(playful music) - [Jackie] Coming up on The Rundown.

- [Chairman] As many are in favor of the motion, signified by voting aye, those opposed, no has every member voted?

- [Jackie] Week Five of the 67th legislative session wraps up with two big bills completing their legislative journey and heading to the governor's desk.

- Let's get this down to the governor's desk so we can get rid of this mask mandate in the state.

- [Jackie] And more controversial bills show Montanans divided on hot button issues.

- This bill goes too far.

- I don't believe this bill goes far enough.

- I'm Jackie Coffin and The Rundown: Capitol Report 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, Pondera, Blackfeet, Shoshone, Bannock and Apsaalooke people.

Hello, and thank you for joining me again in Helena.

It's been another busy week here at the Capitol and we have a lot to talk about today.

I'll break down bills on guns, sanctuary cities, the death penalty.

My special guest this week is the new director of Department of Corrections, Brian Gootkin.

Let's get started.

I want to begin with where we are in the legislative process.

Friday wrapped up the 25th day of the session, which on the legislative calendar means there's only 20 more legislative days left until the first big transmittal deadline.

On March 3rd, the 45th day of the session, all bills have to have moved through their first committees in chamber and over to the other side.

So all bills carried by House Representatives must have gone through a House committee in their second and third readings through the House, and by transmittal deadline, they must be ready for consideration in the Senate.

It's the same vice versa for Senate bills.

The transmittal deadline is always on the 45th day of the legislative session and marks the halfway point as the session cannot any longer than 90 days according to our state constitution.

The general feeling right now is that we're running behind in bill introduction and hearings.

And this is the consensus from both Republicans and Democrats.

A big part of that is due to COVID-19 and its impacts on legislative services staffing.

Another reason is a lot of bills have been submitted this session.

Right now there are still a lot of bills moving through and generating debate, including discussions on guns.

- The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

- The right to self-defense is a natural God-given right that our founders had the foresight to memorialize in our Second Amendment.

- The most about gun bill this session is House Bill 102.

It broadens Montana's concealed and open carry and allows for concealed carry on college campuses.

House Bill 102 was introduced by Representative Seth Berglee, a Republican from Joliet, and it passed through the House earlier this session.

House Bill 102 was on the floor of the Senate, Tuesday and Wednesday.

- [Chairman] Senator Manzella.

- Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Members of the Senate, I have the pleasure of caring House Bill 102 for your consideration today.

And I believe that we've all had a lengthy time to consider the bill so I'm going to keep this brief.

The purpose of the bill is to enhance the safety of the people by expanding their legal ability to provide for their own defense by reducing or eliminating government mandated places where only criminals are armed and where citizens are prevented from exercising their fundamental right to defend themselves and others.

And in simpler terms, that means anywhere a criminal has the ability to carry, a law-abiding citizen should have the right to carry also.

- [Jackie] On Tuesday, senators debated the bill in its second reading.

- On December 29th, 2019, a man walked into a church in North Texas that had a security and a number of people that were carrying concealed.

The shooter killed the two people before he was shot by a parishioner which had a concealed carry permit.

The attack lasted 11 seconds.

The ideas that everybody is going to pull out a gun and the bullets are going to fly everywhere is not true.

In a case of that shooting, the congregate that testified that he shot the shooter, said that there were five or six people that had drawn their arms when the shooting started.

And the only person that was injured by the members of the security was the shooter.

As a good representative, a former chief of police from Kalispell said, this isn't for those situations where we have a police officer right there on the spot at that time.

This is for everyday Montanans in those times when we don't.

Please vote green.

- This bill says it's to enhance the safety of the people by expanding their legal ability to provide for their own defense.

However, there's nothing in this bill that requires a gun carrier to be better trained in safety including handling a weapon, when and when not to draw, when and when not to discharge your weapon, or what to do when law enforcement arrives after you may have just wounded or taken somebody's life.

There's no requirement for first aid or to provide first aid.

This bill asks us to permit concealed carry for anyone in all businesses including bars and casinos where alcohol is sold.

It also includes concealed carry on college campuses without any specialized training.

I've been around guns and been gun owner my entire life.

My grandfather was a Capitol Hill policemen in Washington, D.C. and was rated as an expert marksman by the NRA.

My daughters are both gun owners and shooters.

My oldest daughter taught small arms training in the United States Air Force.

And I take the right given to me by the Second Amendment very seriously, to keep and bear arms and protect myself and my family and property.

Without specific training and requirements, I cannot support this bill as written.

It creates a serious public safety concern and has deadly unintended consequences.

I believe it will actually harm my Second Amendment rights.

I'm a no.

