access to telemedicine (House Act 43) also find great support within the caucus.

Democrats claim many of the Republican bills are exonerating large corporations and wealthy Montans, not those hardest hit by the pandemic. As a kind of counter, they introduced their own tax bills, which they said would provide more help to low- and middle-income Montanans. Those guidelines would have offset property tax and rental costs (Senate Bill 10), exempted some social security income from state income tax (LC2676), and expanded the state's earned income tax credit (House Bill 424), but none of them made it very far through that Legislative process.

The Democrats have also gone to great lengths to raise the minimum wage in Montana (Senate Law 187 and House Law 486) – which we see great interest in at the national level – but that law hasn't gained much traction among Republicans either.

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the special powers of local health officials and the governor's office in a state of emergency. For example, former Democratic Governor Steve Bullock unilaterally extended the state of emergency in Montana and established a nationwide mask mandate. Local health authorities have been able to restrict business hours. Republican lawmakers seek to rule these powers.

Two notable bills that have come under scrutiny are House Bill 121 and House Bill 230, which would give elected leaders essentially control over the executive branch and local health authorities in a state of emergency.

Democrats unsuccessfully pushed back against these bills, saying they would undermine these officials' ability to deal with public health emergencies.

Another big topic of the session is social issues like abortion and LGBTQ + rights. Democrats are taking some defensive victories here, particularly killing a bill that would have penalized doctors for gender-based care for minors (House Bill 113), though a similar proposal is now going through the House (House Bill 427).

Other Republican-sponsored measures, such as a proposal that requires surgery and ordering a judge to change the sex listed on a birth certificate (Senate Law 280) and one that allows individuals to cite religious beliefs as legal defense in court (Senate Law 215). also deleted the submission deadline.

Looking ahead, we will see how the budget deteriorates and what policies are advancing. MP Llew Jones, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, is basically the head of the legislature coordinating the budget (House Bill 2). He says the grants committee will hear presentations from the sub-committees starting Monday that will analyze specific areas of the budget such as health and personal services and education.

The last status sheet of the general sovereign wealth fund shows a negative structural balance of 1.5% in the budget. So if nothing changes, the state will end up spending more than it will bring in – but of course we expect a lot to change and spending cut, over the next half of the session

We also await a debate on how the state should use new tax revenue on marijuana sales and how that substance should be regulated for recreational use. There are different views on these two points. We saw a legislature attempt to put forward a bill to delay the implementation of recreational marijuana by a year, but it failed.

Politically, we will be closely following the bills that have changed, changing the way judges get on the bench and how elections are run in the state. The Republicans want to give the governor the power to appoint vacant judges directly without the need for a judicial nomination committee (Senate Law 140) to contribute, and they want to cancel voter registration on the same day (House Law 176).