House passing budget top issue at video conference

The main topic at Tuesday's legislative video conference in Havre was breaking news from the Montana House of Representatives: its passing the main budget bill on a 100-0 vote with no amendments.

"We passed the budget this morning in an hour and fifteen minutes, which by all accounts is a record … ," Rep. Kris Hansen, R-Havre, said during the video conference in Robins School Administration Building, sponsored each week by Havre Public Schools and the Havre Area Chamber of Commerce. "We voted House Bill 2 out of the House in an hour and 15 minutes … on a hundred to zero, vote which is also 100 percent unprecedented, as far as we can tell."

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Sen. Greg Jergeson, D-Chinook, appeared doubtful that the bill will pass through the Senate without any changes.

"There is always an institutional difference between the House and the Senate," Jergeson said. "When the House does a hundred to zero, the reaction in Senate is fifty to zero suspicious. So, we'll see how this breaks down as we go forward."

The bill has some controversial issues, including eliminating funding for family planning. Republicans have argued that because Planned Parenthood, which provides abortions in its services, is one of the recipients of family planning money, the funding should be eliminated.

Gov. Steve Bullock's office also has criticized the bill for some programs it has cut, such as providing funds for fighting wildfires.

Hansen said the bill includes several high-visibility items discussed previously in the session, such as funding for Insure Montana that helps small businesses provide health insurance, increases in the payment rate schedule for health care providers, and funding for the state Wheat and Barley Committee.

Jergeson said he also was able to attach an amendment to another bill that will make permanent the restoration of health care payment schedules cut in previous sessions.

Hansen said that the House had scheduled two days of debate on the bill, and when she got to her desk Tuesday morning she found some 40 or 50 proposed amendments.

"When we started the debate, nobody actually proposed any of those amendments," she said, adding that after the committee chairs listed their portions of the budget, Appropriations Committee Vice Chair Galen Hollenbaugh, D-Helena, stood up and said, "We worked really hard on this, we worked together, and we encourage you to support the budget.

"And so, there was no contrariness, there was no amending, there was no speechifying, there was no anything," Hansen said.

Rep. Mike Lang, R-Malta, who attended the video conference, said the parties working on HB 2 looked closely at all the issues.

"I think that was the success on it," he said. "They brought it all on the table and they got it passed that way."

Lang said the bill increases state spending overall by 1.12 percent over the last biennium.

Hansen said the bill includes a reduction in the Department of Corrections budget and an increase in each of the budgets for the Department of Health and Human Services, higher education and K-12 education.

She said the process is

just starting. As well as about 100 bills that could increase or decrease spending still awaiting action by the Legislature, now the Senate will look at HB 2. The Senate could add or decrease funding, then send it back to the House.

If the House agrees with any Senate changes, it then would go to the governor for his signature. Otherwise, Hansen said, it will go to a conference committee to resolve differences.

"You need to understand that this is very much Step 1," she said. "We have got a long way to go before it is finalized. … There are a lot of things, a lot of moving pieces still in motion, but this is the beginning of the end."