- [Jackie] While it is seen as a partisan bill with Republicans generally in favor and Democrats generally opposed, not all Republican senators support or voted for HB 102.

- Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, in my view, this bill goes too far.

I did try to amend this bill in committee and failed.

That's how it works around here some days.

I cannot not support the bill in the shape that it's in right now.

- [Chairman] Manzella, then when this committee-- - [Jackie] House Bill 102 passed its third reading in the Senate the next day.

- [Chairman] The House Bill 102, it recommend the same do pass as many of you are in favor of the motion, signified by voting aye.

- After passing its third reading and heading back to the House for votes on Senate amendments, the bill cleared its last legislative hurdle and is now headed to enrolling a technical process before it heads to the office of Governor Greg Gianforte.

The other big bill headed to Gianforte's desk is one he requested.

Senate Bill 65 shields businesses, schools and a myriad of healthcare providers from liability for COVID-19 deaths or illnesses.

- The bill is still the same bill that passed here a couple of days ago.

It's a good bill and I ask you to support the amendments and let's get this down to the governor's desk so we can get rid of this mask mandate in the state.

- [Jackie] Liability protection is one of the crucial parts for Gianforte's promise to remove Montana's mask mandate along with expanded vaccinations for his designation of the most vulnerable members of our society.

The COVID-19 liability protection bill, Senate Bill 65, passed its final motions in the Senate on Thursday.

I did reach out to staffers in the governor's office and state Senate to find out when these bills could be signed into law.

They told me the bills need to go through enrolling, which is a minor technical process, then SB 65 could be on his desk as soon as Tuesday or Wednesday of this week.

- I appreciate the urgency with which the legislature has acted to pass Steve Fitzpatrick's bipartisan bill that will do just that.

I look forward to getting SB 65 to my desk so we can take that critical step towards getting Montana safely open for business, moving towards incentives and personal responsibility and away from impractical government mandates.

- [Jackie] A few other gun bills hurting committees this week include House Bill 258, which prohibits law enforcement from enforcing federal gun bans or restriction with some exceptions.

- The time has come now to fortify Montana's gun owners against a very likely attack on our constitutionally protected freedoms.

The Tenth Amendment is in the constitution for express purpose such as this.

Let's take this federal pressure off our state and local law enforcement and shore up Montana against these attacks that are sure to come.

- The Sheriff's association has concerns that such language would really put up a firewall of communication between federal agents, federal entities and local police, local sheriffs, local law enforcement.

- Senate Bill 158, which would allow legislators to carry handguns in the Capitol and a House joint resolution saying taxing guns is unconstitutional.

On the topic of law and order, a bill banning sanctuary cities advances through the house.

Montana currently does not have any sanctuary cities but it's a bill receiving a lot of Republican support even from Governor Greg Gianforte.

- We are a nation of laws.

That's why I support Representative Holmlund's bill to ban sanctuary cities in Montana.

- If you were paying attention during the state of the state message, this one was actually referenced by the governor.

It is the sanctuary city bill, for the short version, and there's several things that it does.

But in section two, the new section two is really kind of the heart of the bill.

A state agency or local government may not enact, adopt, implement, enforce or refer to electorate, a policy that prohibits or restricts a government entity official or employee from sending to, receiving from, exchanging with or maintaining for a federal state or local government entity information regarding a person's citizenship or immigration status for a lawful purpose.

Or B, complying with a notification request concerning the release of an individual if the request is lawfully made by the United States Department of Homeland Security.

- The language of the bill feeds the false dichotomy between law and order versus illegal immigration.

One premise, one view of looking at this bill is that a yes vote means you're for law and order and a no vote means that you're all for open borders.

Let's not simplify to that degree.

I support legal immigration.

I don't support this bill.

Two, as we just heard some of the texts from the bill, this puts local law enforcement officers in the position of enforcing immigration policy, which let's face it, they're not trained for.

And in our state of Montana relies on a person's appearance, which can open the door for racial profiling.

And what is the effect of that?

I ask you to think how you would feel as a non-white person in an atmosphere that encourages this rhetoric.

- [Chairman] Is there an objection, Representative Usher?

- [Usher] Absolutely.

Mr chair.

This bill is not about racism.

It's not about racial profiling.

This bill is about sanctuary cities and whether or not we want to allow local municipalities to pass the bill or not.

We as a state are saying we do not.

Has nothing to do with race or racial profiling or immigration, illegal immigrants or not.

It has to do with what we want to allow our local municipalities to do.

- Thank you, Representative Usher.

Representative Marler, you can definitely have these comments on a point of personal privilege, but please if we can on the floor, can we stick to the bill?

