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Lawmakers left the Capitol more than a month and a half ago, but the final policy decisions of the 2025 Lbegislature were still pending this week.
One of them, a bill expanding workers’ compensation for first responders to include mental health claims, passed out of the Montana Legislature April 25. Roughly six weeks later, Gov. Greg Gianforte vetoed the legislation, criticizing the policy’s narrow application to “individuals the bill strictly defines as first responders” in his June 9 veto letter.
George Richards, president of both the Montana State Council of Professional Fire Fighters and the Montana State Firefighters Association, said in a Wednesday interview with Montana Free Press that he received no warning about the upcoming veto. The bill saw unanimous support from Democrats throughout its legislative journey but split the GOP caucus.
“We had such great bipartisan support from both sides, Republicans and Democrats. They’ve seen the need, they’ve seen the effect,” Richards said. “Republican legislators that worked in the field stood up, testified on it. Same with Democrats.”
With the session gavelled out, the fate of legislation isn’t debated in committee rooms, but instead through messages to the governor asking him to either sign policies or wield his veto pen.
The state Department of Administration, Billings Chamber of Commerce, Montana Health Network and Montana Self Insurers’ Association all contacted Gianforte asking him to veto House Bill 394. Members of the coalition cited legal concerns about whether the initiative was equitable for other psychologically strenuous workers and the bill’s estimated $700,000 annual cost, which businesses would pay via higher worker’s compensation premiums, which businesses would pay via higher workers’ compensation premiums.
In the state budget bill, the fate of billions of billions of dollars remains uncertain.
In the state budget bill, the fate of millions of state dollars remains uncertain.
That’s because Gianforte had not, as of press time for this newsletter, announced his actions on House Bill 2, the Montana’s main budget measure for the two-year period that opens July 1. The governor can veto bills to reduce spending (10 were still awaiting action earlier this week) and issue line-item vetoes in spending bills such as the multibillion-dollar biannual budget.
Gianforte only receives bills as quickly as Senate President Matt Regier, R-Kalispell, and Speaker of the House Brandon Ler, R-Savage, sign them and transmit them to the governor. Friday is the last day Gianforte can act on the budget bill before it becomes law without his signature.
Over the last decade, the budget legislation has taken longer and longer to receive final action. In 2015, HB 2 was sent to the governor six days after it cleared the Legislature and was signed by the governor five days after that. HB 2 took 10 days to reach the governor in 2017 and was signed nine days later.
After the 2023 session adjourned, Democratic legislators sent a letter to then-Senate President Jason Ellsworth asking him why he had not yet signed critical legislation, including the budget, more than a month after passage. That year, Ellsworth signed HB 2 a month after the speaker of the House did, and then the governor signed it two days later, on June 14.
This year, it took 33 days from the budget’s passage to the House speaker’s signature and 40 days for the Senate president’s. The bill takes effect on July 1 each biennium.
In a Wednesday interview with MTFP, Regier indicated there was limited politicking in his bill-transmission timeline, though the Senate president did note that legislators sometimes asked him not to transmit bills until related legislation had been reviewed by the governor.
Ler could not be reached for comment.
—Zeke Lloyd
3 Questions For
Kimberly Berg has worked for the Hill County Health Department, based in Havre, for more than a decade. During that time, the county’s public health officer and health department director had never handled a measles outbreak — until this year.
When MTFP caught up with Berg on Wednesday, the county had recorded four measles cases — a tiny fraction of the more than 1,214 cases tallied nationwide by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As of the publication of this newsletter, Montana has cumulatively counted 22 infections among children and adults in Flathead, Gallatin, Hill and Yellowstone counties. Two people have been hospitalized, though Berg said those incidents were not in her county.
We asked Berg what the outbreak has revealed about the spread of infectious disease in her region of the Hi-Line and community trust in public health officials. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
How would you currently describe Hill County’s response and resiliency to the measles outbreak?
As far as our community’s response, I think there was a very quick, kind of shocking response of, “We’re actually seeing this in Hill County, Montana.” People kind of thought that the day would not come where we would see a measles outbreak. I was one of those people, prior to this year. The majority of people that have checked [their vaccine history] have been up to date on their vaccinations. And those that are not have very quickly scheduled an appointment to come in. I think we’ve seen a very positive response from the community.
There, of course, is always work to be done in terms of educating about communicable diseases. We’ve had some conversations with different adults that are very adamant that they’ve had [the MMR vaccine]. But without documentation, it didn’t happen. You can choose to not get it again. If you do get it again, it’s not going to have a negative effect on you.
