Shaylee Ragar: The 69th legislature went on spring break on Friday. Lawmakers have surpassed the halfway point and an important procedural deadline. It was a mad dash for lawmakers to get work done ahead of time. This is The Session, a look at the policy and politics inside the Montana State House. I'm Shaylee Ragar with Montana Public Radio.
Tom Lutey: And I'm Tom Lutey with Montana Free Press.
Eric Dietrich: And I'm Eric Dietrich, also with Montana Free Press.
Shaylee Ragar: Okay, so before we get into the craziness of the last couple of weeks, what are both your plans for break? We don't have any committees. We don't have floor sessions. What are you gonna do with your time?
Tom Lutey: Well, I'm probably gonna stay out of basements for a while. When we're at the Capitol, we're down in the basement, there's not a window and you sort of lose track of everything. Shaylee, I believe you said the other day it was kind of like working in a casino. So yes, lots of daylight for me.
Shaylee Ragar: It does feel like a casino. It's like you don't have any idea what time it is. So water and next to a window, like a plant.
Tom Lutey: Yes, absolutely.
Shaylee Ragar: Okay, Eric, what about you?
Eric Dietrich: I have a puppy who needs some very long walks.
Shaylee Ragar: Yes, I am with you on that. I need to make up for a lot of lost walks, but before we left for break, the Senate could not leave without another dust up.
The chamber is considering wading into another ethics investigation. Tom, Republican Senator Shelley Vance cited your reporting when she called for an inquiry into a contract signed by Senate President Matt Regier.
“I'm greatly troubled about what I read and I believe we need to engage in further investigations.”
What is she talking about?
Tom Lutey: Senator Vance was referring to the Senate president's use of taxpayer-funded partisan outside legal counsel, a practice dating back to his time as Speaker of the House in 2023. Regier had hired outside counsel near the start of the 2023 session to effectively fill a role the legislature had yet to write into law.
That session, Regier had a bill that would have created and funded the position of private special counsel specifically assigned to him, but the bill died. By that time, the attorney had been working for Regier for several months. What followed post-session was contracted work that didn't line up with the laws cited to justify taxpayer dollars funding the work.
These contacts required authorization of both the speaker and the president, which he did get in part because Regier’s 2023 bill failed and there were arrangements where the work was done before the contracts were signed.
Shaylee Ragar: So, Senator Vance raises these concerns on the Senate floor. What did the Senate agree to do about it?
Tom Lutey: Well, the Senate voted 34 to 16 to, as Billing Senator Daniel Zolnikov put it, file a waste, fraud and abuse complaint with the legislature's investigative arm.
Shaylee Ragar: So, an ethics investigation is already underway into a different senator, Senator Jason Ellsworth, for a contract that he penned with a longtime business associate.
Do you expect this to be similar to what has played out with Ellsworth?
Tom Lutey: Well, I think what the Senate intended when they referred this matter to the legislative auditor was exactly that.
Shaylee Ragar: So we'll be waiting to see what the auditor's report has to say about Regier's contracts, but we're going to have to wait a little bit longer because we are going to be on break.
The legislature will not meet Monday through Thursday this week, Eric, let's explain what we're talking about here.
Eric Dietrich: Yeah, so the transmittal date is kind of both the halfway point of the legislature and one of the main procedural deadlines. The way I think about it is that bills have a deadline to get at least part of the way through the legislative process before the midpoint.
It's kind of like this giant wall of fire, you know, chasing in an old video game, right? And you have to jump through the committee hurdle, jump over the floor debates, right? And if you don't do that fast enough, you get caught in a wall of lava. The wall of lava for most bills was Friday. Bills that have funding in them get a little bit more time, but most of the bills, the legislature considers where they needed to be through or they're dead now.
Shaylee Ragar: I love your metaphor there, Eric, that's a beautiful way to put it. I'm thinking lawmakers are like a little Mario. I don't know video games, but lawmakers are like Mario trying to go through this course of obstacles to get to the prize, which is getting their bills across the finish line.
Eric Dietrich: Yeah and many of them have fallen short this week.
Shaylee Ragar: Right. Tom, how would you describe what the work looks like for lawmakers ahead of this deadline?
Tom Lutey: Well, the past two weeks have been a gauntlet of long hours in committee for lawmakers as they rush to pass non-revenue bills before the deadline, March 7th.
That was followed by a couple rounds of all day floor sessions to get bills passed to the other chamber. The whole enterprise was fueled by takeout. Lots of pizzas, sandwiches, and Panda Express.
Shaylee Ragar: There's a lot of griping that goes along among lawmakers about how long debates are taking or how long committee hearings are going.
The Friday before this, like last week before transmittal, Senate Public Health met until like 9:45 on a Friday evening.
“We are the sole, latest remaining committee in the building.”
And they were kind of having fun with it though, even being in this building until 9:45.
“Should we go for the record? For the latest deadline?”
“It is a trophy I didn’t want to win.”
I think it's safe to say, Eric, that lawmakers find a variety of ways to make this last crunch bearable.
Eric Dietrich: You look at the legislature on the outside and sometimes you think it's kind of like an oiled political machine, and it's not because the gears are people and they're kind of squishy and they have to go to the bathroom and run out of patience and get bored when they're participating in eight hours of floor debates. I got to a point where I was taking photos of lawmakers with 1,000 yard-stares on the House floor and there were several of them.
