Sine Die

The 69th Legislature has adjourned. We're here to talk about what happened and what comes next.

MTPR's Shaylee Ragar is joined by Tom Lutey, Eric Dietrich and Mara Silvers from the Montana Free Press.

Tom Lutey: I'm Tom Lutey with Montana Free Press.

Eric Dietrich: I'm Eric Dietrich with Montana Free Press.

Mara Silvers: And I'm Mara Silvers with Montana Free Press.

“Sine die, Mr. President, 36 Senators aye and 14 voted no.” 

“With 36 voting yes and 14 voting no, on the motion of sine die. The 69th Legislative Session has passed and we are adjourned.” 

Shaylee Ragar: You guys we're done. We did it.

Mara Silvers: We made it.

Shaylee Ragar: We made it to the end. How are you feeling?

Eric Dietrich: My dog is relieved.

Shaylee Ragar: Dog is relieved. My dog is relieved as well.

Let's talk about the last weeks before the session adjourned. It felt pretty chaotic to me. How do you guys feel about what happened the last couple of weeks?

Tom Lutey: I think that tension that was there two weeks into the session, maybe the first day of the session, was still there and maybe by the time we got to the end, things were even a little more raw, particularly for the more right-leaning members of the Montana Senate that just were not able to move anything of significance. Maybe with the exception of the income tax package that they had, which all Republicans voted for. I would say more than anything else.

Eric Dietrich: I was really struck by the contrast between the House and the Senate. The textbook dynamic is the House is the rabble-rousers and the Senator is like the gentleman's club. But that was very much inverse of the dynamic this year.

Shaylee Ragar: I do think it was interesting we heard Speaker Brandon Ler, a Republican, commend both his House Majority Leader Steve Fitzpatrick and House Minority Leader Katie Sullivan on the last day of the session.

They all kind of had like a kumbaya moment. That did not happen in the Senate. And in fact, the day before we heard some pretty strong words from Senator Daniel Emrich, a Republican from Great Falls on how he views what happened this session. He is a hard line Republican and he was frustrated.

“Currently, it seems like we are in the middle of a Republican civil war.” 

Factions in the Republican party in Montana are not new, but what do you think this session says about the future of politics in Montana, where we're at right now, what this means for future sessions?

Mara Silvers: I think in the tail end of the legislature, we were seeing a lot of bitterness and interestingly, in the last couple of days, it just seems like that some of those sentiments had calcified into real resentment, bitterness and rage.

“This Senate has not done its job.”

We heard Senator Daniel Zolnikov from Billings even say that he didn't wanna sine die because he felt like the Chamber had not gotten anything done.

“Massive failure, whatever this was. If this is how people legislate, then we have a problem.”

It seems like the people who are leaving the building with that level of resentment, it's not gonna go away anytime soon. They're gonna carry that with them and it's certainly going to bleed into politics down the road.

Shaylee Ragar: We heard a lot of Republicans in the 23 voting bloc in the Senate who voted together, who said, we haven't done enough on property tax relief and voters are gonna have something to say about that in the next primaries.

If they do, we'll see what happens. But Eric, let's talk about those property tax proposals that ended up passing. What's in that proposal?

Eric Dietrich: Really the big thing is the tax relief concept that Governor Greg Gianforte had been talking up all session.

There's a fair bit of drama on the way, but that passed, is through, the timing of it means that they don't think they're gonna be able to implement it this year. So there'll be another one time rebate this year and then also some interim rates. And then the full second home tax piece of that will be implemented on next year's tax bills.

Gianforte's been calling that a homestead proposal because it lowers taxes for owner-occupied homes and long-term rentals. And so that's really in effect, the second home tax and the taxes on people who own second homes will go up quite a bit based on the numbers I've seen. And there's also some concern coming from industry groups that it'll shift some burden on larger businesses–a lot of opposition from those folks towards the end of the session.

Shaylee Ragar: What are these opponents saying, Eric?

Eric Dietrich: The nature of the property tax system is that in order to make some people pay less, other people will have to pay more and the people have to pay more will be, of course second homeowners, including Montanans who own second homes that they're not using as long-term rentals.

And then also in some cases, large industrial companies, we had a lot of concern from that, including from Todd O'Hair, the Chamber of Commerce CEO.

“Some of the folks that are gonna see substantial increases in their property taxes are some of those industries that are already under a lot of duress. Think about your coal mines. Think about your hard rock mines. Think about your refineries that are dealing with tariffs.” 

Proponents responded that in a lot of cases, those industrial companies have seen decreases in their tax bills in recent years as rising home values have pulled taxes onto residential properties.

Shaylee Ragar: Right, I've heard people say, we are just un shifting a burden that was already unfairly put on residents. We did see a similar breakdown in political support and opposition on the budget as we did on property taxes, Eric. Is this a big budget?

Eric Dietrich: Big is relative, I think. The folks that negotiated the budget ended up passing are the centrist Republicans and the Democrats.

They think it's the right size. They tend to be pretty satisfied with it, at least when reporters ask them. And of course, in contrast, the hard line Republicans who voted against the budget, they think it's too much spending. They would like there to be less spending.

Shaylee Ragar:So, Eric, remind us, what are the headlining pieces of the budget?

Eric Dietrich: So the key debates were really how much money to put into things like healthcare programs and education. Those are kind of the big spending pieces that come outta state government. Big kind of headline spending items that were included in the various budget bills that were passed: There's a $100 million for increasing starting teacher pay.

There's also $250 million to expand the state prison system, which is currently overcrowded. The other big spend that's in the budget, which is kind of an inverse spend, is that Republicans united actually over Democratic opposition to pass a big income tax cut. That's also an expensive provision that'll cost the state about $278 million a year in revenues once it's fully implemented.

