Update from Helena

Lots of interesting bills last week. We passed House Bill 175 to put medical marijuana repeal back on the ballot in 2012 to let you vote. The floor debate seemed to center on which poll numbers reported by the newspapers were important. I voted for this.

In the meantime, SB 423 was introduced late last week in the Senate. It will generally revise laws relating to the use of marijuana and is titled “Montana Therapeutic Marijuana Act.” It calls for couriers, licensure, and regulation by the Public Service Commission. The PSC chair said that they did not want this job. They’d rather focus on utility regulation.

We had another referendum for the voters, HB 609, to prohibit the state from requiring anyone to purchase health insurance. This has been introduced in 42 other states. Courts have upheld the right of a state to do this when the referendum provides greater protection to the people than the federal rule does.

We passed a bill to establish a drug registry to help stop the abuse of prescription drugs. We are going to resurrect HB 14 that removed the five year look back in DUI cases. Of the 5,000 first time DUI cases, 40 percent had a DUI that wasn’t counted because it was more than five years before.

We did pass a two-year re-appraisal cycle bill, HB 595. It is not perfect, but it would help. Regrettably, it has a large cost put on it by the Department of Revenue, a couple of million dollars a year and 25 new employees. Once again, we heard that this is only a problem in our area, this time from a Great Falls legislator.

Senator Lewis from the Helena area presented a bill to have state employees that earn over $80,000 pay a percentage of their healthcare, and up to all of it for those earning more than $90,000 per year. The bill also caps salaries for the legislative and the executive branch at $100,000.

I have yet to see the Governor’s veto on any bills and he has signed lots of them. Last week in caucus he rallied the Democrats with a war story about 32 soldiers (there are 32 Democrats in the House) holding off 1,000 attackers until reinforcements arrived. He held up his veto brand and said that he had arrived. The troubling part of this war story is that at the exact same time, the Republican Majority Leader was urging us to continue to keep the rhetoric civil. He actually said that we are all one family, both sides of the aisle. No one here is here for the money and we need to respect each other. We’ve even had a few members receive death threats.

Lots more going on, but I never forget that I work for you. Leave me a message at 406-444-4800, my cell is 253-8766 or e-mail me at jannataylor@montana.com.