Community Focus: Workload, tensions go up in the Capitol

Just before Easter, the Senate passed my Senate Bill 416, which is the only major infrastructure bill that might have a chance to pass. SB 416 passed the Senate on a 47 to 3 vote. Today SB 416 will be heard in the House Appropriations Committee and to pass the House it must get a two-thirds vote as it has a bonding component. This bill is one that no one particularly stomachs, but is a compromise bill that has a chance to pass.

Just before Easter, Sarah Swanson Partridge and Mr. and Mrs. Tom Flowers brought two busloads of seventh-graders, about 60 kids, to Helena to see Fish, Wildlife and Parks "Montana Wild." This is a great exhibit of fish and wildlife in Montana. House Speaker Knudsen, Rep. Mike Lang and I met with these seventh-graders for a presentation and Q-and-A session. It was great.

House Bill 2, the general funding of government, was heard and passed last week in the Senate on a 31 to 17 vote. This is more than a $10 billion budget for the next two years and $4.5 billion of that is general fund budget - or in other words, your tax dollars. I did not vote for HB2 as I thought it was too much money! Now HB2 will go back to the House for final passage. If the House changes anything then the House and Senate will go to conference committee.

Sen. Buttrey's Medicaid expansion bill passed the Senate and now is over in the House. At the present time, 128,000 people are on Medicaid in Montana. That is almost 13 percent of the population in Montana, and if we add another 70,000 people that will be 20 percent of the population in Montana. We Republicans offered to help the most needy and those bills were rejected. If the federal money (your tax dollars as well) does not come back to the state in the next couple of years, this could well break Montana's budget. And, with the federal budget nearing $19 trillion in the red, how good does one feel about the chance of federal money coming back to Montana.

The session is nearing the end - today is the 75th day - and tempers are getting short. This, too, shall pass. The governor has said there is no compromise on my Senate Bill 284 that would allow the county commissioners to have a say on bison translocation in a county, and yet he wants a ton of more money for FWP. I would urge you to give him a call in your support for local control.

I hope you all had a blessed Easter.

State Sen. John Brenden is a Republican from Scobey. His district includes northern Blaine County and rural northern Hill County - North Havre to Wild Horse. It runs east to the North Dakota border. He can be contacted by email at [email protected].