A proposal to squirrel away nearly a billion dollars in state funds over the next few years is advancing along tight margins in the Legislature.
What’s been dubbed the Growth and Opportunity, or GO, Trust is a complex framework of interest-earning savings accounts. Most of the money would come from the state’s general fund, which is largely filled with income tax revenue.
Rep. Llew Jones, a Conrad Republican and the bill’s architect, says he wants the state to use its budget surplus to leave a legacy for generations to come.
“So, this is the acorn. We always hear, ‘be careful planting an acorn, it might grow into an oak tree.’ This is the acorn,” Jones says.
The money would be distributed into several buckets for public employee pensions, property tax relief, water and bridge projects, affordable housing and child care. The bill would enact automatic transfers of general fund money into the trust biannually for the next decade, and it would also earn interest.
Jones’ bill advanced out of the upper chamber on a 27-23 vote. It must go through another round of consideration in the House before heading to the governor’s desk.
Some hard-line Republicans, like Sen. Carl Glimm, have pushed back. They argue it’s irresponsible to use the budget surplus that came from one-time-only federal pandemic funds for a permanent trust.
“We didn’t want to plant acorns with them. We didn’t want to start programs that then the state would be responsible to come in and pick up that funding stream,” Glimm says,
The bill originally would have had the state deposit more than a billion dollars into the trust as seed money over the next few years, but that was amended down to about $900 million.
Supporters compare it to Montana’s coal trust. The savings account was set up in the state Constitution 50 years ago. It still pays for public projects today.
Opponents say excess state dollars should be returned directly to taxpayers.
