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On Wednesday, Rep. Bill Mercer, R-Billings, was on a mission: to strip out what he viewed as excessive spending from the state health department’s multi-billion-dollar budget, even if only by $1 million or $2 million over the biennium.
In one amendment after another, Mercer and other Republican budget hawks tried to downsize the largest section of House Bill 2, the state’s primary budget bill. They proposed nixing a large rate increase for vocational rehabilitation trainers who help people transition out of the Montana State Hospital and other state institutions. Other amendments aimed to undo transfers of federal TANF funds, or Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, to food banks, child mentorship and after-school programs.
Again and again, restrictive amendments by Mercer and others were voted down by a large bipartisan bloc. Oftentimes, majority Republicans who voted with Democrats to maintain higher funding were the silent minority of their caucus. Few got up to speak on the floor in defense of the TANF reallocation or the higher rates for vocational rehabilitation trainers. The overt plea for empathy was left to Democrats.
“I’m gonna rise in opposition to this amendment and I’m going to try really hard to soften my good friend in seat 96’s heart,” said Rep. Becky Edwards, D-Bozeman, referring to Mercer’s desk number during debate on an amendment to roll back $500,000 a year in TANF funding going to child mentorship programs.
“My heart is plenty soft,” Mercer said, drawing chuckles from the crowd. “I am absolutely, though, concerned about compliance with these programs and the way they’re supposed to be used.”
Another Bozeman Democrat, Rep. Eric Matthews, later gave Mercer a hug.
A similar dynamic played out in debate over the education section of the state budget. Rep. Terry Falk, R-Kalispell, unsuccessfully tried in one amendment to strip out funding to help school districts pay off debt and, in another, sought to cut an administrative position related to overseeing university buildings. In those instances, the proposals were criticized by other Republicans, with one legislator calling the second amendment “penny wise, pound foolish.”
The rejection of belt-tightening amendments was difficult to predict at the outset of the session. Democrats are firmly in the minority in both chambers. And some of the most powerful seats on individual budget committees were held this session by members of the Montana Freedom Caucus, who often advocate for fiscal restraint. Rep. Jerry Schillinger, R-Circle, chaired the committee tasked with overseeing natural resources management and transportation spending. Rep. Jane Gillette, R-Three Forks, chaired the health budget committee.
By the end of Wednesday’s floor session, though, the minority faction of Republican moderates and minority Democrats became the most influential force in shaping the $16.6 billion budget for the next biennium.
But House Bill 2 still has a long path to becoming law. Some lawmakers with similar budget orientations to Mercer will likely try other efforts to trim spending in the Senate chamber.
—Mara Silvers
Reporter’s Notebook 📔
The Montana American Indian Caucus, a group of Native American lawmakers, meets every Wednesday during the legislative session to discuss its agenda, hear from guest speakers, inform the audience about bills and their progress, and often much more. As the legislative fellow for Montana Free Press and ICT (formerly Indian Country Today), I cover these meetings.
Every meeting begins with a prayer, typically offered by a caucus member. This is taken as a chance to pray for protection, guidance and a positive future for Montana and its citizens.
Wednesday’s meeting was different compared to others, due to the lack of members attending at the start because of the hectic week. Only Sen. Jonathan Windy Boy, D-Box Elder, and Lance FourStar, director of the caucus, were there, and others would join later that hour.
Windy Boy took an unexpected route to open the meeting, calling on me: “Before we get started here, I want to call on Kaiden, if you [would] come up here [and] say a quick prayer.”
As a reporter, I am very accustomed to not saying a word during these meetings and instead focusing on what others say. Being asked to talk took me by complete surprise. It was an honor to be asked by an elder and a member of the caucus to do the opening prayer. I have never been asked to lead a prayer before.
“Little unexpected,” I said as I approached the podium, trying to gather my thoughts. ”Dear Lord, look over us today and just watch everybody in this building. Make sure we all stay safe, and make the right decisions as we go forward and just promote life here in Montana for all of our communities. Thank you. Amen.”
As I led the prayer, I could feel my nerves catching up to me. By the time I sat down, my hands were shaking to the point that I could not write, which was a bit strange and, to me, somewhat embarrassing.
Part of me was glad the moment took me by surprise. I didn’t have time to prepare, so I didn’t have time to think. Looking back, though, I wish I had said a few more things. I wish I had thanked Windy Boy for asking me to lead the prayer and I wish I had spoken in Salish, my Native language that I have spent the last four years learning. I also feel a bit ridiculous that public speaking is still as difficult as it is for me, particularly in these more formal settings like the state’s Capitol. I guess that’s what I get for sitting in the front row.
I’ve been working as a legislative fellow for four months. At this point, I’ve gotten to know each of the American Indian Caucus members and have had very lengthy conversations with a few of them. I think I’ve spent maybe 50 hours talking to them about Indian Country and how it will be affected by certain bills. This is often done in a much more casual setting, which is easy to do, but formal public speaking still is daunting.