When we’re talking to people, we have talked to a few people that are shocked that we’re not more rude to them when we find out that they choose not to vaccinate. And our stance at a health department is that it’s your choice. But our job is to give you every piece of information that we can to tell you the consequence of that choice.
Do you know what Hill County’s measles vaccination rate is?
I don’t right now, at this point in time, no. It’s very hard. We can run stuff through the state immunization registry, but not all clinics input into there, and not everybody has given consent for you to see their records. It’s a hard number to find. We have information on our licensed day cares because we go into them and we know. So we know coverage rates for those settings. I would say we’re close to 95% or higher coverage rates. And that’s for those specific age groups.
Our schools, we don’t know because our legislative session changed that. And schools don’t have to report that now to health departments. We work very closely with the school district here. We’re probably close to 85% or 90% for Havre Public Schools, but I don’t know that for sure. That’s just based on conversation. Our rural schools, that’s a smaller population, and I don’t know about that. It’s hard to get that data.
When measles first started showing up, we reached out to schools, and we were almost out of school [for the summer]. We reached out and said, “Just have this on your brain. If we get a measles case, we’re going to need to know who does not have an MMR.” So we started that conversation, and they were all very receptive and understanding of that. When you have a measles case in a school facility, you’re going to have a very large number of contacts. Because anybody who walked through that hallway or classroom or cafeteria two hours after that positive person is gone is a contact.
What has the outbreak of this particular disease taught you?
There’s always something new with each communicable disease. I think one big takeaway is that we lucked out with one of our highly suspected cases. They were tested, and the doctor was very adamant that it was measles based off its clinical presentation. We were waiting on the test results, and based on that exposure, there were multiple other community exposures. It was negative, but that was a big takeaway.
I think that has shown that one case can have a very large impact on your community. So I think even bringing that awareness forward — and thank goodness it was a negative test. The reality is that you don’t know what you’re walking into when you walk into a Walmart or something else. People could have anything. The next outbreak is just a plane ride away. So it’s just helpful for people to be as safe as they can — for people to vaccinate and educate as much as they can.
—Mara Silvers
Happenings
In 1996, Blackfeet banker Elouise Cobell and others filed a class action lawsuit against the federal government, alleging that the federal government had mismanaged tribal members’ land, funds and other assets. After years of litigation, courts found the government had violated its treaty responsibilities by improperly accounting for that money and by mismanaging tribal members’ assets. The $3.4 billion settlement, which was finalized in 2012, was the largest government settlement in U.S. history.
Now, 13 years later, about $38 million of that settlement remains available for eligible recipients. People familiar with the case say that settlement awards have not yet been distributed to more than 17,000 Individual Indian Money (IIM) account holders or their heirs who may be eligible. The Montana settlement value is estimated to be more than $1.3 million, and there are 694 deceased IIM account holders from Montana with potential heirs who could submit a claim. While payment amounts vary among deceased class members, the average settlement payment is about $1,700 nationally, according to lead plaintiff attorney William Dorris.
The deadline to file a claim is June 30. To submit a claim or learn more, visit cobellsettlement.com or call 800-961-6109.
After June 30, all remaining settlement funds will be distributed to the Cobell Scholarship Fund, which offers financial assistance to Native Americans pursuing higher education.
—Nora Mabie
Following the Law
The Trump administration’s attempt to circumvent tightened emissions standards that the president’s predecessor adopted for coal-fired power plants has generated a lawsuit with ramifications for Montana’s largest power plant.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency moved last week to reverse the Mercury and Air Toxics Standard rule that the Biden administration implemented last year to reduce airborne emissions of heavy metals and soot when coal is burned to create electricity.
In a press release June 11, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin described the rule implemented by former President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris as an attempt to “regulate coal, oil and gas out of existence” because those energy sources don’t “align with their narrow-minded climate change zealotry.”
The repeal attempt comes two months after Zeldin granted Colstrip, the coal-fired plant in eastern Montana, a short-term exemption from the rule using a provision of federal law relating to “national security” interests. NorthWestern Energy CEO Brian Bird, who has negotiated deals with other utilities in Washington to double his utility’s ownership in the 40-year-old plant, praised the EPA for the exemption when it was announced.
“This relief means our Montana customers will not be burdened with hundreds of millions of dollars of costs to comply with a new regulation that would only marginally increase the Colstrip Plant’s air toxics efficiency,” Bird wrote in an April press release.