The state came into the session with a big surplus, kind of a lot like they called it one time money essentially. They don't know that it's gonna be there next time, but it's there this time. So what they did with that, a big chunk of it is they used it to seed what's an endowment, they call the growth and opportunity trust. That money will be a backstop for the state pension system and affordable housing subsidy programs that can also be invested in spinoff interest that could be used for a few things including bridge repairs and childcare programs.

Shaylee Ragar: Well, we'll definitely be keeping an eye out to see what the Governor does with the budget; whether he decides to line item veto some things, whether he decides to include the trust, but one thing in the budget that we know Gianforte will sign because he is already signed it, is Medicaid expansion: A debate we expected to be really big this session.

Mara, you followed it. Remind us what happened.

Mara Silvers: Yeah, it was definitely a policy that a lot of people thought was gonna be full of fireworks and it was gonna be a major bargaining chip for both parties, and it turned out to just have a lot of support from the Republican caucus, especially in the House.

And Democrats were united behind it and it was not something that hardline Republicans could really get in the way of and stop. So, it passed earlier on in the session and Gainforte signed it at the end of March, and it kind of just moved a pretty significant policy debate off to the side of the stage and other things started to come in and be what lawmakers were really focusing on.

Shaylee Ragar: Right, we can't make any sweeping conclusions yet about how well each party did or how many of their priorities they got through, but it seems like Democrats are pretty happy.

Is that a fair statement, Mara?

Mara Silvers: I think it depends on the Democrat you talk to. Actually, we saw the Democratic caucuses and the Senate and the House operate very differently.

Over on the House side, Democrats were often divided and I have heard some Democrats express real frustration that the caucus was splintering in the House.

Shaylee Ragar: There are places, to your point, Mara, where Democrats had some big losses. They wanted to stop bills that aim to regulate gender and civil rights of transgender Montanans.

And they were successful on a couple of those, but, but not all of them, Mara.

Mara Silvers: Overall, Democrats were very united in the way that they voted on those bills, but I think that there's another layer of nuance about what they were leveraging and what they were bartering with. That is perhaps one of the reasons why so many of those bills were able to go through, but it also could just come down to where the Republican Party is at. Some of these gender bills are becoming the postcard issue. They're becoming the thing that Republicans are using to tout and prove their own conservative bonafides. There just might not be a lot of appetite to vote down those bills for a while until the culture wars change.

Shaylee Ragar: We saw a lot of these bills targeting transgender people last session, we saw more this session, and I think Representative Zooey Zephyr, a Democrat from Missoula and the first transgender woman elected to the state House, her testimony became so repetitive. She was saying a lot of the same things on a lot of the same bills. And I think that was emblematic of the exhaustive debate we saw on this.

“But I hope this body, as I said the last time this bill came up, would leave trans people alone.” 

Let's start looking to the future here. We are entering the interim season. It's two years until the next legislative session. We also call this lawsuit season. We've already seen one lawsuit filed against a bill that was passed this session that would prohibit which bathrooms transgender people can use–that's already in court.

What else are you all expecting to see?

Eric Dietrich: I'm gonna be keeping a close eye on the implementation of the property tax bill. There are pieces of that where there was discussion in the legislature about whether they'll be litigated. It's complex and it's historic and will cost some people a lot of money and there could be enough discontent there that people try to challenge it in court and if they do, we’ll continue to see what happens.

Mara Silvers: I'm certainly looking for the possibility of lawsuits. There are several bills that passed following in the wake of similar bills that passed in 2023, but they're slightly different. It'll be interesting to see how litigation shakes out on those, but there are also some other bills that have not really been tested before in court, especially on the gender front.

Shaylee Ragar: Tom, what do you think the odds are we're gonna be back here pretty soon for a special session?

Tom Lutey: Oh well we certainly could be. I mean, depending on what happens with the federal budget we could be. Shirley was getting texts from lawmakers at the end who were suggesting that we'd be back by December of this year.

Shaylee Ragar: We gotta end it here for now. I'm gonna speak for all of us when I say that our favorite moment last week was being at Mara’s post-Sine die, post-adjournment party. It was such a good time. So instead of asking you your favorite moment, I would like each of you to please share with me the reporter superlative that you were assigned at Mara’s post-Sine die party.

Tom Lutey: Most likely to ask the first 30 questions at a press conference.

Shaylee Ragar: We so appreciate the first person ready to raise their hand.

Mara Silvers: Mine was best work-life balance because I think compared to prior sessions, I did take care of myself this session.

Eric Dietrich: I just got made fun of for asking wonky budget questions.

Shaylee Ragar: But we need you to ask those questions, Eric. Mine was best Good Cop.

Don't forget, we are all gonna be back here for our live show on May 7th at 7:00 p.m. It's a live stream. We want your questions, we want your comments. Visit mtpr.org/session to submit those questions and comments ahead of time. Thanks so much for sticking with us the last few months.

I want to give a huge shout out to our producer, Nick Mott, who does so much work behind the scenes, our editors Corin Cates-Carney, Jackie Coffin, and Holly Michels. And to you reporters. Thanks so much for joining.

Mara Silvers: Thank you, thanks for having us.

Tom Lutey: Thanks, Shaylee.

Eric Dietrich: It's a pleasure to be here always.

Shaylee Ragar: This has been The Session, a look at the policy and politics inside the Montana State House

The Session 2025 legislative recap

Do you have questions about the results of the 69th legislative session and how they may affect you? Learn about the key bills, big debates, party politics and what’s next for Montana’s laws from the journalists who were there. Ask your questions and join us May 7 for a live recording of "The Session." Register here.