As reporters, we’re taught to observe a story, but on Wednesday, I wondered if delivering the prayer could be viewed as problematic. I represent MTFP and ICT, and as a journalist, it is my job to find stories, get the facts, put them on paper (more accurately in a Google doc) and let readers decide what they think. I wondered whether my prayer would blur the lines of objectivity.
But part of reporting on Indian Country means building strong relationships with members of the American Indian Caucus. It means joking with them in the hallways of the Capitol. At one point this session, I even jokingly called Rep. Donavon Hawk, D-Butte, Crow and Crow Creek Sioux, portly. He replied, “My momma told me I’m big-boned.”
Building trust means calling and texting caucus members with questions about legislation. And on Wednesday, it meant saying a prayer before their meeting.
After the caucus, I asked Windy Boy why he asked me to open with the prayer. He simply replied: “To the creator, we are all created equal.”
— Kaiden Forman-Webster
For the Record 📣
During an April 1 visit to a second grade classroom in East Helena, Gov. Greg Gianforte signed a bill increasing state funding for Montana’s K-12 public schools by $52 million over the next two years. Gianforte, a Republican, praised sponsor Rep. David Bedey, R-Hamilton, and other legislators for shepherding the measure to his desk — or, rather, the low elementary school table that served as a remote substitute — with his office hailing House Bill 15 as a “signature element” of his latest budget proposal.
From session to session, House Bill 15 routinely serves as the Legislature’s vehicle for inflation-based adjustments to the state’s education budget. As education advocates have noted to MTFP in the past, prior to 2015 the bill was often something of a political football. In more recent years, however, the legislation has often landed on the governor’s desk before the midway point of the session. In 2021, Gianforte signed HB 15 into law on Feb. 25. In 2023, he signed it on March 2. This time around, the proposal cleared the House Jan. 27 and received its final Senate vote March 31, with bipartisan support in both chambers.
Timing for HB 15 is key as local school boards, which craft their coming year’s budgets throughout the spring, look to the state for funding assurance. The amount of money in the bill is critical too, as recent sessions have highlighted. While HB 15 has won relatively speedy passage in sessions over the past decade, lawmakers continue to wrestle with a 3% cap applied to the funding increases. Democrats argued for adjusting education dollars above that cap, and as local schools struggled with high post-pandemic inflation rates, Republicans have increasingly warmed to the discussion of a new approach. Yet the frustration has carried over into the 2025 session.
“No doubt this spring a lot of school districts will see school bond issues or mill levies, a number of which will probably fail,” Sen. Willis Curdy, D-Missoula, argued on the Senate floor in March, citing the rising costs of electricity, insurance and school buses. “I’m going to have to end up voting for this thing, but I just want to list my protests because we’re not doing enough.”
Enter House Bill 266, a measure from Rep. Luke Muszkiewicz, D-Helena, to establish a process for increasing the state’s inflation cap. The proposal creates a pathway for the Legislature, the governor and the Office of Public Instruction to consider higher adjustments by comparing school funding levels with the consumer price index.
Proponents argue HB 266 would help alleviate budget challenges faced by schools during unforeseen spikes in inflation, and the bill has already cleared both chambers on strong bipartisan votes. On April 2, it landed back in the House with amendments from the Senate, setting the stage for a reconciliation committee to iron out the details.
—Alex Sakariassen
Verbatim 💬
“I would just point to two words in the bill that are supposed to guide this committee over the interim. They are ‘independence’ and ‘quality’ — that’s the standard.
I would ask each member to think for a minute: What do we mean by ‘independence’? I could posit to the body every time the Supreme Court says something we do is unconstitutional, they’re showing a lot of independence and an ability to look at things differently than we do, and to look at the laws and make an independent judgment. Or we could say, ‘Jeez, they should do exactly what we’re saying they should do’ — and somehow that’s independence. We could define this word in so many ways that I just don’t think this is an assignment that we want to make.
… I just think this is a fool’s errand.”
—Rep. Tom France, D-Missoula, speaking on the House floor Tuesday about House Bill 840
Rep. Lukas Schubert, R-Kalispell, introduced HB 840 to establish a committee of legislative leadership-appointed lawmakers to investigate Montana judges’ “independence” and the “quality of their rulings” and report to the public on their findings.
In his introduction to the bill, Schubert nodded to the “back and forth” in the House regarding tension between the legislative and judicial branches.
“We need to pass this bill to address this issue that folks are having, where we don’t know: Are these judges independent? Are they not? Let’s actually find out in the interim,” Schubert said.
Lawmakers voted down HB 804 by a 39-61 margin. Nineteen Republicans joined all of the House’s Democrats in rejecting the measure, which included a $473,000 expenditure.
—Amanda Eggert
Hot Potato 🥔
House Bill 890 has proven to be a contentious element of Montana’s efforts to modernize its criminal justice data system. Unlike its predecessor legislation from two years ago, this bill has sparked fierce debate between lawmakers and justice officials over the proper handling of sensitive criminal data.
