Gov. Greg Gianforte recently visited an elementary school in East Helena.
He took questions from the students before signing a bill with money for K-12 public education alongside Superintendent of Public Instruction Susie Hedalen.
One student asks, “How much money does it cost to provide for everybody and the resources that everybody needs?"
"That’s a great question," Hedalen says.
"It's a lot," Gianforte adds.
Answering that question is the goal of a fiscal note.
Legislative leaders are required to request fiscal notes for any bill that affects revenue or spending for the state or a local government.
In the case of this student’s question, the fiscal note projects a cost of $52 million to cover inflationary increases in public education.
“It’s a nice concise and easy way for us to go look to see how large the number is," says House Minority Leader Katie Sullivan, a Missoula Democrat.
“Is it a huge number? If it’s big, maybe people pay attention more. If it’s smaller, they might kind of let it pass by unscathed.”
Sullivan says fiscal notes are essential for lawmakers to decide how to vote on the nearly 800 bills this session that came with a likely cost to the government. That gives the people estimating a bill's cost — the governor’s budget office — a lot of power.
Sullivan says fiscal notes are essential for lawmakers to decide how to vote on the nearly 800 bills this session that came with a likely cost to the government. That gives the people estimating a bill's cost — the governor’s budget office — a lot of power. Sullivan says there’s sometimes a perception that the governor’s politics influence that analysis.
Minority Leader Sullivan teamed up with House Speaker Pro Temp Katie Zolnikov, a Billings Republican, to sponsor a proposed study of transferring fiscal note production to the Legislature’s nonpartisan staff.
Zolnikov says the process now raises questions about the separation of powers.
“And then you know, we’re kind of shifting our focus away from, what is this bill and what is it doing, versus we need to assert our independence from the executive branch and this ridiculous fiscal note.”
Skepticism of fiscal notes is far from new, nor specific to the Gianforte Administration.
Ryan Osmundson, director of the governor’s budget office, says there is no political influence in penciling out a bill's expense. He says bills sometimes just cost more than lawmakers are willing or able to pay.
“Certainly the phrase 'death by fiscal note' is something that’s real, but it’s because people need to know what it costs,” Osmundson says.
Lawmakers can make amendments to their bills after a fiscal note is published, and the budget office will revise their original estimate. Or, lawmakers can offer a rebuttal to the budget office’s analysis.
Osmundson was a Republican legislator for a decade and chaired the Senate Finance and Claims Committee before Gianforte appointed him budget director in 2021.
However, the rest of the staff in the governor's budget office are nonpartisan state employees. Deputy Director Amy Sassano has worked for five different governors.
The accusations that the fiscal notes are politically gamed is inaccurate. We work our tails off to make sure that there is no lobbying in the fiscal notes, that there are no opinions in the fiscal notes, that they state the facts or the assumptions to the best of our ability.Deputy Budget Director Amy Sassano
“The accusations that the fiscal notes are politically gamed is inaccurate," Sassano says. "We work our tails off to make sure that there is no lobbying in the fiscal notes, that there are no opinions in the fiscal notes, that they state the facts or the assumptions to the best of our ability.”
Osmundson says the proposal to have the Legislative Fiscal Division take over fiscal notes would complicate the process, still rely on executive branch agencies’ estimates and likely require new staff.
Republican Senate President Matt Regier of Kalispell says he likes an idea that would give lawmakers more power in the process, in the same way they collaborate with legislative staff to craft bills.
“I think you could point fingers at everybody on a fiscal note. And I’m not going to back down from letting legislators have more control of their legislation than staff or the executive branch.”
Earlier in the session, Regier did not require that all money bills moving through the Senate include a fiscal note. He said he understands some in his caucus are wary of the projections.
All told, about $100 million in spending in several different bills advanced from the Senate to the House without fiscal notes. Regier later obliged demands for those cost estimates, and they are now available.
Supporters of the proposed study wonder if using the Legislative Fiscal Division would prevent that kind of tension. The bill doesn’t require that change, it just asks lawmakers to look into what it would take.
Projecting a policy’s cost isn’t an easy task, says Republican Rep. Llew Jones of Conrad. Some are spot-on and others show differences ranging from a few thousands dollars to hundreds of thousands of dollars. Jones says that’s an acceptable range for a state budget of $16 billion.
An ally of much of the governor’s agenda this session, Jones has not ruled out politics playing a role in fiscal notes.
“With a doubt, do I think there can be scenarios where if someone doesn’t want to do something, they look at the absolute worst case scenario? Yes. Conversely, if they want to do it, maybe they look at, ‘well, we can do that, we wanted to do it anyway.’ So fiscal notes are not perfect, I’m just not sure what their next best alternative is,” Jones says.
If the fiscal note study bill passes, lawmakers will have two years to consider whether the power to create the estimates stays with the governor’s office or moves elsewhere.
