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March 6, 2025
Auditor for spending public funds on a private attorney currently contracted as his special counsel.
Senators voted 34-16 on Thursday evening for the investigation into Regier’s use of Abby Moscatel, a Lakeside attorney first hired by Regier in 2023 to serve as his partisan attorney when he was House speaker.
Regier in an interview with Montana Free Press late last month insisted the contracts were compliant with the law.
Sen. Daniel Zolnikov, R-Billings, called for the filing of a “waste, fraud and abuse” complaint against Regier with the legislative auditor, a move similar to a complaint filed by Regier against former Senate president Jason Ellsworth on Jan. 15.
“This would be consistent with the process that the former president [Ellsworth] went through, as we should attempt to stay consistent,” Zolnikov said on the Senate floor Thursday evening. “Let the auditor do the report, and let him [Legislative Auditor Angus Maciver] do findings. That would be intellectually honest and consistent.”
After the vote, the Senate worked quickly through a roster of bills on third reading before adjourning for transmittal break, a period in which hundreds of non-revenue bills passed from one chamber are prepared to proceed in the other. The House lawmakers plan to adjourn for break Friday.
Sen. Shelley Vance, R-Belgrade, got the action rolling Thursday by attempting to refer Regier’s attorney matter to the Senate Rules Committee ahead of a possible ethics investigation. Vance said she first learned of the attorney hire in a report published by the Montana Free Press on March 5.
The news article addressed Regier’s hiring of a “chief legal counsel to the House majority” during the 2023 legislative session at a time when state law only allowed the House speaker and Senate president to share an attorney. Payments to Moscatel were small enough to not require a contract or the signature of the Senate president, who at that time was Ellsworth.
What started in that 2023 session, according to records gathered by Montana Free Press, were taxpayer dollars paid to Moscatel for work she did for the now-Senate president Regier. The work included tasks routinely done by other government employees and legal work that didn’t fit the scope laid out in the law cited in her contract. There was also a contract signed only after the work was done. The total payout from public funds for work during the 2023 session and for two contracts in 2024 was $22,970.
Additionally, the attorney represented Regier and others in a Lake County lawsuit in which plaintiffs challenged the Secretary of State’s certification of two 2024 ballot initiatives, Constitutional Initiative 127, which would have required a majority vote share to win an election, and Constitutional Initiative 126, which would have created a non-partisan four-candidate primary in statewide elections.
Regier refused to say whether taxpayer funds were used to pay for the private lawsuit when asked by Montana Free Press, answering instead that there were no invoices.
“I’m greatly troubled about what I read, and I believe we need to engage in further investigations,” Vance said on the Senate floor Thursday.
Vance said the following things should be investigated:
“Whether the president acted unlawfully by hiring an attorney to perform legal work after the failure of House Bill 260 [in the] the 2023 session, a bill intended to provide legal authority and funding to hire an attorney.
“Second, whether the president engaged in waste, fraud and abuse by hiring an attorney to perform legal tasks that the legal staff and Legislative Services typically perform, such as wordsmithing amendments.
“Third, whether the president acted unlawfully by using state resources to pay for legal services related to a private matter [the Lake County Constitutional Initiative 126 and Constitutional Initiative 127 lawsuit].
“Fourth, whether the president engaged in waste, fraud and abuse by attempting to bifurcate or evade limits of spending authority by accepting invoices for amounts less than $10,000 in legal services.
“Fifth, whether the president acted unlawfully by authorizing or directing his attorney to perform legal work on state and federal immigration laws without lawful authority.
“Sixth, whether the president failed to disclose a conflict of interest regarding Senate Bill 352, regarding immunity for legislative staff, including contracted legislative staff.
“Mr. President, these are many of the same issues raised in the matter involving Sen. Ellsworth. Since we referred Sen. Ellsworth to Ethics, it only makes sense we begin a similar investigation into the current president of the Senate.”
The Senate Ethics Committee is scheduled to hear arguments in the Ellsworth case on Friday. Ellsworth is accused of not disclosing a former business relationship with a man who received a contract for $170,100 to monitor government agencies as they put into practice new laws intended to limit the powers of Montana courts.
A related misdemeanor allegation that Ellsworth circumvented state procurement laws to issue the contract is being investigated by the state Department of Justice.
