On Wednesday, the Republican supermajority in the Montana House stood united against Democratic attempts to modify the state’s primary two-year budget bill. Their collective decision paves the way for the bill to proceed to the state Senate, with a final vote expected in the following days.
The $14.3 billion budget bill, House Bill 2, authorizes most state spending for the two-year fiscal period starting July 1. It passed a preliminary House vote Wednesday on party lines, 68-32, following a day-long debate.
Republicans contended that although the budget might not be flawless, it represents a fair middle ground between conflicting priorities.
According to House Appropriations Chair Llew Jones, R-Conrad, it signifies a favorable equilibrium between the financial interests of taxpayers and the essential requirements of crucial services.
The budget, as it stands, according to Democratic members of the minority, fails to adequately allocate funds towards affordable housing, childcare accessibility, and reimbursement rates for healthcare providers accepting Medicaid, which happens to be the state’s most extensive public insurance program.
“Shortly before the vote, House Minority Leader Kim Abbott, D-Helena, expressed that the proposal fails to tackle the challenges we currently confront and does not adequately address the widespread crisis in our state.”
Democrats proposed 14 amendments during the debate, all of which were voted down by Republicans. With one exception — a vote by Rep. Jennifer Carlson, R-Manhattan, for stripping funding that would let the Montana Department of Corrections move some prisoners from its crowded facilities to a private prison in Arizona — Republicans voted along party lines, preserving the budget bill as it passed out of the House Appropriations Committee March 15.
The state budget is based on an executive proposal put forward by Gov. Greg Gianforte, a Republican, in November. Lawmakers who serve on the House and Senate appropriations committees have spent much of the winter digging into that proposal and amending it to produce the budget bill in its current form.
The bill is expected to undergo amendments by the Senate and will probably undergo a final round of negotiations between House and Senate lawmakers before being sent to Gianforte’s desk.
Of the $14.3 billion in spending authorized by the budget bill, $7.1 billion, or half, will come from federal funds passed through state coffers, most of that for health programs and highway construction. Another $4.2 billion is spending from the state General Fund, the flexible funding bucket at the center of most budget debates. Major General Fund spending categories include $1.6 billion for public education, $1.4 billion for state health and human services programs and $798 million for courts, prisons and state law enforcement.
Due to a $2.5 billion budget surplus in the state, along with state agencies grappling with a 14% inflation rate during the past two years, the budget bill incorporates significant increases in various areas. Notably, lawmakers have allotted $6.1 million to enhance the salaries of correctional officers and have allocated a substantial amount, approximately $295 million, to elevate Medicaid provider rates.
The current version of the budget bill authorizes a total spending that is approximately 14% higher than the two-year budget passed by the 2021 Legislature, which matches the rate of inflation. This amount is also equivalent to approximately $13,000 per resident of Montana.
Many of the big-ticket spending proposals under consideration by this year’s Legislature are included in other budget bills. For example, Gianforte signed a billion-dollar tax cut, rebate and spending package into law March 13. Other proposals in the legislative pipeline could spend hundreds of millions on, for example, infrastructure, housing, pension fund stability or further tax rebates.
As per usual, the majority of discussions held on the House floor on Wednesday centered around relatively minor components of the budget that hold significant practical or political importance, rather than major alterations to agency funding.
Democrats, for example, brought an amendment in an effort to strip $2 million of General Fund money that Republicans had added to the Montana Department of Justice budget for litigation funding. The justice department, led by Republican Attorney General Austin Knudsen, typically defends state agencies in litigation such as lawsuits brought by plaintiffs challenging the constitutionality of newly adopted laws.
The state has seen an uptick in such challenges, many of them brought by left-leaning attorneys and plaintiff groups, since Gianforte’s election in 2020 deprived Democrats of the governor’s veto pen. A bill to patch up overspent line items from the prior 2022-23 budget cycle, House Bill 3, was also signed into law March 15 with a $2.8 million appropriation for DOJ litigation costs.
On Wednesday, there were several other Democratic amendment efforts that took place.
- An effort to add $170 million to the state’s emergency rental assistance program.
- An effort to add $30 million to a program that subsidizes rent-restricted affordable housing construction by offering low-interest loans.
- An effort to add $13.5 million in state spending to the health budget in order to reimplement the state’s 12-month continuous coverage policy for its expanded Medicaid program, which Republicans eliminated last session.
- An effort to strip $7.8 million added to the corrections department budget to let it contract for the use of 120 beds at an Arizona prison owned by CoreCivic, formerly the Corrections Corporation of America.
- An effort to add $3.4 million for 15 additional staff at the Office of the State Public Defender, which provides representation in criminal cases to defendants who can’t afford their own attorneys. Gianforte’s budget proposal had called for 20 additional attorneys, investigators and administrative assistants. The current budget bill would add five attorney positions.
- An effort to add $600,000 to make free school lunches and breakfasts available to more K-12 students.
- An effort to restore a $150,000 cut made to funding for tribal colleges to help prospective students prepare for and take the HiSET exam, a high-school equivalency credential similar to the GED.
With the exception of the CoreCivic vote, which received support from Carlson, all other amendments were rejected along party lines.
Alex Sakariassen and Mara Silvers contributed reporting.
