(upbeat music) - [Jackie Coffin] Happening now on The Rundown.

- [Man] 34 senators voting aye and 16 voting no.

House Bill two has been concurred.

- [Jackie Coffin] Big money bills move through the legislature from the budget to the stimulus to Montana's new marijuana program.

- We want a budget that Montanans can be proud of and that keeps our state working the way it should for its citizens.

- [Jackie Coffin] And funding coming down the pipeline to bridge Montana's digital divide.

- This is going to change the face of connectivity in the state of Montana.

- I'm Jackie Coffin and The Rundown starts now.

The Rundown is made possible by the greater Montana Foundation.

Encouraging communication on issues, trends, and values of importance to Montanans.

The Rundown Capitol report takes place primarily in Helena, which is the original land of the Salish, Pend d'Oreilles, Blackfeet, Shoshone-Bannock, and Upsellica people.

Welcome and thanks for joining me again in Helena.

I missed you all last week and hope you enjoyed your spring holiday celebrations.

There's a lot to talk about as we wrap up week 14 of the legislative session particularly money bills, marijuana stimulus, and of course the budget.

I'll touch on a few other bills as well.

And my special guest this week is the new director of Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks.

Let's begin with a quick look at the legislative calendar.

We just passed the 68th day of the legislative session and the deadline for appropriations and revenue bills, AKA bills allocating and directing money was Thursday, April eighth.

And bills pertaining to the three largest spending areas.

The budget, the stimulus, and marijuana all passed by the deadline.

House Bill two, the general appropriations act, not only cleared the deadline it has passed through the house and the Senate.

The state budget, which lives in House Bill two, is carried by representative Lou Jones a Republican from Conrad.

In total, it amounts for $12.6 billion over the 2022-2023 biennium.

Governor Gianforte unveiled his proposal for the budget at the beginning of the session.

But the budget crafted and passed by the legislature is over $400 million less than what the governor proposed.

On March 22nd the budget passed the house after an all-day hearing.

On Thursday the $12.6 billion budget came up on the Senate floor for the first time.

- This is House Bill two.

This is the one bill that we are required by the constitution to pass.

We are required to have a balanced budget.

That's what this is.

As you all know, many of us have been working on this over the last several months.

I feel like we've had a very good working relationship with both the minority and the second floor.

And I feel like this is a very good product.

- This budget is a reflection of our values and we're a very, very diverse group.

We want a budget that Montanans can be proud of and that keeps our state working the way it should for its citizens.

- [Jackie Coffin] The budget is broken down into six main sections.

General government, department of health and human services, natural resources and transportation, corrections and public safety, and education.

There are several subcommittees in the house and Senate devoted to crafting the budget for each section.

When the budget hit each chamber, the chairs and vice chairs of these committees presented their budget recommendations.

- This is House Bill two.

We're going to deal with section A.

- Section B just deals with department of public health and human services, which is plenty.

It's $6 billion.

- [Jackie Coffin] The largest and most contested section is the department of health and human services.

DPHHS employs nearly 3000 people and serves tens of thousands of Montanans with food, health, mental health, aging, and disability services, and much more.

In both house and Senate floor hearings there were many efforts to amend this budget, mostly by Democrats and some Republicans and most efforts failed.

- Mr. Chairman, I move to amend House Bill two with amendment number HB 2-B002.

When I moved this amendment in Senate finance committee, we heard that we are likely all impacted by suicide.

Yet we still voted this amendment down in committee on a nine-to-10 vote.

And when I heard that, I thought long and hard about that.

We're all impacted at this point by suicide in Montana because it's an epidemic.

Knowing that and knowing that so many of us in this room, and so many of our friends and neighbors are impacted by the epidemic of suicide means that we have to do better in the state of Montana.

And we know that suicide affects everyone when it happens.

Family, friends, community members, and when my sister committed suicide she left behind two boys and I can tell you their lives are never going to be the same.

They've never been the same.

They lost someone.

They lost that motherly love, that funny, outgoing personality and they'll never get her back.

And so for me, if we save one life, this money is worth it to me.

And we know this money, this funding does so much more.

We often don't know and may never know if or when someone is or was suicidal.

Many people who are suicidal, they keep it to themselves.

And I'm sure, you know, maybe many of you at this point have talked to someone who was at some point.

I know I've had conversations with people years after who said, "You know, at this time I was suicidal.

"You didn't know it."

So this funding to me is very important.

The Montana suicide prevention funds critical training in mental health, and resiliency education for young people with funds for critical lifeline call centers that directly save lives through helping Montanans in a crisis that call the suicide prevention hotline.

And you know, that's one of the important things about this.

The data might be hard to find but if the data is one person that we've saved their life.

That could be your family member.

That could be someone in your family, a friend, community member.

It's worth it to me.

There are three lifeline call centers in the state.