Shaylee Ragar: I think an example we all kind of enjoyed was when Senator Forrest Mandeville had his laptop open on the Senate floor watching basketball games, and I thought he had been kind of watching one basketball game and I asked him, ‘Oh, is your game still on?’ And he's like, ‘Oh, I have watched six high school basketball games today.’
Eric Dietrich: Yeah, yeah. He was watching his hometown Class B girls team participate in the state divisional tournament.
Shaylee Ragar: Right. That's one thing that I love about the legislature and something that if you're not in the building, you won't see. But these are people, just like everyone else, who are here from their communities who are missing out on things that are going on in their communities. Probably most of them will spend their break at home talking to their constituents.
And I think as we talk about transmittal break and the upwards of at least 100 bills we heard on the floor over last week is that there are a lot of bills that you're not going to hear legislative coverage of, but that are getting long hearings and getting discussion.
Eric Dietrich: I think one of the examples that comes to mind is on the Senate floor this week, there was a bill up that basically changes the state laws that apply to how you can drive through roundabouts.
“MDOT had approved a roundabout in the middle of Highway 93 in my community. And I started getting phone calls. My phone blew up.”
Eric Dietrich: That's not a bill that we would ever write about in a news story or cover in a radio spot because there are hundreds of bills like that that go through a session and just not that significant relative to like, reworking the state tax code or arguing about some of the hot button social issues of the moment.
I think the way to think about what happened in the Senate and House this week is debating rules for going through roundabouts and lawmakers had to do something like that a hundred times each.
Shaylee Ragar: So there are a lot of bills like this that you're not going to hear about in the news, but are making their way through the legislature.
Eric Dietrich: And the other thing to know about those is often, but not always, those bills pass with broad bipartisan support, right? Like, you get up and somebody talks about it and it kind of sounds like a good idea and nobody really seems to have a problem with it. Sometimes, later, you find out that those bills actually are more complicated than you thought they were.
But at the same time, a lot of the business up here really is nuts and bolts lawmaking like that.
Shaylee Ragar: Right. I think we should say to that because there are so many bills flying during this time, I don't know that we have a great sense yet of what hit the lava wall and what did not. But another factor that is adding uncertainty into this process right now, aside from all the craziness and the deadlines that these lawmakers have to meet is what's happening at the federal level.
So I know listeners have been hearing a lot of news about how the Trump administration is making changes at the federal level, and this is certainly impactful to state government, right, Tom?
Tom Lutey: Yeah, very true. We heard a little bit about that yesterday in our press conference with Governor Gianforte where he was talking about some of the measures that are being taken right now at the state level to pave a better path for Montana veterans, including tax breaks and this kind of thing, while at the same time, we're seeing discussions about cuts to the Department of Veterans Affairs. I think what we heard from Gianforte yesterday was a kind of a degree of patience.
Shaylee Ragar: Right. My sense is that the state doesn't have a ton of guidance on what's coming and when it's coming and so when we have questions there is a lot of ‘we'll just have to wait and see.’
For example, there were reports that the Trump administration was going to dismantle the Department of Education, we asked the governor about that. Montana got $54 million in Title One funds from the Department of Ed federally this year. And Gianforte said, ‘hold on, we don't know yet what the impacts are going to be.’
“I've told some people just hold on to your horse for a minute. You know, let's see what actually gets implemented before we claim the sky is falling. I'm not sure that's the case yet.”
That might be a frustrating answer for some, but it is the information that we have right now. Eric, what have you been hearing from lawmakers about changes at the federal level?
Eric Dietrich: Not a ton, actually. I also haven't been asking them specifically about it for the most part. I mean, I think the legislature kind of puts its head down, focuses on legislative stuff, and in a lot of cases focuses on state stuff and the federal stuff is still a little abstract.
Most of it, there's a lot of talk in a lot of cases but we don't know precisely what's going to happen yet as we think about federal politics. I mean, we tend to think about there being a big partisan divide there and I think some issues you see that partisan divide filter down to the Montana legislature, but when they're debating, like what rules you should follow as you're driving through a roundabout, that's so practical, the partisan divide doesn't really make sense.
Shaylee Ragar: Yeah. Okay well, we will end it there for now. I hope you both have a lovely break, but before we leave, what was your favorite moment last week?
Tom Lutey: Oh, that had to be Lynn Bennett walking through the basement with a couple slices of really nice King cake. I completely forgot about Mardi Gras.
Shaylee Ragar: Yeah, things are happening outside this building. Eric?
Eric Dietrich: I stumbled upon a couple board committee clerks who are playing the piano in the basement.
Shaylee Ragar: Oh yeah, that was like a really beautiful sound. I could hear it from my office too.
My favorite moment last week was on Wednesday evening, we were on a late floor session. And somebody accidentally pulled the fire alarm. I was sitting in the state Senate, it had already been a long floor session and the fire alarm forced us all to walk outside. I think it was the first breath of fresh air I had had for like eight hours.
This has been The Session, a look at the policy and politics inside the Montana state house. Thank you guys.
Tom Lutey: Thanks, bye.
Eric Dietrich: Glad to be here and looking forward to a little bit of time off.