Gender identity and anti-trans legislation are a repeat focus this session. Lawmakers begin work on property tax changes. The governor is quiet about Medicaid expansion. Sen. Sheehy wants to know how many pushups the Secretary of Defense nominee can do.
"Capitol Talk" is MTPR's weekly legislative news and analysis program. MTPR's Sally Mauk is joined by Montana Free Press State Editor Holly Michels and Lee Banville, Director of the University of Montana School of Journalism and Professor of Political Reporting.
Sally Mauk: Lee, Governor Gianforte gave his State of the State address to the Legislature this past week, outlining his view of his administration's accomplishments and listing his priorities for this session. But there was one glaring omission from his speech, and that was continuing Medicaid expansion, something he supports with some caveats. But he didn't mention it and I'm wondering why.
Lee Banville: I do think it was interesting that he chose to, in his long list of things he wants to focus on this year, skipped over one of the most maybe contentious or certainly one of the most consequential sort of policies that are up for debate over there in Helena. And I think what it says is that he's not going to - although he has expressed support for it - he's not going to be out front on it. He's going to let the Legislature hash this stuff out. At least that seems to be what he was indicating by not mentioning it, not saying it's a priority. And immediately, Senator Morigeau, one of the first things he said was it's a priority for Democrats. And so, it doesn't speak to the intensity of the debate that's bound to happen around Medicaid expansion. But what it does do is it says, well, this is going to be a legislative fight right now. And the governor, while supportive of it, isn't going to be spending a lot of his political capital making sure it happens.
Sally Mauk: Another high priority for the governor, Holly, is lowering Montanans' high property taxes, and his proposal would cut property taxes for owners of primary residences in Montana, but not other property owners. And here's what the governor said:
Greg Gianforte: I don't believe, for example, a Californian who drops into Montana to ski once in a while near their mountain mansion should get a property tax cut.
Sally Mauk: Holly, I never actually expected to hear the governor diss rich Californians.
Holly Michels Yeah Sally, that was much more of a Democratic rallying cry in the last election, but that's what we heard Gianforte say in the State of the State. And what he's referencing there is this deep frustration Montanans have with property taxes. Your property taxes went up on average about 22% after the last legislative session. Some estimates show they could go up again about 11% if lawmakers don't act this go around.
Gianforte, between last session and this one, formed a property tax task force and they came up with several suggestions of ways to reduce property taxes. The one that Gianforte has thrown his support behind the most, and the one he's referencing in that State of the State speech, is the Homestead Exemption Act. What the act would do is determine which properties are owned by Montanans as their primary residences, and then it would set those properties with a lower rate when the state revenue department does the math, they do to determine how much of a home's value is taxable. So, the thinking there is that if the amount of value your home is taxed on is smaller, your property taxes correspondingly go down.
This bill would also give lower rates to landlords who have long term rentals versus something like an Airbnb.
And the bill also has some provisions in it aimed at lowering property taxes for businesses.
And then it would also make the rate higher for second homes, like what Gianforte's referencing in the speech there and things like Airbnbs.
The sponsor of this bill is Representative Llew Jones, and he's estimated that this bill could lower property taxes on average, statewide about 15%. The bill already has several Republican co-sponsors, and I did see at least one Democratic co-sponsor when I last checked on this bill.
But Democrats have generally voiced concerns about Gianforte's approach to the homestead exemption, saying that they think Montana families who have long time family cabins, or something like that, could get stuck with those higher tax rates. Democrats have their own proposals, one of which would be exempting the first $50,000 of a residential property from taxation and then having lower tax rates for less valuable properties and then those rates go up as the property's value goes up.
All these bills are about to get their first hearings coming up soon. So we're going to hear a lot of testimony, of course, for and against them, as well as lawmakers debating the merits. We'll start pretty soon to get an idea of what plans are going to gain traction, which won't make it too far.
Sally Mauk: There is, of course, bipartisan support to lower taxes, it's just what form that's going to take. Lee, the governor is still fighting the culture war with bills aimed at trans Montanans and gender identity that he supports. Here's what the governor had to say.
Greg Gianforte: We've responded strongly and unequivocally to the far left's extreme agenda that threatens the health, development and well-being of Montana children.
Sally Mauk: Previous bills, Lee, to limit trans rights have been ruled unconstitutional, but that's apparently not a deterrent for the governor.
Lee Banville: I think he was doing two things here, right. I mean, one of the points he was making was that he kept having to battle the courts on issues like that. He used the loss in these anti-trans court cases as part of his argument for why we need to overhaul the judiciary. But it's also clear that Republicans at the national level and over in Helena see trans issues as what political scientists would call a wedge issue. It's a really easy way to divide the population and the support. And so, it's interesting to think not that long ago, gay rights and gay marriage were similar kinds of wedge issues. And in a surprisingly quick 20 years, it went from something that Democrats were opposed to gay marriage, to gay marriage being a right. We're not anywhere near that on the trans issue. The public it seems very sort of unsure of where it stands on a lot of this. But what Republicans seem to believe is hitting on this issue is as a way to telegraph to their supporters where they stand on these contentious cultural issues. I think they see it as a way of rallying support.
Sally Mauk: Holly, Governor Gianforte also supports legislation that would require judicial candidates to declare a party affiliation. And with the justices sitting stone faced right in front of him said this:
Greg Gianforte: Let's face reality, folks. We already have a partisan Supreme Court in Montana. They're nonpartisan in name only.
Sally Mauk: But Democratic Senator Shane Morigeau in his rebuttal to the governor's speech vowed to fight to keep the court neutral.
