{"id":17280,"date":"2017-04-21T16:31:55","date_gmt":"2017-04-21T22:31:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=17280"},"modified":"2017-04-21T16:31:55","modified_gmt":"2017-04-21T22:31:55","slug":"legislative-update-friday-april-21","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2017\/04\/legislative-update-friday-april-21\/","title":{"rendered":"Legislative Update: Friday, April 21"},"content":{"rendered":"<h4><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"addboard alignleft wp-image-17281 size-full\" src=\"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/Capitol-logo-1.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"140\" height=\"166\" \/><\/a>Budget bill on the way to governor<\/h4>\n<h6>By Cole Grant<\/h6>\n<p>It\u2019s been a long, hard trek, but the $10.3 billion Montana state budget is now on its way to Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock\u2019s desk.<\/p>\n<p>Rep. Nancy Ballance, R-Hamilton, chairs the House Appropriations Committee and is sponsoring <a href=\"http:\/\/leg.mt.gov\/bills\/2017\/billhtml\/HB0002.htm\">House Bill 2<\/a>. She said the budget cuts as deeply as it could without impacting essential services like education, healthcare and corrections.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNow, some say we didn\u2019t spend enough, others are saying we didn\u2019t cut enough,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>Bullock said he thinks there have been constructive conversations with both Democrats and Republicans about how to make a budget that funds essential services, doesn\u2019t spend more than it brings in, \u201cand leaves me with a degree of flexibility so I\u2019m not picking up the pieces and calling them back into session.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Bullock now has 10\u00a0days to review the bill. As with any other bill, if he doesn\u2019t sign or veto it in that time, it automatically becomes law.<\/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>Budget bill on the way to governor By Cole Grant It\u2019s been a long, hard trek, but the $10.3 billion Montana state budget is now on its way to Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock\u2019s desk. Rep. Nancy Ballance, R-Hamilton, chairs the House Appropriations Committee and is sponsoring House Bill 2. She said the budget cuts as [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":145,"featured_media":17281,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[1122],"class_list":["post-17280","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\/17280","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=17280"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17280\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17283,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17280\/revisions\/17283"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}