{"id":16983,"date":"2017-04-05T17:03:01","date_gmt":"2017-04-05T23:03:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=16983"},"modified":"2017-04-05T17:03:01","modified_gmt":"2017-04-05T23:03:01","slug":"legislative-update-wednesday-april-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2017\/04\/legislative-update-wednesday-april-5\/","title":{"rendered":"Legislative Update: Wednesday, April 5"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"G\"<\/a>

Lola Sheldon-Galloway<\/p><\/div>\n

House hears two abortion bills<\/h4>\n

By Cole Grant<\/h6>\n

Montana lawmakers heard two bills Wednesday that would change when and how women can have abortions.<\/p>\n

The House of Representatives advanced Senate Bill 282<\/a>, which would require, among other things, that if a fetus has more than a 50 percent chance of living outside the womb, a doctor would need to give it life-sustaining support. The bill needs one more vote to pass the House.<\/p>\n

Rep. Lola Sheldon-Galloway, R-Great Falls, voted for the bill.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe pregnancy is terminated, which is the desire of the mom, but the life of the child is saved,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Earlier Wednesday, the House Judiciary Committee heard testimony on Senate Bill 329<\/a>, which would make it a felony to perform most abortions once the fetus can feel pain, which the bill marks at 20 weeks.<\/p>\n

Jessica Peterson with NARAL Pro-Choice Montana opposed the bill.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo no matter how we personally feel about abortion at different points of a pregnancy, a woman\u2019s health should drive important medical decisions, not personal preferences nor political agendas,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Both bills have passed the Senate.<\/p>\n

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>\n

Senate takes up gas tax proposal<\/h4>\n
By Freddy Monares<\/h6>\n

It\u2019s the Senate\u2019s turn to hear testimony on a bill to increase the gas tax in the state to generate a revenue stream for infrastructure projects.<\/p>\n

House Bill 473<\/a> passed out of the House on a 54-to-46 vote in March.<\/p>\n

The bill would increase both the gas tax and diesel fuel tax by about 8\u00a0cents a gallon and allocate part of the revenue to the Montana Highway Patrol and match funds for projects paid for by local government.<\/p>\n

Rep. Frank Garner, R-Kalispell\u00a0is\u00a0the sponsor of the bill and says with the increase, each year,\u00a0\u201cevery cent produces about $8 million. This would be roughly $60 million that it produces.”<\/p>\n

Darryl James, executive director of the Montana Infrastructure Coalition, supported the bill during debate in a committee hearing.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis isn\u2019t a do we or do we not pay for these road and bridge improvements, it\u2019s just the mechanism that we do it,\u201d James said.<\/p>\n

The House re-referred the bill to an appropriations committee before it was transmitted to the Senate.<\/p>\n

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":"

House hears two abortion bills By Cole Grant Montana lawmakers heard two bills Wednesday that would change when and how women can have abortions. The House of Representatives advanced Senate Bill 282, which would require, among other things, that if a fetus has more than a 50 percent chance of living outside the womb, a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":145,"featured_media":16984,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[1122],"class_list":["post-16983","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\/16983","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=16983"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16983\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16986,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16983\/revisions\/16986"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}