Get an insider’s look into what’s happening in and around the halls of power with expert reporting, analysis and insight from the editors and reporters of Montana Free Press. Sign up to get the free Capitolized newsletter delivered to your inbox every Thursday.
February 6, 2025
Allegations of criminal activity by former Montana Senate leader Jason Ellsworth are being handed over to the state Department of Justice following a heated Thursday floor debate in the Senate chambers in which minority Democrats prevailed.
Against the wishes of the Republican leadership, lawmakers voted to suspend a Senate Ethics Committee investigation into Ellsworth and send allegations of criminal official misconduct to Republican Attorney General Austin Knudsen.
The move by Senate Minority Leader Pat Flowers came after Republicans attempted to strip Ellsworth of a key committee assignment, at which point Flowers said the political motivations of Ellsworth’s own party made it impossible to adjudicate the 2023 Senate president fairly.
“It shined a bright light on what this is about, from my perspective,” Flowers said. “If this was going to continue for next week, two weeks, three weeks of this process, it was time to get it out of this body. Let us get to work on actual legislation and let the Department of Justice do the investigation.”
Republicans have openly stated that Ellsworth is guilty since news broke that he awarded $170,100 in contracted work to a former business associate, Bryce Egglsteon. Ethics proceedings against the Hamilton Republican were launched after a brief investigation in which neither Ellsworth nor Eggleston were interviewed. Initially when selecting an attorney to prosecute the case, Senate President Matt Regier, R-Kalispell, chose Matt Monforton, a lawyer and former Republican legislator who had been disparaging Ellsworth on social media for several days.
With support from a handful of Republicans, Democrats managed a 27-22 win to send the Ellsworth matter to prosecutors at the DOJ. The chamber has 32 Republicans and 18 Democrats. Ellsworth voted with the Democrats to send his case to Kndusen.
Ellsworth is accused of splitting the contract awarded to Eggleston into two agreements to avoid state law requiring contracts of $100,000 or more to be competitively bid. The split contract, and questions about Eggleston’s ability to do the work, are the foundation of the Senate’s case against its former leader.
Under the agreement, Eggleston was to observe and report on state agencies as they put into practice laws proposed by Republican legislators to limit the power of Montana courts.
Monday, a Senate Ethics Committee of two Republicans and two Democrats formalized the allegations against Ellsworth, identifying two potential violations of the law: official misconduct, a misdemeanor punishable with up to six months in jail; and failure to disclose a conflict of interest.
At one point in the Monday proceeding, Ellsworth’s attorney, Joan Mell, suggested that any criminal allegations be left to the state Department of Administration to identify and, if warranted, referred to the county attorney.
Senate Republicans on Thursday responded in acrimony after Flowers succeeded in delivering the case to the Department of Justice. Republican Sen. Daniel Emrich of Great Falls announced that he would attempt expulsion votes against both Ellsworth and Flowers on Friday.
Emrich then accused Flowers of referring to Ellsworth as the minority leader’s “golden goose,” for delivering just enough Republican votes for the chamber’s 18 Democrats to control the Senate. The allegation brought every Democrat in the chamber to their feet in defense of Flowers as he demanded Emrich not be allowed to make false statements.
Several Republicans voiced disappointment about referring the Ellsworth matter to the attorney general.
“I am angry. I am embarrassed and angry,” said Sen. John Fuller, R-Kalispell. “And you do not want to see me angry because I have been known to hold a grudge for a long time.”
At one point in the debate, Billings GOP Sen. Tom McGillvray, who had attempted to remove Ellsworth from the powerful Senate Finance and Claims Committee, announced that he was in communication via text message with Attorney General Knudsen and that Knudsen had indicated the Senate couldn’t defer the criminal matter to the Department of Justice. That was met with gestures of disagreement by the four attorneys serving as Democrats in the Senate. The Republican majority doesn’t include an attorney.
“The duties of the attorney general are to be able to appoint a county attorney, when ordered or directed, to institute and prosecute and put in the proper court,” said Sen. Shane Morigeau, a Democrat and attorney from Missoula. “I think what we did today is we’ve made a point very clear that there have been allegations of official misconduct, of criminal activity.”
Republicans suggested that handing the Ellsworth matter to prosecutors would assure the outcome of the investigation into his actions wouldn’t be decided before the 2025 Legislature ended.
The simmering subtext was that Senate conservatives had identified Ellsworth as a moderate voter capable of preventing hard-right members of the party from killing key legislation like continuing an expanded Medicaid eligibility, which Republican moderates and Democrats have managed to keep alive for a decade.
The first Senate floor session of the Legislature was just 15 minutes old when Senate Democrats staged a revolt by partnering with Ellsworth and a handful of other Republicans to secure better committee assignments for eight lawmakers stuck on a committee which they said had no real purpose. In doing so, they populated key committees with moderate voters capable of derailing conservative Republican priorities.
—Tom Lutey
Dems learn to stop worrying and love an income tax cut
For years, legislative Democrats and progressive advocacy groups have criticized Republican efforts to cut state income taxes, warning that tax rate reductions risk eventual budget shortfalls that could force catastrophic cuts to Montana’s public services.
This year, though, the Legislature’s top Democratic leaders — Senate Minority Leader Pat Flowers, D-Belgrade, and House Minority Leader Katie Sullivan, D-Missoula — have signed onto a Republican bill that would ultimately reduce Montana’ income tax collections by more than $200 million a year.
The measure, Senate Bill 203, has been pitched by Senate Republican leadership as an alternative to Gov. Greg Gianforte’s plan to ratchet down the state’s top-bracket income tax rate. As the Montana tax system is currently structured following Gianforte-backed rate cuts in 2021 and 2023, the higher of two rate brackets, taxed at 5.9%, kicks in at a fairly low taxable income level — only $35,500 a year for individual filers who take a standard deduction.
The governor, a Republican, wants to ratchet that top-bracket rate down to 4.9% and offer a modest increase to a working-family tax credit, arguing Montana’s top rate should be competitive with neighboring states (which, of course, have statewide sales taxes). When fully implemented, the Gianforte proposal would reduce annual collections by about $350 million a year.
Leaders of the Legislature’s Republican majority have countered with other bills, SB 203 and House Bill 337, that would instead cut taxes by raising the dividing point between the two income brackets. Those bills would apply a lower 4.7% rate to more middle-income dollars while leaving a higher rate on higher incomes. Supporters argue that approach would produce a tax cut more focused on the middle class.
When asked about their support for a sweeping income tax cut at a press briefing this week, Flowers and Sullivan said their endorsement of SB 203 was really about politics rather than policy — an effort to send a signal that they’d prefer an alternative to the governor’s top-down approach and also to make sure that their minority party is at the table as an inevitable tax cut is negotiated.
Pretty much every Republican she’s spoken with this session has indicated that they plan to make sure an income tax cut passes this session, Sullivan noted.
“When I hear that commitment in their voices,” she said, “I realize I need to get on something and try to make movement.”
Flowers echoed the sentiment, saying he’d prefer a tax cut that isn’t focused on the highest earners — and that he thinks $200 million a year is more affordable than $350 million.
“It does have a lower price tag,” he said.
—Eric Dietrich