—Tom Lutey
Ellsworth files $5 million tort claim
Sen. Jason Ellsworth, the embattled former president of the Montana Senate, is seeking $5 million in compensation for alleged defamation by Legislative Auditor Angus Maciver.
The claim, filed on Monday with the state Risk Management and Tort Division of the Department of Administration, offers a preview of the senator’s defense to be presented Friday before the Senate Ethics Committee.
The claim stems from an investigation into Ellsworth’s awarding a $170,100 contract to a business associate. The senator didn’t disclose a conflict of interest stemming from his relationship with the contractor, which is what Friday’s hearing concerns.
The legislative auditor concluded that Ellsworth, R-Hamilton, attempted to split the contracted work into two agreements to avoid competitive bidding laws, which amounted to a misdemeanor abuse of power, which the state Department of Justice is investigating. Ellsworth in the tort claim lays out the origin of the investigation against him, which was launched Jan. 15 by Senate President Matt Regier, R-Kalispell, and Majority Aide Rhonda Knudsen, a former state representative. Regier and Knudsen reported the case through the legislative auditor’s fraud hotline.
“Senate leadership alerted the media and made the false statement that Ellsworth intentionally skipped the public bidding process, when he did not,” Ellsworth said in his claim.
The senator accuses the legislative auditor of rushing his investigation to accommodate an Ethics Committee that was already scheduling meetings on the matter.
Maciver, on Wednesday, said that he had received notice from Risk Management and Torts about the claim, but wouldn’t comment further. In Montana, claims against the state must be made 120 days before a civil lawsuit is filed.
Ellsworth puts Maciver’s investigation findings at the center of his claim because it has been repeatedly cited by the press. In the report, the legislative auditor concludes that Ellsworth approved an illegal contract, which the senator denies.
On Thursday, Ellsworth’s attorney, Joan Mell, lodged several complaints, starting with Regier not showing up for a scheduled March 5 examination by Mell. The president had been identified as a witness for the prosecution in the Ethics Committee hearing set for Friday.
Whether former Senate president Ellsworth appears at the hearing remains to be seen. Ellsworth left the Capitol early in the week. He has been voting by proxy since then.
Mell, on Thursday, said it wasn’t clear if Ellsworth would appear at the hearing in person. The attorney said she was receiving the Ethics Committee’s lawyer’s notes from witness interviews for the first time on Thursday. She also filed a cease and desist order against Maciver for his widely circulated report indicating that Ellsworth hadn’t complied with a contract posting deadline. The posting deadline was key to the misdemeanor charge against the senator.
—Tom Lutey
A possible GOP showdown in Ravalli County
With this week’s exit of Ron Marshall, R-Hamilton, from the Montana House of Representatives, the process to find a new lawmaker to represent House District 87 is underway.
Marshall, whose previous district includes Victor and Pinesdale in the Bitterroot Valley, announced he was leaving the Legislature earlier this week after a series of battles over vape and tobacco bills. Marshall owns two vape shops in Montana with his wife, Deanna, and has become a vocal critic of national tobacco companies and what he alleges is their outsized influence on Montana elected officials.
As the dramatic haze surrounding Marshall’s exit begins to dissipate, another is building over who local Republican leaders will choose toreplace him. The Ravalli County Central Committee will propose three candidates, one of whom will then be selected by the county commission to assume the HD 87 seat in the state House.
Before he left the Capitol building on Monday, Marshall endorsed Bill Lussenheide, a local resident active in Republican politics, to take his seat. Another name that has been floated is Kim Daily, a former candidate for House District 88, who Lussenheide endorsed.
But Ravalli County is filled with would-be appointeds of more moderate stripes than Lussenheide and Daily, including former Reps. Michelle Binkley and Wayne Rusk, who lost primary races in 2024 and are rumored to be under consideration.
Marshall forecasted that his absence from the Legislature would not be a make-or-break factor for significant policy this week, as both chambers accelerate toward the transmittal deadline. He said the commission would likely have a replacement by the time lawmakers return from the week-long break, set to end March 14.
A meeting called by the central committee’s precinct captains was scheduled for Thursday evening in Hamilton.
—Mara Silvers