- [Marler] I think I'm on the bill but I'll keep going.

- Could you show us a section in the bill that talks about racial profiling?

- The part of the bill says that local law enforcement needs to be involved in detaining people who are suspected of being illegal immigrants.

We live in a state with the exception of our native American called Montanans.

We're mostly of white descent.

European immigrants are gonna blend in.

People of color will not blend in.

- Representative, again, the language of the bill is if someone is detained for ICE, that the city or the county has to turn those people over to ICE.

It doesn't say anything in the bill about race or color.

Again, if you'd like-- - [Marler] I'll move on to my next point.

- Thank you.

- [Marler] Thank you.

- What city in the state of Montana is considered sanctuary city?

I had a colleague over there that stood up in objection about the issues of racism.

Racism does exist here.

I know because I got surrounded by five cops two months ago in the city.

- Representative, we're not saying racism doesn't exist.

We're trying to stay to the language of the bill.

- Let me finish.

I'm not being censored I told you.

And I'm not gonna just sit down and shut up.

I have a point to make here.

And this bill here shouldn't even be in front of us.

That's my point.

So that's why I'm opposing this.

And I appreciate if you treat my side over here with a little more respect, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you.

(clapping) - Order in the chamber, please.

Order in the chamber.

- [Jackie] This bill moved on through the House and will likely be on the Senate floor next week.

Our final bill and the law and order wrap up is a bill loosening Montana's death penalty laws.

House bill 244, carried by representative Dennis Lenz, a Republican from Billings, would strike just one sentence of Montana's current death penalty law, but it would make a big difference.

- It kind of tongue in cheek.

244 is indeed a simple bill.

It addresses a simple line as you can see between first page, line 21 through 23, but this subject is not simple.

And I'll never pretend that it is.

That someone who has the death penalty sentence imposed on them is very, very serious to get to that bar.

I'm sure we'll be talking about that later but I'll also refer back to the the judges on page three of the judge's decision.

The state of Montana is the only state that specifies that the death penalty be accomplished by an ultra fast acting barbiturate.

The other states employing death penalty either specify a particular drug or merely state the execution is to take place by means of lethal injection.

And that is what we're going to do here.

Is change this to administration of an intravenous injection of a substance or substances in a lethal quantity sufficient to cause death.

- So really what we've got is a situation in the state of Montana that while we have had the death penalty legal on the books for years, we have not technically been able to execute anyone since 2015 because we have not been able to get an ultra fast acting barbiturate.

Those drugs are no longer available in the US.

Members of the committee, the language proposed in this bill brought to you by Representative Lenz mirrors the language used in Texas and in Florida.

Those are the two states that use the death penalty more often than any other states that we have found.

This is the language that has withstood legal challenge.

I'm not going to stand up here and tell you that this is not going to be legally challenged.

I'm sure that it will be.

The death penalty is a hot button issue.

And typically people who are charged with the death penalty and sentenced to die don't want die.

Then they will appeal and fight that.

And we expect that fully.

But the language you see in front of you is what we believe is going to give us the strongest legal position to defend that and be able to actually carry out the will of this legislature in carrying out capital cases.

- This is a bill I'm going to follow closely and cover more in depth if and when it progresses.

I'd like to tell you more about our death penalty laws, who they affect in the decade's long attempts to overturn the death penalty in Montana.

We don't have time for that in this show but I promise we will down the line.

One of the goals of this show is to help you get to know your state government.

This week, I sat down with the new director of the Department of Corrections, Brian Gootkin, the former sheriff of Gallatin County.

We talked about his plans for the position and how his 27 years in law enforcement brings valuable perspective.

- So Department of Corrections is obviously in the executive branch of the government and our main responsibility is we have approximately 15,000 convicted felony people under our care.

And that's broken down into a bunch of different secure facilities, probation and parole programs.

So that's my new job and I'm learning all about it.

- All right, where did you come from?

What was your job before this?

- 27 years with Gallatin County Sheriff's Office, I worked my way all the way up through and then eight years as the sheriff.

- All right, and why transition from the Sheriff's Department to the Department of Corrections?

- So 27 years is a long time and we have a great office, great people.

I felt as though we built a culture there where not only are they not gonna skip a beat when I leave or when I left, they're gonna take it to the next level.

So I was very comfortable in leaving at that time.

And then taking on a new challenge of being the director of Department of Corrections, entering a different portion of public safety and making a difference, I think that those were the two combinations that really made me wanna take on this challenge.

- Have you identified any projects, anything that needs to be changed?

Any immediate thing you should be working on?

- Yeah, I have.

As a matter of fact, you know, collectively we have great people in the Department of Corrections, fantastic professionals that really love and care about what they do.

