Legislature hosted by 4-H'ers

We finished Week Four of the 68th legislative session last week. For breakfast one morning last week, we were hosted by 4-H members from most of the counties throughout Montana. My home county sponsored me, and I also got to say hello to Chouteau County 4-H’ers as they sponsored Rep. Paul Tuss. Additionally, the School for the Deaf and Blind from Great Falls performed a song for us using American Sign Language. It was a very impressive program to have on the floor of the Senate.

I just looked at the proposed constitutional amendments. The count is currently over 40 to fix our Montana constitution. For the most part, the titles are so short one would have no idea what might come from them, good or bad. In order to see these for yourself, go to https://leg.mt.gov and do a bill lookup, then search for constitutional amendments. The amendment proposals range from taxes to guns, voting, and on from there. In our caucus workgroup, we were asked to come up with three to five we could support as a group. We all turned in a vote on what we felt we could maybe support. As of yet, I haven’t seen any results of that poll.

Also, if you email me, I ask that you put your county as part of the subject line. This helps me sort the junk mail and prioritize constituent emails. At times, my inbox gets flooded by emails from who-knows-where, sometimes with copy/paste or no content at all. This is frustrating when I am trying to get information on a bill or following up with someone from my district and cannot find what I need. Likewise, if you have called and my voicemail box is full, bear with me as my phone is like emails, getting bombarded.

I did get the truancy bill (SB 129) passed through the Senate. In current Montana statute, a student cannot be considered truant until age 7. SB 129 states, if a child is placed in a public school at 5 or 6 years of age, a parent or guardian is responsible to make sure they attend school regularly, the same as for students aged 7 and older. This bill was supported by all of the school associations. Research shows when a young student is disengaged with regular schooling and gets behind, if they are still behind in the third grade, it’s much harder for them to ever catch back up and reach grade level.

The highlight of the week was the Governors’ State of the State and the Democrat rebuttal.

As always, stay safe.

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