HELENA – Every legislative session takes on a life of its own, evolving and maturing, stumbling and striding, and ultimately striking an accord as both chambers plod through months of discourse and debate, hashing out the finer points of statewide policies bristling with consequences that will affect the lives of a million Montanans.
The 64th Montana Legislature was no exception, particularly in its final days of labor-intensive, single-minded efficiency, during which the fragile political sphere seemed poised to transcend partisan politics and accomplish its singular objective of passing a state budget. It then took two deliberate steps backward and descended into the murky waters of dysfunction.
The 150 lawmakers that make up the body’s two chambers convened here Jan. 5, two months after the state GOP won a 29-21 majority in the Senate and a 59-41 majority in the House, mounting a potential Republican front to dispatch the Democratic governor’s agenda and roll out its key priorities of tax relief, limited government spending, private sector jobs, and natural resource development.
And while the tide of Republican victories set the stage for a leviathan to quash the Democrats’ agenda, the upshot was much different than what some pundits predicted, even as others, including Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock, presaged a session characterized by compromise.
On the 83rd day of the session, during an interview in his cluttered office on the second floor of the state Capitol, Bullock said he was “pleased but not surprised” with the outcome.
His initial plan to expand Medicaid to 70,000 uninsured Montanans was rejected, but a Republican-sponsored compromise bill emerged and was passed as about a dozen moderate House Republicans joined all 41 Democrats to endorse it.
A similar faction of Republicans would join Democrats to pass the Flathead tribal water compact, which Bullock signed into law April 24, approving the last and most contentious of seven tribal water compacts in the state. He was flanked by the bill’s sponsor, Sen. Chas Vincent, R-Libby, and Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes Chairman Vernon Finley, and surrounded by about 150 supporters.
And while those supporters included members of both major parties, many Republican lawmakers were absent from the celebratory ceremony, deflated by the double-barrel action dealt to some of their top priorities by the rogue Republicans.
At the beginning of the session, the conservative GOP leaders were hopeful their party could work to overcome a splintered caucus that led to squabbling as more moderate Republicans squared off against the hardline party members, who opposed Bullock’s policy initiatives at nearly every turn.
Last session, that rift spread through the state Senate, but the midterm election cycle last November saw some members of the conservative faction shift to the House, and some moderates move to the Senate. The leadership transition did little to mitigate the political infighting.
Sen. Mark Blasdel, R-Kalispell, served last session as House Speaker and, in his fourth and final term as a House representative, earned respect on both sides of the aisle, evinced in the passage of the state’s major budget bill with a unanimous 100-0 vote.
In November’s election, Blasdel handily won a seat in Senate District 4, and set an ambitious agenda that included reducing a business equipment tax, property tax reappraisals, funding for education, income tax reductions, renegotiating the Flathead tribal water compact with the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, and rejecting Medicaid expansion.
Passage of the latter measures disappointed Blasdel and other conservative lawmakers.
“Obviously as a conservative Republican you look at the water compact and Medicaid expansion and they are frustrations, but the majority spoke,” Blasdel said. “I think it just showed how far the supporters were willing to go to accomplish that.”
Blasdel said a change to state House rules played a major role in the GOP defeats, as Democrats and moderate Republicans forced their agenda through the Legislature. The new rules allowed six so-called “silver bullet” measures, requiring a simple majority vote of the full House to blast it out of committee and onto the House floor.
As the rules played out this session, and with advocates of both Medicaid expansion and the tribal water compact aware that they couldn’t muster a 60-vote supermajority, both measures passed with a simple majority under the silver-bullet designation.
“Those rules changes at the very beginning laid a foundation and a setting for some major landslides,” Blasdel said. “We saw that with the water compact, with dark money and with Medicaid expansion.”
“But that’s how it works,” he added. “There are always a lot of changes in play, with new faces and new personalities entering into the spectrum. Every session is different and every session I’ve been a part of, there have been some issues that struck a nerve and tore apart a caucus. Last session there were some very confrontational battles that divided the Republican caucus in the Senate. This session that played out more in the House. With that came some hurt feelings and negative relationships.”
Bullock said he didn’t have much sympathy for the “extreme minority” in the House, and in the final days of the session called on its members to negotiate and pass a final budget-and-infrastructure bill, or else explain their decision to kill it to Montanans.
But looking back on the last four months, Bullock said the accomplishments of the session far outweigh its shortcomings.
“I think coming in there were a lot of pundits that thought with a divided government like this we wouldn’t be able to get things done.” Bullock said. “I wouldn’t say I am surprised by our accomplishments, but I would say that my belief in the system is reaffirmed because at the end of the day the majority of the Montana Legislature came to Helena with the expectation of getting things done and serving their communities, and I think our success this session is a testament to that.”