One of the things that I see just as an outsider coming in is there's two different things.

One huge thing is that in state government, all of our technology is siloed and we don't communicate with one another.

And that's not just state government.

That's also with our local partners.

So you have county jails that have a lot of the same inmates that go to the prison system yet they don't communicate.

You have the county attorneys and the judges that also don't communicate with law enforcement technology-wise.

And then you have Department of Corrections, you have DPHHS where we should be working very closely.

So that's a 30,000-foot problem that I can see that we need to address statewide.

And then secondly, another big thing is everybody talks about recidivism and reducing recidivism.

And what I've learned, again, coming from the outside, is no one can even agree with what recidivism is.

What's the definition and how can you measure recidivism?

We don't even know what our number is right now.

So we need to make a Montana definition with all of our stakeholders in my opinion and work together to come up with that basic definition.

So that way we can measure that.

And then we can also measure our programs and what we're doing statewide to see if we are actually reducing that recidivism.

- From your experience and coming to the table as a stakeholder, what are some ways to decrease recidivism rates that you see that you think are effective techniques or that you think we can employ here in Montana?

- Well, that's a good question.

I don't think I'm deep enough into it right now.

I mean, I'm on week three, so part of that is evaluating our entire system, our entire department, and especially taking a really close look at the programs, all of our programs that we have, evidence-based programs, because we do a really nice job of trying to set up all of these evidence-based programs but we don't have measurements.

We don't have outcomes.

So I think that that's one of those things that we really need to evaluate and we are.

We're coming up with an action plan to make sure that we can evaluate outcomes and.

But again, those things take time and evaluating.

This is a huge system when you're talking about 1400 employees, that doesn't include our contracts with all of our different partners and then approximately 15,000 offenders.

So that's a huge overtaking but we're up for the challenge.

- Are we dealing with any infrastructure problems and budgetary problems?

- Yes, all of the above.

So we have huge facility problems as far as aging.

You know, we have really old, even though our prison in Deer Lodge was built back, I believe in the 80s, it's been a long time and that is getting, you know, it hasn't been taken care of.

We need to make sure that we address that along with the women's prison.

So yes, budget issues, facility issues, system issues, technology issues.

But again, I think with this administration, Governor Gianforte's leadership, we are definitely gonna head in the right direction.

- Do you think having the experience of a law enforcement officer, the perspective and the connections with the law enforcement community can make a change in the prison system as we've seen it now?

Or do you think that will come in handy?

You know, will that give you insight that previous directors maybe didn't have?

- I do and, you know, one thing, I'll never talk bad about previous directors 'cause now I really understand that awesome responsibility that each one of them had.

I think it is a unique perspective that I bring and also more importantly, a relationship that I have with all of our criminal justice partners.

I've built a relationship over 27 years with sheriffs, chiefs, county attorneys, judges.

I hope that I've built that trust and that respect.

And I think that that was a part of the governor's reasoning why he selected me.

One of the first things I did was go to Billings.

We have a huge problem in Billings with crime and meth murders.

So I think it was week two.

I went and I met with chief St. John, Sheriff Linder, County Attorney Scott Twito, and I believe they had eight judges there, face-to-face to listen and to tell them that we are we are gonna be a partner and we are gonna help them.

And one of the first things that we did was the governor gave us 10 probation officers in his budget which obviously still has to go through the process.

So if and when that process happens, we're gonna put seven of those in Billings.

But just going and doing the face-to-face and I knew most of those people and having that relationship, I think that brings hope and that they can trust that I'm not just talking.

Talk is cheap, you know, action.

So I thought that that was a really good meeting.

- And I feel like this is the kind of department where maybe the public doesn't really know if they can engage, how they can engage, if you're someone that they connect with if they have questions or concerns or see a need for recommended changes.

Is there room for public dialogue with you and the DOC?

- A ton.

And, you know, we have the people in place.

What I've learned just in the short three weeks is we do great things.

We don't do a really good job of, 'cause we're so inundated with everything else and business as usual, and we have the legislative session in place right now so we're on react mode where we have to provide so much information.

But one of the things once the session is out of town, we really wanna focus on the great things that we're doing.

And we are.

So it's tough because we have such a huge agency with a lot of bureaucracy and a lot of times it's a negative magnet because of the environment and the nature of the beast.

So I really wanna focus on that.

I really wanna show the people what the great things that we are doing in moving forward and looking forward.

- That's all the time we have this week.

Thank you for joining me again for another installment of The Rundown: Capital Report.

If you would like to get in touch with me, my email is jackie@montanapbs.org.

I'll see you next week in Helena.

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