{"id":20149,"date":"2017-11-10T23:20:37","date_gmt":"2017-11-11T06:20:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=20149"},"modified":"2017-11-11T22:48:03","modified_gmt":"2017-11-12T05:48:03","slug":"special-session-will-seek-to-close-227-million-budget-gap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2017\/11\/special-session-will-seek-to-close-227-million-budget-gap\/","title":{"rendered":"Special session will seek to close $227 million budget gap"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Capitol\"<\/a>

Montana legislators will meet in the state Capitol, seen here in a painting from 1896, for a special session next week.<\/p><\/div>\n

Editor’s note<\/strong>:\u00a0Veteran state political reporter Chuck Johnson will be covering the special legislative session for Last Best News and Missoula Current.<\/em><\/p>\n

He will be covering his 19th\u00a0special session out of the 33 special sessions in Montana history.<\/em><\/p>\n

Johnson also covered 22 regular legislative sessions, out of 65 in the state’s history, for several different news organizations: Lee Newspapers, the Great Falls Tribune and the Bozeman Daily Chronicle.\u00a0He leads off with this report on what to expect when the session opens next week.<\/em><\/p>\n

HELENA\u2014Montana legislators will convene for a special session next week to address proposals by Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock to fill a state government budget gap.<\/p>\n

On Friday, Republican legislators, who control both the House and Senate, formally expanded the session to add some other ideas to the mix.<\/p>\n

Earlier this week, Bullock issued a formal call to summon legislators back to Helena for a special session that starts Tuesday. Joint House and Senate committee hearings will be held Monday. (See related story.<\/a>)<\/p>\n

At issue is how to come up with money to fill a potential $227 million general-fund budget gap. State tax revenue collections have lagged behind what the Legislature projected earlier this year.<\/p>\n

In addition, after the costliest wildfire-fighting season in state history, lawmakers have been asked to replenish the firefighting fund that was drained earlier this year.<\/p>\n

Bullock\u2019s staff had worked informally with key Democratic and Republican legislators from the House and Senate to come up with his plan.\u00a0It would divide the gap into thirds and fill it this way: $76.6 million in budget cuts, $75.5 million in fund transfers and $75.1 million in temporary tax increases.<\/p>\n

\"Guv\"<\/a>

Gov. Steve Bullock<\/p><\/div>\n

The tax hikes include temporary increases in the state taxes on hotel, motel and campground lodging, rental cars and a 3 percent management fee on the Montana State Fund workers\u2019 compensation accounts that top $1 billion.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been working for months with Republican leaders to identify a path forward that doesn\u2019t require these $227 million worth of cuts,\u201d Dan Villa, the governor\u2019s budget director, said Friday. \u201cWe\u2019re pleased with the progress made to date. We know there\u2019s more work to be done in the coming few days prior to the special session, but we\u2019re confident that Republicans and Democrats both believe there\u2019s a more responsible path forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

Republicans said Friday that they had obtained the necessary signatures \u2014 they needed 76 of the 150 legislators to sign on \u2014 to expand the session\u2019s agenda. They included Bullock\u2019s proposals but added some of their own.<\/p>\n

One is a controversial proposal is to accept a $30 million payment from CoreCivic (formerly Corrections Corporation of America) in exchange for extending by 10 years the state\u2019s contract for the Crossroads Correctional Center private prison in Shelby.<\/p>\n

Republicans included the budget cuts that Bullock proposed, but which he can put into place without legislative approval under state law. Bullock has said he would make the cuts after the special session.<\/p>\n

House Speaker Austin Knudsen, R-Culbertson, said the three major proposals in the Republican call are recommending that the administration accept the $30 million payment from the operators of the private prison in Shelby, authorizing the state auditor to apply for a waiver for a high-risk insurance pool and directing some fire mitigation funds to employ private loggers to reduce fuels in forests.<\/p>\n

\u201cI will not be supporting any tax increases,\u201d Knudsen said. “I\u2019ve got to tell you, you get out of Helena and get over where I live, we\u2019ve just had the worst drought in 100 years, terrible crops, terrible calf crop this year, ag prices are still down, calves have rebounded a little but not much. It\u2019s not a good time to talk about raising taxes. And of course, everyone just got their property tax bill.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"CapreAir_Variable\"<\/a><\/div><\/div>Senate President Scott Sales, R-Bozeman, said he believes accepting the $30 million from the private corrections company makes sense.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know why we wouldn\u2019t take that money versus raising taxes and cutting services on the most vulnerable Montanans,\u201d Sales said. \u201cI think both the Senate and House will pass it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sales questioned whether the Legislature would support the tax increases recommended by Bullock.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not feeling that there\u2019s an appetite for tax increases,\u201d he said. \u201cI think we\u2019re going to be able to solve most of these problems with some of the ideas we have in the expanded call. If there is a tax increase, it will be very minimal and very temporary.\u201d<\/p>\n

House Minority Leader Jenny Eck, D-Helena, said, \u201cMy perspective is we have been working for many, many weeks to try to come to a place of middle ground and understanding between the parties to try to come into the special session with as close of an agreement as we possibly could.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bullock\u2019s call reflects the conversations over many weeks by the administration and Democratic and Republican legislative leaders with an understanding of what it will take to pass the bills. They are not necessarily the first options party caucuses would make.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t like that fact that we\u2019re looking at looking at $75 million in cuts, after we\u2019ve already made $196 million in cuts this year alone and $350 million since 2013,\u201d Eck said.<\/p>\n

As for the Shelby prison proposal, Eck said now is not the time to negotiate a multi-million contract \u201cthat benefits one particular part of the state.\u201d She said there are contract issues that need to be studied carefully and not \u201crammed through\u201d in a special session.<\/p>\n

Senate Minority Leader Jon Sesso, D-Butte, said he felt good on Monday over Bullock\u2019s special-session call, which reflected the bipartisan compromises that leaders had worked on for weeks. Then Republican expanded the session.<\/p>\n

\u201cI guess I\u2019m still confident were operating in the four corners of what could be a good mix for the session, with government cuts, transfers and some new revenues,\u201d Sesso said. Overall, I\u2019m optimistic that we can find the right blend of moves that can get us to the 26, 51 and 1.\u201d<\/p>\n

That a reference to the need for 26 votes in the 50-member Senate and 51 votes in the 100-member House to pass the bills and then getting Gov. Bullock to sign them into law.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Editor’s note:\u00a0Veteran state political reporter Chuck Johnson will be covering the special legislative session for Last Best News and Missoula Current. He will be covering his 19th\u00a0special session out of the 33 special sessions in Montana history.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":196,"featured_media":20151,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,14,1],"tags":[1867,6443,1122,6442,782],"class_list":["post-20149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-montana","category-news","category-uncategorized","tag-austin-knudsen","tag-dan-villa","tag-montana-legislature","tag-special-session","tag-steve-bullock","prominence-top-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20149","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\/196"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20149"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20149\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20168,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20149\/revisions\/20168"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}