Montana House finishes second week

With the second week of the Montana Legislature in the books I would like to give you an update on some accomplishments that were made in the House.

At this point, more bills are starting to pass out of committees to be discussed on the floor of the House. For some bills, it is incredibly important to pass them to the governor’s desk as soon as possible. One of those bills is HB 159 our K-12 school funding bill, which had a hearing in the House Education Committee this week. This bill was sponsored by Republican Rep. Bruce Grubbs.

I believe that the education of Montana school children should not be used as a political football like it has been in the past. Leaving our schools without the ability to finalize their budgets for the next two years is incredibly detrimental and I’m glad Republicans were able to come together to move quickly on this important bill within the first few weeks of the session. Our local school districts need the certainty that comes from passing this base budget bill early in the session, allowing them to finalize their budgets. There will be much discussion in the session about other school funding issues that are not addressed in this bill. I look forward to those discussions.

There has been a lot of discussion also with the border wall funding that Sen. Scott Sales proposed. I do believe that securing our borders is a top priority, but the Montana Legislature has more important things to focus on. Montana needs to focus on education, infrastructure, health coverage costs and many more issues. We are only in session for 90 days and have over 3,000 bills introduced. In 2017, we had a special session because of lack of revenue coming in, so focusing on the needs of Montana need to be top priority for the Legislature. Montana has a limited amount of revenue sources, 60 percent of revenues come from property tax and income tax. We also have a huge border ourselves to secure. I believe that we have to focus on what serves our taxpayers the best and getting dragged into the national debate over the southern wall will only delay progress in the Montana Legislature. Investing that money in Montana or addressing our own border security issues would serve our taxpayers best.

The Republican Caucus is hosting “Capitol Day” on Feb. 1. We are holding plenty of activities for the public to participate in, including House and Senate committee hearings and a free lunch at noon, and we will be discussing interesting bills on the house floor.

Sen. Steve Daines will be here, as well, to address the Legislature at 1 p.m. You can watch from the gallery above the House floor. At 1:30 p.m. both chambers will have a floor session. Come to the People’s House on Feb. and experience what a day at the Legislature is like.

There will also be free lunch at noon.

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People can contact House District 27’s Rep. Josh Kassmier, R-Fort Benton, at 406-781-5386 or via email at Joshua.kassmier@mtleg.gov.