One in Great Falls, voices of hope.

The help center in Bozeman.

The Western Montana mental health center in Missoula and in 2018 lifeline call centers in Montana answered 87% of the calls from Montanans to the federal suicide hotline.

Research on the youth aware of mental health program found it reduced new cases of suicide attempts and severe suicidal ideation by 50%.

New cases of depression were reduced by approximately 30%.

- I would resist this amendment.

We tried in our subcommittee to get a handle on the different pockets of suicide prevention money.

Where they all are.

And we need to quantify the effectiveness of this.

I can't disagree with much that the Senator talked about.

This putting a million dollars into AMDD for suicide prevention with no goals, no program.

We don't know where it's gonna go.

We don't know what it's gonna do.

We don't know how much money we've spent over the last 15 or 20 years on suicide prevention.

We've tried to get a handle on this throwing more money out for suicide prevention feels good but what are we getting for the money?

It's a very difficult issue.

And I was the one in the finance and claims committee that said that suicide hits all of our families.

It's hit my family.

We're all aware of it but just putting more money towards prevention.

We're not quantifying the results.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

- No, I appreciate this discussion.

You know, suicide is it's complicated.

It's a sickness and it's something that we still struggle with across the nation and trying to figure out.

It's not just a Montana problem.

It's a problem across the nation.

And you know, I think this is more than it just feels good.

You know, we have proactive efforts that this funding would expand on to help people.

And you know what we're getting for it is we're getting the opportunity to potentially save someone's life.

Someone you might know.

And I would personally gladly take out and leverage every asset I have to raise a million dollars if that brought back my sister.

So I'm asking all of you to help fight this epidemic in Montana and support this amendment.

- Question now arises on the motion by Senator Morigeau that House Bill two be amended as (beeping) those motion vote aye those opposed vote no.

Has every member voted?

Does any member wish to change his or her vote?

Now the clerk will record the vote.

- Mr. Chairman 22 senators vote aye and 28 senators vote nay.

- 22 senators voting aye and 28 voting no.

The amendment fails.

Are there further amendments?

- [Jackie Coffin] An important take away for House Bill two is the end of continuous enrollment for Medicaid expansion.

Medicaid expansion is a component of the Affordable Care Act and the state opted into it in 2015 and again in 2019.

Expanding Medicaid meant raising the qualification for government reimbursed healthcare from 100% of the poverty line to 132%.

Now one in 10 Montanans are eligible and rely on Medicaid expansion for healthcare coverage.

But ending continuous eligibility means people can get kicked off or have a harder time getting on.

By doing so, the state of Montana saves 1% in costs in the Medicaid expansion program.

Where the federal government pays 90% and the state pays 10% of the program.

- Currently in Montana, we have a policy in place for Medicaid expansion called continuous eligibility.

It's a policy that allows people who qualify for Medicaid to stay on for 12 months before they have to re up.

75% of the people who have Medicaid expansion are in the workforce.

And those employment numbers have increased thanks to the stability that having health care allows people.

Continuous eligibility is successful because it supports people in the home.

For example, spouses who might be taking care of a relative, or their husband or wives struggling with dementia or someone a parent who's at home with a disabled child.

And this allows them to provide those services and to do what they need to do.

People have complex lives and this supports some of those complexities.

It's also important because it's sort of a game changer for a lot of people.

For example, people who have mental illness through by staying continuously eligible through a period of time they can get the medication and the support they need to keep a job.

And there are plenty of examples of this that we have heard.

And it is again about helping the working class get the services and the healthcare they need to keep a job.

- The first thing is is that this is a policy decision that we're making through Senate Bill 100 and that's moving through the process.

So this amendment would run contrary to that.

But I do just want to speak to this issue a little bit because it was mentioned that this isn't a more efficient way to run it, but in my opinion that's just not true.

And apparently in the opinion of the federal government too because they ding us an extra percent in Medicaid expansion if we leave people on for a full 12 months without checking their eligibility.

So the Medicaid expansion reimbursement rate is 90%.

The state pays 10%.

The feds pay 90%.

Unless we do this and we leave people on for a 12-month period without ever checking their eligibility again.

Then the state of Montana picks up an extra percent, 11%, and the feds only pay 89%.

So this is opposite of even how the federal government wants Medicaid expansion run.

And we pay a penalty for it.

This penalty is $10.5 million.

- And this budget funds the services that they expect.

The services that they've come to want.

And it does so in the inside of inflation.

Inflation's over 4%.

We're under that.

So frankly, this is a very conservative budget and I'd appreciate your support.

Thank you members.

- [Jackie Coffin] After almost five hours of hearings on Thursday, the Senate passed the budget on both second and third readings and send it back over to the house with amendments.

Before the legislators broke for Easter, they tackled another huge money bill that in this body is fairly unprecedented.

