Montana Republicans swept into the state capitol for a variety of reasons, but perhaps none as big as the rising national debt and dissatisfaction with President Barack Obama’s health care plan. Both issues have dominated the debate in the first weeks of the Legislature, except now it’s the GOP on the defense.
One of the first actions legislators must take when they arrive in Helena is to pass a bill that pays for the cost of the session. With extra scrutiny on every dollar spent by state government, a typically uneventful vote became a preview of what the next few months may look like. But the criticism varied widely in its merit.
First, the mundane: When the Legislature approved a $1,000 stipend for lawmakers to buy laptop computers as part of the so-called “feed bill,” the backlash, mainly from the GOP’s political opponents, was swift.
Gov. Brian Schweitzer took the opportunity to call the Republican majority hypocrites and point out that he had taken it upon himself to stop any new computer purchases in the executive branch to save money.
“On one hand they come to town and they want to cut the size of government,” he quipped. “Does that mean all of the government except for themselves?”
To me, a $1,000 computer allowance is fair. An adequate machine is an absolute requirement (at least it should be) for lawmakers to stay organized and accessible during the session. Ours is a citizen Legislature and many of its members from rural areas likely don’t have laptops of their own.
The most troubling part of the feed bill involves increases in legislators’ expenses in other areas. It should first be noted that this does not include a salary increase, which remained frozen. Admirably, Rep. Mike Miller, R-Helmville, said he had intended to amend the bill so it would actually cut legislator pay by 5 percent, but the Montana Constitution prevents the Legislature from setting its own salary.
Instead, the rising costs can be attributed mainly to health care, which anyone who works in the private sector is all too familiar with. Except our contributions to the monthly premium for insurance have increased to make up the difference. That’s not the case on the state level.
The bill to cover state employees, including legislators, has increased and so has the amount of money taxpayers must pay to provide a health insurance plan for all of them. And it’s a quite a plan indeed.
Each lawmaker receives $733 a month that they can use to either join the state employee health plan or accept as a subsidy to pay for their own existing policy. That amount easily covers the monthly premium for medical coverage for a single person. If a state employee wants to add his or her family to the plan, the out-of-pocket costs come to anywhere between $36 and $189 a month.
It’s a screaming deal and – as Mike Dennison of Lee Newspapers reported last week – 128, or 86 percent, of legislators have already signed up for the program. The funding bill, which totals $8.77 million, includes $2.67 million for lawmakers’ health insurance.
What makes that number especially egregious is that it pays to cover part-time employees. Lawmakers convene for just 90 days every two years. While they may attend a few committee meetings between sessions, they are mostly at home working at jobs that likely don’t provide health insurance as good as the state’s.
Rep. Janna Taylor, R-Dayton, has suggested rolling back the state health insurance plan to ’07 and ’09 levels. That’s a good start, but doesn’t go nearly far enough. Lawmakers who work for the state part-time should have their benefits cut in half, which means the state would cover about 50 percent of the cost of their monthly premiums. Perhaps lawmakers’ jobs in the private sector can make up the difference.
And if Republicans make good on their threats to take steps to remove the state from Medicaid, which could jeopardize health care coverage for low-income families, then lawmakers should not receive any benefits at all.