Shane Morigeau: The far-right Republican attack against the court, as you just heard tonight, amounts to no more than putting their own political agenda in front of the rights of freedom of speech, government transparency, religious freedom and privacy of all Montanans.
Sally Mauk: And this is going to be one of the premier fights of the session, Holly.
Holly Michels Yes Sally, it is. This has been queued up for a while now. Over the last few years, Republicans' frustrations with the judiciary have just been building. This comes, in part, from the way the court has handled its own public records and in part, over rulings where courts in Montana have found Republican backed laws unconstitutional - what Lee was just referencing with some of the trans legislation.
And last year, after a court order that Republicans found particularly frustrating, the state Senate formed a special committee to craft laws to make changes to the judicial branch and now those bills are starting to move through the Legislature. At one point, there were about 27 of them. Some of them are changing or have been dropped, but there's still roughly about two dozen of these ideas starting to advance now.
Among these ideas is a pitch to make judicial races in Montana partisan. That's what Gianforte was referencing here. Republicans argue that judges running by party affiliation doesn't really change anything, in their eyes, as they feel judges are already partisan. When they're making that point, they say things like judges get financial campaign contributions from people with political affiliations, or in some cases, we have judges who have held previous political positions. Looking at Mike McGrath, the former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, he was a Democratic attorney general before he held that position. And then in Montana, judge races can sometimes be low information contests where voters might make decisions just based on party affiliation. Republicans have dominated the ballot box in recent years. An 'R' beside a judge's name could be very helpful.
There's also other efforts here to insert partisan politics into judge races. There's a bill that would allow political parties to contribute to judicial candidates. But as we heard from Senator Morigeau, Democrats are strongly against these proposals.
State Senator Andrea Olson, who's a lawyer that sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee that heard some of these bills recently, said that she thinks the actual problem is Republicans passing unconstitutional laws, not the judiciary itself. And that's what we heard in Morigeau's rebuttal there. He's saying it's these Republican laws from last sessions that aim to limit access to abortion, limit the types of treatment transgender minors can receive, and more that those laws are just unconstitutional, so the courts are necessary to strike them down.
I think we can expect to see a lot more of these exchanges over the rest of the session. You know, like I said, these bills are just getting their first hearings in committee. Then they'll be debated. The committees will either advance them or not, will have those floor debates with either the full House or Senate, where we get a lot of robust exchange between lawmakers. So we're going to hear a lot more about this legislation in the coming months.
Sally Mauk: Robust exchanges is probably an understatement at this point. Lee, Montana's new Republican U.S. Senator, Tim Sheehy, was in the headlines again this week for how he questioned Donald Trump's nominee for Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth. And here's how Sheehy started his questioning at Hegseth's confirmation hearing.
Sheehy/Hegseth exchange:
Sheehy: How many genders are there?
Hegseth: Tough one. Senator, there are two genders.
Sheehy: I know that well, I'm a Sheehy [she/he], so I'm on board (laughter)
Sally Mauk: And he followed that, Lee, by asking Hegseth how many pushups he can do.
Lee Banville: Yeah, And I'm hoping you don't ask me that same question.
Sally Mauk: I'm just going to ask you.
Lee Banville: We're not going to answer it. I'm going to take the Fifth. I think that, you know, obviously I mean, we were just talking about wedge issues. And so, Senator Sheehy in that questioning, I mean, the Hegseth hearing was already going to be a loaded event. And so, choosing to start with an issue like gender identification and some of those issues is a way of once again sort of value signaling what his views on all these things are. It really does speak to just how potent I think Republicans see that issue of trans issues, gender issues, gender identity issues. They clearly see it as a way to convey it to the audiences they want to convey a set of values that they think can really rally a lot of support.
Sally Mauk: And the pushups question has been described as performative masculinity by one critic.
Lee Banville: I try to be a performative masculine person, too, and I'm very mediocre at it.
Sally Mauk: And Holly, there is a bill, it's called the Bathroom Bill, which also goes to the whole issue of trans rights. And tell us about that bill.
Holly Michels Yeah. So, what this bill would do is set bathrooms in dormitories, multiple user bathrooms, like the ones here in the Capitol that are available for the public coming and going, locker rooms, those kind of spaces need to be used by people based on their chromosomes or external sex genitalia. This follows a lot of legislation we saw last session that took similar efforts.
It also is interesting, we had pretty strong debate last year in which Representative Zoe Zephyr, Democrat from Missoula and one of the first trans legislators in Montana, ended up banned from the House floor when Republicans objected to some of her comments in debate over a bill related to gender affirming care for minors. We had pretty intense debate on the House floor. I would say nothing rose to the level of last session. We did have two Republican lawmakers, Representative Dave Beatty and Representative Brad Barker, say that they did have some concerns with portions of the bill, but they felt that it could be cleaned up with, perhaps, amendments in the Senate. So I think we'll probably see some changes to the legislation coming.
It's interesting to me that we're talking about needing to do clean up in the other chamber this early in the session when there's time to probably do that on the House floor or elsewhere. But I think we can look for those changes coming in the Senate. And yeah, we're going to see more issues like this, I think, as the session advances. But this is kind of the first round we've seen in the House this time.
Sally Mauk: Things are happening more and more quickly over there and we will try to keep track of it. Holly and Lee, thank you. I'll talk to you next week.
"Capitol Talk" is MTPR's weekly legislative news and analysis program. MTPR's Sally Mauk is joined by Montana Free Press State Editor Holly Michels and Lee Banville, Director of the University of Montana School of Journalism and Professor of Political Reporting.
Tune in during the legislative session online Friday afternoons and on-air Saturdays at 9:44 a.m. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