Specifically $2.7 billion of federal stimulus funding from the American rescue plan of 2021.

Called the Beast House Bill 632 carried by representative Frank Garner, a Republican from Kalispell allocates the ARPA funding.

To get it passed, Garner had to appeal to some of his fellow Republicans.

- We are going to invest in places like Sun Prairie.

Like Circle, like Billings, and Bozeman, especially Kalispell (all chuckles).

Or we're going to be rebuilding Portland and Seattle because this money does not go back to work on the debt.

It goes back to a pool that other places will take the money from.

I refuse to have my kids help pay for this debt without making sure that we have long-term, strategic plans that will help move this state forward and that will provide for their success.

Today what we get to do with this bill is provide an opportunity for our families to be successful in the future.

My kids and yours.

The opportunity.

- One minute.

- And so what I'm asking you to do today is to vote with me and to bet with me on the folks in Montana.

Because what I know is they will take this, they will make it successful, and they will make us successful because of it.

- [Jackie Coffin] The ARPA funds invest money in capital infrastructure projects, schools, and local municipalities, a wide array of health and social services, employment, and business support, housing support, and more.

In doling out stimulus money the federal government put in place requirements of how and where it can be used and stipulations on implementation.

An exciting opportunity for Montanans is the ability to invest nearly $250 million into expanding broadband.

- Obviously, Montana is a large state geographically.

Pretty small state population-wise.

We are pretty spread out.

That requires a lot of infrastructure.

And when we're talking connectivity, that requires a whole lot of fiber in the ground.

That requires a whole lot of cell towers, et cetera.

And what we're going to be looking to do with this money is not solve the entirety of the connectivity problem in the state of Montana.

I think that would cost a much larger amount of money than we will ever have access to.

But this money here, if done the right way, through the commission process, is going to change the face of connectivity in the state of Montana.

It is going to give rural communities throughout this state the ability to control their own economic future.

To decide where they want to go, how fast they want to go, how much they want to grow.

- Broadband Now is an LA-based organization that collects and publishes data from the FCC about broadband service, connectability, internet providers, and more.

According to their data sets, Montana ranks 50th in the nation for internet access.

And they attribute this to our rural population and our large geographic area.

They also point to our lack of broad- This they say creates a digital divide between Montanans who have access to reasonably-priced, high-speed internet and those who do not.

Coming out of the pandemic when work, school, and social connection became intrinsically linked to the internet the divide has never felt deeper.

In addition to the ARPA funds, the legislature has a handful of bills carried by Democrats and Republicans expanding broadband access in Montana.

One is Senate Bill 297.

The Connect MT Act carried by Senator Jason Ellsworth a Republican from Hamilton.

This bill establishes a broadband infrastructure account, opens up the opportunity for grants, and generally structures broadband deployment laws.

It also establishes a task force for broadband deployment.

Under Ellsworth's bill broadband service is defined as any wire line or fixed wireless technology having the capacity to transmit data from or to the internet at minimum speeds of at least 100 megabytes a second downstream and 20 megabytes a second upstream.

Broadband service infrastructure means the signal transmission facilities and associated network equipment proposed to be deployed in a project area used for the provision of broadband service to residential customers.

The Connect MT Act allocates $2 million from the general fund to this effort.

A critical part of expanding broadband comes with the installation of fiber optics cable.

A bill carried by representative Derek Harvey, a Democrat from Butte, seeks to kill two birds with one stone when it comes to road construction and wireless broadband.

The Dig Once Act would coordinate road and highway projects with the department of transportation and entities working on broadband so fiber optic cable can be laid during road construction projects.

The Connect MT Act passed through the Senate and is currently waiting on a hearing in the house.

The Dig Once Act was signed into law by Governor Gianforte.

The Beast House Bill 632 passed through the house and is currently working its way through the Senate appearing in the Senate finance and claims committee this week.

One of the goals of this show is to help you get to know your appointed and elected state leaders.

Right before Easter, I sat down with the new director of Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks, Hank Worsech, who came out of retirement to take the position.

I asked him about his goals with the department - Henry.

I actually go by Hank Worsech, director FWP.

So I'm originally from Northern Minnesota.

So my brother moved here.

I was the baby of the family by 15 years.

My brother moved here in 1970 and I used to come out and see him when I was a kid.

Decided this is where I wanted to be.

And I was in the Marine Corps for 10 years and I traveled all over.

And every time I come through Montana I decided I needed to be here.

So in 1990, I injured my back when I was in Station Camp Lejeune and got discharged early.

So I loaded up my kids, my wife, and I had a job in Chicago.

And I turned it down to come to Montana with nothing.

So I tell everybody I'm like everybody's ancestors.

I made a conscious decision to come here.

It wasn't that I was born here or anything else.

This is where I wanted to be.

I could have lived any place and I wanted to be here.

And I came here because I love the people.

I love the country.

