Update on the legislative interim

This past week, we held our final interim Local Government Committee meeting prior to session starting. We had a report from the League of Cities and Towns. They feel some of the bills passed last session did not take into consideration the input from the League should have had stronger consideration. Their opinion is that these bills infringed upon local control of zoning. Last session we had no less than 56 bills introduced dealing with housing or lack thereof. There is no doubt a housing problem exists. Many of these housing bills ended up either dying in committee, being contested in court, or moving forward to hopefully solve issues.

A property tax report was given by the governor’s task force. There were a number of ideas brought forward by the task force, to include raising taxes on housing not lived in by the owner for more than seven months per year. I believe there will be many more proposals come session time.

It is the time before session that many groups and associations want to visit with legislators about the issues affecting them. This week, I have visited with Montana Association of Counties, Montana Oil, Gas, and Coal, Local Hospital Mill Levy folks, and the State Optometrists. I appreciate these groups reaching out and wanting to chat as all of these issues are good to know about beforehand, given what is coming in next session.

The St. Mary Diversion Project, the Milk River, and MSU-N are all at the top of my priority list this year. It is one of my objectives to explain to my counterparts that Northeastern Montana is an integral part of the state. Now that my Senate District 14 has been reconfigured, I have been trying to learn the new district. I thank the St. Mary folks for the updates every two weeks and the personal visits from east of Havre.

As for harvest, locally it has just been cleaned up, and reports are a bit better than anticipated. Winter wheat is, for the most part in, and folks are cleaning up the equipment to put it away for the year.

Judy and I have had the younger grandkids here for a few days this past bit, getting to know them better. Now we are going to college football games to watch the older grandkids play. We have two grandsons playing this year, one at Montana Tech in Butte and the other is playing for MSU-N. We try to make it to both teams’ home games. It’s tough on their grandmother when they play each other; that game will be coming up soon.

As Always, Stay Safe!

——

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