Time Will Tell Real Progress Of 63rd Legislative Session

Well the 63rd Montana Legislative session has ended and time will tell the real progress made. At the present it is still difficult to see the true present and projected financial structure of our state.

HB2, $4.5B over two years, is the general appropriations bill which funds the state legislative services, governor, and all education and state agencies. The governor partial veto in this bill was $400K for the plant diagnostic lab at Montana State University. I feel bad about this because it is really a lab for Montana’s number one industry, agriculture. This lab diagnoses plant disease, when fields become infected. Ag will have to find a way to fund this facility.

Following are the highest demand on dollars created by the legislature for our state.

We do know that in HB3 there was an obligation to fill in $118M for expenses incurred by the previous state government, to be paid by June 2013.

HB 5 is for long range planning bricks and mortar. This carried a $49.6M price tag. The governor wanted to bond, take a loan, on these projects. I agreed with the legislature to spend the cash we had on some of the requested projects. We still have many dollars of mandated obligations (liabilities) that will stay with us for years to come. HB5 is on the veto list, but should survive, as it contained a sentence the governor did not like. His objection will not affect the overall dollars.

HB6 puts funds in DNRC for renewable loans and grants from the general fund and special revenue. Locally, Malta, Malta Irrigation, Chinook, Sunny Hills-Glasgow, Chinook, Fort Belknap and Havre each will have the opportunity for $100K for water projects.

HB 13 dealt with the state employee pay plan. My priority was, hope it works out, to ensure raises for those employees who had not received a raise over the past two years. There were $21M in pay raises given last year with 25 percent of the raises given to factors such as longevity and position changes. These were improper raise decisions. In HB 13 we spent $59.1M this session.

Five hundred full time equivalent employees, positions sitting on the shelves of state agencies, were removed for state government this session. This was an agreement with the governor in SB410, the last session bill, and he received $7.5M, for his operations, of the $13.5M agreement.

HB 377, $55M, is for the public employee pension fund and HB 454, $72.7M, is for teacher’s retirement fund. These are long term responsibilities, which are not fixed, but a band-aid has been applied. These bills reduced GABA, Guaranteed Annual Benefit Allowance, from 3 percent to 1.5 percent, increased current employee contributions by 1 percent, increased local and state government contributions, in some cases, up to 2 percent. These two bills will be analyzed again next session to see if the process is on line to become sound in the next 20 years.

SB 175 puts an additional $50.5M into K-12 education. It gives more local control to local school boards.

SB 96 will give $3.6M in lower taxes on business equipment

The governor has the ability to veto bills. The following are a few of the bills that he has vetoed and are in the process of being overridden by the legislature.

HB12, $6.48M, is for increased provider care reimbursements for public health and human services.

HB218, $35M, is for eastern Montana counties which have been impacted by the oil boom. The governor states is his veto that eastern Montana received enough dollars in HB 11 for their projects. He needs to come and see where eastern Montana’s impacted counties are. There is $3.25M in HB 11 for Richland to Rosebud counties and east. These funds were applied for without the needs derived from the oil boom. I do not see how 10 percent funding is adequate, especially after HB 175 takes oil revenues from the east for the rest of the state.

SB 236 reduces general fund dollars by $7.5M through 2019 and lets the dollars be used for natural resource impacts.

In my opinion our governor is not supportive of agriculture and eastern Montana.

The governor is vetoing some bills passed by the legislature because he wants $300M in the state checking account. While I do not disagree with responsible financial management, I question the ability to manage it properly. There will be unplanned expenses and needs. I do not know what he would have cut if a large Medicaid bill had been passed. We are $19M short of being structurally sound. This means if the state had $281M in checking instead of $300M, we would be financially structurally sound. There is room for the needs of eastern Montana.

He states in his veto letters that he is the one left in town after the legislature convenes, well I beg to differ, because I too am concerned how the state and its citizens will fare until we meet again. I may seem a little harsh on the governor; however, the legislature is made up of 150 citizens from around the state who are intelligent people also.

A point to leave you with is that 87 percent of the state expenses are mandated before the legislature meets. We just try to see that representation is fair and accurate.

God Bless you all, Montana and our Nation.

Rep. Mike Lang of Malta serves House District 35