Legislature looks at bill on murdered and missing indigenous women

State Rep. Jacob Bachmeier, D-Havre, said during a Havre teleconference with local legislators that House Bill 21, Hannah’s Act, sponsored by Rae Peppers, D-Lame Deer, will involve the Montana Department of Justice assisting in cases of murdered and missing indigenous women.

Speaking in Helena, Bachmeier added that this bill will be attached to a $100,000 appropriation to help departments communicate and collaborate.

Rep. Jonathan Windy Boy, D-Box Elder, said the bill was brought forward and will expand work on missing persons to include all Montanans. He said currently no agency has a data-tracking system in place to track cases of missing or murdered indigenous women and children.

“As Montana citizens the feeling is that we should all be a part of this stuff, the whole process,” Windy Boy added.

Sen. Russ Tempel, R-Chester, said one of the bills he has recently seen during this legislative session is a bill in support of stripper wells. He said this bill will make it economically feasible for oil companies to get oil in places which may have previously posed a problem. He added the bill will hopefully encourage oil companies to drill.

Tempel said that the Senate Education Committee has been working on a few bills regarding teachers fraternizing with students and aligning school lockdown procedures with fire codes.

He added that current procedure for school lockdowns are in violation with the state’s fire codes.

Windy Boy said a bill he is working on would help with students attending tribal colleges who have credits that do not transfer to other four-year universities outside of the reservation. He said this has been a problem for some time, and is unfair to tribal students, causing them to have to spend more time and money to obtain the same degrees as everybody else.

“It’s time just to do it,” he added.

Bachmeier said that it seemed shocking to him that campuses on Indian reservations, that are accredited by the same accreditation groups, are not always able to transfer.

Andrea Melle, a single mother of two children who have autism, Kerrie, 21, and Drew, 19, spoke during the teleconference, concerned about the future of Medicaid.

Melle said she is the sole caregiver for her children and if work requirements are tacked on to Medicaid she would be have to pay people to go into her house and care for her children, which would cost upwards of $42,000, or pay to have them placed into a home, which would be more expensive. She likes taking care of her children, she said, and by her taking on the responsibilities of a caretaker she is saving the state money by caring for them herself.

“I’m hoping that Medicaid expansion stays like it is, it is very important for many people,” Melle said. “… It’s working, I don’t know why we want to change what is working already.”

She added that she had also recently read that in Gov. Steve Bullock’s budget proposal he proposed to cut some Medicaid services in addition to Big Sky Waivers which allows people to be taken care of at home to qualify for payment through expanded Medicaid.

The waivers already have 1,800 people on the waiting list, Melle said, and Bullock wants to  cut almost $15 million from this program. She added that this waiver is already difficult for people to move up on the waiting list, with people moving up only if someone else on the waiting list dies or no longer needs services.

“We cannot afford having cuts to these waivers,” Melle said. “We need more money for these waivers.”

Windy Boy said that he is a co-signer of a bill by Rep. Mary Caferro’s, D-Helena, for Medicaid expansion, which is a “if it’s not broke, don’t fix it” approach to the issue. He added that he disagrees with needing a work requirement and has seen first-hand how a work requirement is detrimental to a program.

Bachmeier said a work requirement would cost more than it would save.

“It would cost millions of dollars more to administer this program than it would be saving kicking people off it. It’s reprehensible, to put it simply and bluntly,” Bachmeier said. “I will not support it.”