Sorted by date Results 26 - 32 of 32
Greetings from Helena. It was good to be home for a few days during transmittal break. We came back to Helena on the 10th and hit the ground running. Things will continue to get busier as we get closer to the end of the 90-day session. SB 137, a bill I sponsored, “Revise laws related to agriculture use of special fuel” passed through both houses unanimously and is on its way to the Governor. This bill allows agriculture producers to purchase fuel within 50 miles of their home base and pay for it by any means and still qualify for the agr...
Greetings from Helena! We finished week 7, another snowy week, and are looking forward to the transmittal break. All non-fiscal bills must be moved from one house to the other by March 1st. I heard some troubling news this week for Richland County and Eastern Montana regarding the closing of the Lewis and Clark Station coal-fired power plant. This plant has been a source of power for MDU customers and a source of employment for Richland county since 1958. I was a little disappointed that MDU couldn’t find a power generating source in Montana. I...
Greetings from Helena! There are some legislators and bureaucrats who think “We the People” can’t operate without the government telling us what to do. That was very evident in the hearings this week at the Capitol regarding Child and Family Services (CFS). In the four states that border us, according to the latest available information, there are 3.9 million people and they have 5,700 children in foster care. In Montana, with 1 million people, there are close to 4,000 children in foster care. We have almost 3 times as many per capita in the c...
Greetings from Helena! It was an interesting week to have two carbon tax bills to deal with global warming. A couple mornings when I was walking to the Capitol, I was considering sponsoring a bill to make everyone own a SUV to warm things up a bit. In all seriousness, I hope everyone is keeping safe and warm in the frigid temperatures. HB 229, which was introduced by Representative Bradley Hamlett from Cascade, is a bill clarifying that fossils are not minerals. This bill is an important bill to our area. The necessity for this bill came from...
Greetings from Helena! We have finished 20 days of our 90-day session. The three committees I am on are real important committees, but they can be emotional at times. In Fish and Game, we heard a bill (SB70) to remove Headwaters State Park from the primitive list. The bill did not have any opponents. This seemed a little odd to me because most groups that come in to the Fish and Game Committee want to make everything primitive, whether it is a conservation easement, a wilderness study area or a monument. Do they want more land to be primitive...
Greetings from Helena. The bills are starting to pick up and make their way through the committees. So we are seeing more and more bills on the floor. A lot of the bills have been clean up bills and nothing very controversial. But there are some good bills coming, some controversial bills coming and some real wild bills coming. A couple of the wild bills that would concern our area are LC1830 and LC1831 which would outlaw competitive hunts for predatory animals (coyotes and fox) and make it illegal to hit a predatory animal with a vehicle. One...
Dear Editor, One thing that is disappointing to me is when candidates campaign one way and then vote the opposite once they are elected. In Eastern Montana candidates like to campaign like a conservative Republican because they can't get elected if they admit they are a liberal. This is what concerns me about candidate for HD 35, Joel Krautter. He encouraged legislators to vote for the gas tax raise in 2017 (Sidney Herald March 15, 2017) and criticized those who did not vote for the bonding (infrastructure) bill, which requires more taxes to...
