{"id":16376,"date":"2017-02-23T18:59:43","date_gmt":"2017-02-24T01:59:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=16376"},"modified":"2017-02-23T18:59:43","modified_gmt":"2017-02-24T01:59:43","slug":"legislative-update-thursday-feb-23","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2017\/02\/legislative-update-thursday-feb-23\/","title":{"rendered":"Legislative Update: Thursday, Feb. 23"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_16377\"  class=\"wp-caption module image alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 140px;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"addboard wp-image-16377 size-full\" src=\"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/Jill-Cohenour.png\" alt=\"Jill Cohenour\" width=\"140\" height=\"243\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Jill Cohenour<\/p><\/div>\n<h4>Peace officer bill tabled<\/h4>\n<h6>By Cole Grant<\/h6>\n<p>]The Senate Judiciary Committee tabled a bill Thursday that would put assault of a former peace officer on par with assault of a current\u00a0peace officer.<\/p>\n<p>Joe Cohenour, husband of the sponsor of\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/laws.leg.mt.gov\/legprd\/LAW0203W$BSRV.ActionQuery?P_SESS=20171&amp;P_BLTP_BILL_TYP_CD=SB&amp;P_BILL_NO=265&amp;P_BILL_DFT_NO=&amp;P_CHPT_NO=&amp;Z_ACTION=Find&amp;P_ENTY_ID_SEQ2=&amp;P_SBJT_SBJ_CD=&amp;P_ENTY_ID_SEQ=\">Senate Bill 265<\/a>, Sen. Jill Cohenour, D-East Helena, said he\u2019d been threatened while he was a police officer.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOne individual I had arrested seven different times for seven different crimes, and put him into jail, which subsequently put him into prison, and he just told me one day you know, one day you\u2019re going to retire, you\u2019re not going to be a cop anymore. And I\u2019ll see you then.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>S.K. Rossi with the Montana ACLU said\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/leg.mt.gov\/bills\/2017\/billhtml\/SB0265.htm\">Senate Bill 265<\/a> is unnecessary, because the laws are already in place.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTo be perfectly honest, working for the ACLU I get threatened all the time,&#8221; Rossi said. &#8220;And I don\u2019t find it \u00a0appropriate to sit out here and ask to &#8230; \u00a0have a special offer on assault that would be illegal regardless of who I worked for.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The bill was tabled on a unanimous vote.<\/p>\n<p><i>Cole Grant is a reporter with the UM Legislative News Service, a partnership of the University of Montana School of Journalism, the Montana Broadcasters Association and the Greater Montana Foundation.<\/i><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h4>Small Medicaid change proposed<\/h4>\n<h6>By Freddy Monares<\/h6>\n<p>Lawmakers in Helena will consider a bill that would add one line to the state\u2019s current Medicaid program, requiring the program to cover services provided by licensed marriage and family therapists.<\/p>\n<p>Rep. Adam Rosendale, R-Billings,\u00a0is the sponsor of the bill.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn a lot of our rural communities it\u2019s one of the ways that people have access without having to travel significantly far distances to our bigger cities,\u201d Rosendale said.<\/p>\n<p>According to the fiscal note attached to <a href=\"http:\/\/leg.mt.gov\/bills\/2017\/billhtml\/HB0453.htm\">House Bill 453<\/a> the addition of the services would cost the state a little less than $200,000 for the first fiscal year. But Rosendale says it will probably\u00a0be less.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe actual charge doesn\u2019t even break $10,000, I think. And it might be significantly lower than that,\u201d he\u00a0said.<\/p>\n<p>The bill would also need approval from the federal program in order to receive matching funds for services.\u00a0Friday will be the first time the House Human Services Committee hears testimony on the bill.<\/p>\n<p><i>Freddy Monares is a reporter with the UM Legislative News Service, a partnership of the University of Montana School of Journalism, the Montana Broadcasters Association and the Greater Montana Foundation.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Peace officer bill tabled By Cole Grant ]The Senate Judiciary Committee tabled a bill Thursday that would put assault of a former peace officer on par with assault of a current\u00a0peace officer. Joe Cohenour, husband of the sponsor of\u00a0Senate Bill 265, Sen. Jill Cohenour, D-East Helena, said he\u2019d been threatened while he was a police [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":145,"featured_media":16377,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[1122],"class_list":["post-16376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","tag-montana-legislature","prominence-category-featured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/145"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16376"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16376\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}