{"id":16662,"date":"2017-03-16T19:10:28","date_gmt":"2017-03-17T01:10:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=16662"},"modified":"2017-03-16T19:10:28","modified_gmt":"2017-03-17T01:10:28","slug":"legislative-update-thursday-march-16","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2017\/03\/legislative-update-thursday-march-16\/","title":{"rendered":"Legislative Update: Thursday, March 16"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_16663\"  class=\"wp-caption module image alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 140px;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"addboard wp-image-16663 size-full\" src=\"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/Screen-Shot-2017-03-16-at-7.03.18-PM.png\" alt=\"Cook\" width=\"140\" height=\"226\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Rob Cook<\/p><\/div>\n<h4>Funding increase for elderly, disabled shot\u00a0down<\/h4>\n<h6>By Cole Grant<\/h6>\n<p>One of the amendments to the state budget Montana lawmakers shot down Thursday would have given more funding to a program that helps pay for long-term care for low-income seniors and disabled Montanans.<\/p>\n<p>Rep. Rob Cook, R-Conrad, chairman of the Health and Human Services Subcommittee, said there\u2019s money left over from what was set aside for that program from the last biennium.<\/p>\n<p>Cook said the Legislature\u2019s budget proposes about $3 million less to the program than what was spent last biennium.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou look at this $42 million that wasn\u2019t spent, why wasn\u2019t that spent on provider rate increases?&#8221; he asked. &#8220;Why didn\u2019t that go to direct care? That\u2019s a good question, isn\u2019t it?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Rep. Laurie Bishop, D-Livingston, supported the amendment.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen I hear something like $42 million that went unfunded,&#8221; she said, &#8220;my first question is, \u2018how do we figure out how to connect people with those services?\u2019 Not, \u2018how do we take those services away?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The amendment failed on a 42-58 vote, with most Republicans voting against it.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h4><i><\/i>House&#8217;s final vote on budget bill set for Friday<\/h4>\n<p>The Montana House of Representatives is expected to take a final vote Friday on House Bill 2, the state\u2019s main budget bill.<\/p>\n<p>On Thursday, the Republican held House shot down amendments, most of them from Democrats, that would have provided more state funding for new and existing programs.<\/p>\n<p>Rep. Mary Ann Dunwell, D-Helena, said it\u2019s more than just pages in a budget.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThese are not haircuts, these are strait-jackets we\u2019re putting on some of these programs,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>Rep. Nancy Ballance, R-Hamilton, said it wass not logical to fund the $200 million worth of amendments.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo unless there\u2019s another packet of amendments that we haven\u2019t seen yet that make cuts to other programs or services to pay for these amendments, then it is simply political theater with no basis in reality, and simply an exercise for the media,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>The state\u2019s budget, which is facing a shortfall, has become a key issue this session.<\/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","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Funding increase for elderly, disabled shot\u00a0down By Cole Grant One of the amendments to the state budget Montana lawmakers shot down Thursday would have given more funding to a program that helps pay for long-term care for low-income seniors and disabled Montanans. Rep. Rob Cook, R-Conrad, chairman of the Health and Human Services Subcommittee, said [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":145,"featured_media":16663,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[1122],"class_list":["post-16662","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\/16662","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=16662"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16662\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16665,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16662\/revisions\/16665"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16663"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}