Both the rule rollback EPA announced last week and a lawsuit environmental groups filed the following day to halt the exemptions have been widely anticipated as Trump and his agency heads work to prop up the increasingly uneconomic coal-fired power industry over the objection of climate and public health groups.
Montana Environmental Information Center Executive Director Anne Hedges said in a June 12 press release about the lawsuit that Colstrip is a national outlier because it lacks the pollution control technology the emissions rule requires.
“Harming human health to eke out a bit more shareholder profit from a coal plant — especially one that is the nation’s dirtiest for toxic emissions and is frequently broken when we need it most — is misguided, harmful and expensive,” Hedges said. “Perhaps the billionaires in charge don’t care about human health or their electricity bills, but everyday Montanas sure do.”
The EPA also moved to repeal a rule addressing the climate-warming carbon dioxide emissions stemming from coal combustion. That rule, which also has major implications for the coal industry, wasn’t set to go into effect until 2039.
—Amanda Eggert
Verbatim
“Money is an issue for local governments. Most of these folks can’t be housed with other people, so they are one to a [jail] cell. They have additional mental health and medical needs and often require more security. Counties do not get paid a single dollar to deal with it. [House Bill] 643 would have helped provide better medical and mental health care, better security and maybe some other services to these folks.”
—Missoula County Attorney Matt Jennings
Last week, Gov. Greg Gianforte vetoed House Bill 643, which allocated one-time funding of $6 million from the state’s Behavioral Health System for Future Generations fund to reimburse counties for holding inmates waiting for a bed at the Montana State Hospital.
Unlike the Department of Corrections, the Department of Public Health and Human Services does not reimburse counties for the cost of holding inmates waiting for placement at a state facility.
The bill, sponsored by Polson Republican Rep. Tracy Sharp, was among several proposed this year that aimed to address challenges with the state’s behavioral health system, including the long wait times for state hospital beds. On average, 100 to 125 people held daily in county jails are waiting for a bed at a DPHHS facility, according to the department. Those inmates often wait for several months, with some in jail for more than a year, according to Missoula and Yellowstone county sheriffs.
Jennings and other local county officials testified in favor of the bill as a way to help offset the growing costs of monitoring and caring for inmates with often severe mental health and medical needs.
Gianforte wrote in his veto letter that HB 643 is “unnecessary” given other investments in projects to increase the number of available forensic mental health beds and money available to counties through the Behavioral Health System for Future Generations fund to complete court-ordered evaluations and stabilization services locally.
Sharp disagreed with the governor’s argument and told MTFP he sent a bill fact-sheet to all legislators encouraging a veto override. Results of the by-mail vote will likely be available in July.
—Katie Fairbanks
On Our Radar 
Brad — How’s this for a multimedia merry-go-round? Reading Geoff Dyer’s book “But Beautiful” last month sparked my curiosity about early jazzman Coleman Hawkins, leading to the vacation-enabled purchase of a used pressing of “Giants of the Tenor Sax,” igniting an interest in jazz roots that promised satiety in a discounted copy of Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns’ lavish “Jazz: A History of America’s Music” at Aunt Bonnie’s Books back home in Helena. Which finally steered me to Burns’ encyclopedic documentary “Jazz,” currently available via Montana PBS Passport, providing a welcome reminder that any time — but especially today — is a good time to support public media.
Holly — The item I read in a parenting book that perhaps shook me the most is the idea that the Leave No Trace ethos is overapplied to children interacting with the outdoors, because kids need to build collections (think pockets full of rocks and sticks) to build strong connections to nature. Now I spend half my days stressing over how many wildflowers is too many for a toddler to pick.
Nora — Legendary journalist Mark Trahant recently won the I.F. Stone Medal for Journalistic Independence. I revisited his essay in ICT about his 50 years in journalism, writing for places like the Sho-Ban News, Navajo Times, Arizona Republic and Seattle Times, to name a few. His essay is funny and insightful. I especially appreciated his distinction between journalism and advocacy, and his emphasis on the importance of historical context when writing about tribes.
Eric — This engineering YouTuber and a business partner spent years trying to manufacture an entirely made-in-America grill scrubber. The hurdles they bumped into represent some serious food for thought for anyone who wants to see the U.S. consumer economy less reliant on Chinese imports (spoiler: the list price for the product they’re now selling is… $74.99).
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