Senate Bill 11 — which passed with near unanimity in 2023 and without opposition from the Montana Department of Justice — established the original framework for creating a centralized “criminal justice data warehouse” system that consolidates data from state, local, tribal and federal sources. This foundational legislation aimed to break down data silos and enable better-informed policy decisions while maintaining rigorous privacy protections.
This year’s HB 890 takes a more aggressive approach by mandating that the Montana DOJ, the judicial branch and the state Department of Corrections determine the best way to incorporate “criminal history records” into the warehouse. While the bill itself doesn’t explicitly request sensitive information, the DOJ has raised concerns that its wording could be interpreted to include highly restricted data like biometric information, arrest records without convictions and confidential pre-sentencing investigations.
The outcome of this debate will directly impact how criminal justice information is handled in Montana. For residents with any interaction with the justice system, these decisions determine who can access their records and how this information might be used in the future.
Notably, the DOJ has expressed support for the data warehouse’s underlying goals. However, as Selene Koepke, an assistant attorney general with the Montana DOJ, explained during testimony during a hearing on the legislation March 31: “As a prosecutor, the words ‘criminal history’ as you’ll find in this bill have a very specific meaning to me. A criminal history comes from the NCIC, the National Criminal Information Center, run by the FBI. It’s a repository of all of the criminal offenses charged or committed by everyone across the nation.”
She emphasized that the DOJ believes the bill would require it or the state Department of Corrections to provide criminal history information including that criminal history data from NCIC, which she said would pose significant legal issues. Koepke warned: “The information in those reports is made confidential by federal law and only those in criminal justice agencies … can receive that information. It is essential that we carefully consider the risks of integrating this into the data warehouse. In today’s cyber risk threat environment, we must ask, is the connection worth the potential security risk?”
Rep. Bill Mercer, R-Billings, the bill’s sponsor, closed the hearing by indicating a willingness to modify the bill to address these concerns. “If you want to redefine criminal history information the way the department wants you to redefine it, I think that’s OK. I’m not looking for confidential criminal justice information,” Mercer said. However, the bill was not amended before it passed the House Judiciary Committee along a party-line vote Tuesday.
Meanwhile, another proposed bill sponsored by Rep. Amy Regier, R-Kalispell, House Bill 117 builds on SB 11’s foundational goals by outlining a series of projects for the 2025-2026 interim period, designed to further enhance the data warehouse in preparation for the 2027 legislative session.
Together, these bills reveal Montana’s ongoing struggle to balance the benefits of a unified, data-driven criminal justice system with the need to protect individual privacy and maintain stringent security measures. As implementation moves forward, the resolution of this issue will set precedents for how Montana handles sensitive data in an increasingly digital governance landscape.
—Jacob Olness
Department of Corrections
In the March 21 edition of MT Lowdown, Montana Free Press mistakenly wrote that a disability rights protest at the Montana Capitol over Section 504 was hosted by Disability Rights Montana, a statewide advocacy group, as well as other organizations. That primary attribution was incorrect. The event was organized by Ability Montana, Summit Independent Living, Living for Today and Tomorrow and North Central Independent Living Services. It was attended by staff from Disability Rights Montana. We regret the error.
Highlights ☀️
In other news this week —
Lawmakers urge the state health department to reinstate a tribal relations position.
Energy providers look to set precedent for wildfire liability law.
The governor’s income and property tax bills are killed off, for now.
On Our Radar 
Amanda — Photographer Jake Mosher made “countless sojourns” into the mountains south of Bozeman to capture an image he’d first conceptualized in 2010 of the Milky Way reflected in Hyalite Reservoir, according to recent reporting in the Bozeman Daily Chronicle. Mosher finally nabbed the image in 2023 — and later an award in the 2024 World Nature Photography contest.
Brad — Splashy think pieces on the prides and plights of Gen X tend to be pretty cringe by definition, not least in the rolled eyes of Gen Xers, but The New York Times’ recent requiem for the dead-ending creative career paths of my generational cohort landed with an actual ache of recognition.
Tom — Days before China announced broad, 34% counter-tariffs on U.S. goods Friday, the nation’s strategy for displacing U.S. global order was the subject of a lecture Monday as part of the Mansfield Dialogues series. The center played host to Dr. Rush Doshi, director of the China Strategy Initiative at the Council on Foreign Relations. Just under an hour and available online, the discussion provides good context for our latest emerging trade war and state of global influence.
Zeke — During an acute bout of loneliness, I opted for a viewing of The Banshees of Inisherin. The drama about two friends living on an island west of Ireland offered scenes of warm friendship, depictions of stark solitude and reminders that we don’t have full autonomy over our preference between the two.
Holly — Growing up, my dad kept just four cassettes in his truck, which came equipped with an auto-reverse tape deck. That means I listened to Elton John’s greatest hits on repeat (and repeat and repeat) for countless drives across Oregon. Somehow I’ve never grown sick of Sir Elton, so it was a delight to hear about his new album with Brandi Carlile.
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