Making sausage at the Legislature

Week three has started to sort out the ingredients that were put in the sausage. We have a number of legislators who voted on a bill to use federal money to double the payment to hunting block management leases. I understand that in some cases those individuals deserve an increase. However, some of these same legislators are pushing for a Constitutional Convention to stop the uncontrolled federal spending. I don’t know if it’s irony, misunderstanding of how funding works, or just self-serving lawmaking, but this kind of thing happened a number of times this past week.

In our Education Committee, I carried a bill to help public schools with truancy for kids who start school earlier than 7 years old. This is a bill that simply says if you start a child in a public school at five or six years of age, you as the parent or guardian are responsible to make sure the student gets to and stays in school. Though irrelevant to the bill, a question was asked by a committee member about why schools created truancy during COVID. The school principal who had testified during the public hearing answered the question and gave great examples about how her school went above and beyond to engage students during COVID. I’m not sure about your school, but the schools I know of went to remote learning and the teachers worked harder-than-ever to try and ensure learning was continuing during quarantine times. I think we as lawmakers can sometimes be oblivious to what really happens, and it is important for those subject matter experts to enlighten us during public hearing and through letters and phone calls to legislators.

This and every bill can be seen and heard at leg.mt.gov website. Most committee hearings can be publicly accessed live and are also recorded for watching at your own convenience. This is a really helpful tool if you hear of a bill coming up that you are interested in following.

For farmers and ranchers, water, bears, buffalo and wolves are always the concern when it comes to what the Legislature will do with the above. The water rights issue is getting close to being taken care of in a water court. Bears and wolves are being pushed for a delisting, obviously there is a fight on that front. As far as the buffalo, people are divided on how they should be addressed, depending on where they live.

No bills have made it far enough yet to get to the governor. Possibly next week he will have a few bills sent his way.

As always, stay safe!

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Sen. Russ Tempel, R-Chester, can be emailed at [email protected] .