And I liked the whole attitude, Montana attitude.

So Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks.

I started in 2002 and I worked in the licensing Bureau, license Bureau chief, and also did legislatively liaison work across the street with the department and I went into retirement.

Came out of retirement to take this job.

And I've would've been with it since about the end of January.

I was in a no-lose situation when I took the job.

I actually should have been in Arizona right now.

But what I opted to do was I was asked by quite a few people to put in for it.

And first I thought they were a kiddin' with me.

Just pulling my chain.

And then it got pretty serious and I decided to put in for it.

And got the interviews and got the job then.

And I wanted to come back to it.

I call it like coming back home.

I really loved working for the department.

I love what we do.

It's a passionate that as anybody knows that lives in Montana.

People are passionate about wildlife and recreation.

So I liked being in the middle of that and trying to make things easy.

I really like focus on customer service.

It's a big thing for me is provide the best customer service possible.

And I did that in licensing and I'll continue to do it now with the department.

So it's the Fish, Wildlife, and Parks.

And we are basically, we are stewards of the land.

What we do is we have a public trust doctrine, which we follow and what that says is we have trustees.

The trustees are the legislature, the boards, or the commission.

And they make the laws and rules in that the managers which is the FWP manage those, follow those laws and rules, and implements 'em and enforces 'em.

And we do that for the public.

So if the public wants to change something their best bet is to go to the legislature, make it a law, which is happening right now.

All these laws are coming up.

Once they get passed and signed by the governor we will then implement them and enforce them.

And that's what our role is on that point and what we do for the legislators, is we provide the best information for them to make informed decisions.

That's what we do as a department.

So we go out there and based on science and other things we look at and we provide information to those legislators in those bodies that make the decision.

So one of the things I see is consistency.

So we have seven different regions and sometimes we do things seven different ways.

It's all, like I said earlier, we follow one set of laws.

So they should be consistent throughout the state.

I've been working on doing that consistency.

So if you get an answer in region six in Glasgow and you go to region two, you should get the same answer.

We should handle things the same way.

I also want to strengthen the CEC the citizen advocate committees and have them more of a sounding board before things come to the commission.

And we've got brand new commissioners.

So it's gonna be a good opportunity for all of us being brand new.

One of the things I'd like to do is simplify regulations.

And that's where- I've talked about that before.

And I think we've got a better chance of doing that now and simplify it and make it easier to understand what we're doing.

We have a lot of great opportunities in this state.

And with opportunities comes some complexity.

I'd like to minimize the complexity as much as we possibly can.

And once again kind of put a state approach to some of these things rather than a regional approach and get that out.

So those are the big challenges to me.

The other thing is gonna be the big challenge is the recreation growth in this state.

So you may see more and more people that opt not to hunt and fish, but just recreate and use the resources.

So we've got some bills across street right now to- For example, for fishing access sites right now they're paid for by people's licenses.

Nobody else pays for 'em.

So you've got a lot of people usin' them for recreation that don't pay anything in for it.

So you've got maintenance of the place.

You've got to clean up the outhouses all of those things like that cost money.

So there's a bill across the street right now to look at makin' users pay a conservation license and bringing the price down.

So it's kind of a pay-to-play or share a shared cost on this thing.

For a long time it's been just the hunters and anglers payin' all of this.

So we're looking at that and we know that things are going to expand.

You're gonna have river rafters.

You're gonna have kayakers.

All of these things that there's a challenge for those sites.

So we're going to try to expand sites.

And also, like I said, collect revenue for them for usin' 'em.

Actually, I just got off the phone with the director from Wyoming.

Just introduced myself to him and we're going to have some issues and some discussions on these things.

It's not going to go away.

It's out there.

And one of the things that the governor mentioned to me on my interview was that we have grizzly bears, 70, 80 miles away from the front, and they're in populated areas.

So that's an issue.

So how do we do this?

I think the idea was a recovery area and we all agreed to the recovery area.

Now we're expanding that tremendously.

It's not the grizzly bears fault.

There's just movin'.

So and part of that is they're probably overpopulating a lot of these areas.

So we bring 'em back, put 'em there, and they run back to where we captured them at.

When we got incidences of 'em living on sugar beets, doing stuff like that.

You got 'em out in areas around Choteau where if you, you know pheasant hunting now you be prepared, bear aware.

And it's just a change, a drastic change.

So how do we deal with that?

How do we look at, you know- Can we de-list the Northern part of it?

Can we do different things different?

So I think it's somethin' we're definitely engaged in and we're going to continue being engaged in.

And I don't know what the answer's going to be yet but it has got a lot of my focus I can tell you that.

- That's all the time we have this week on The Rundown Capitol report.

I'll see you next Sunday in Helena.

The Rundown is made possible by the Greater Montana Foundation, encouraging communication on issues, trends, and values of importance to Montanans.