- [Jackie] Happening now on the Rundown.

In the fourth week of session things are heating up with controversial bills hitting the House floor.

- A bill to rein in what has become the Wild West of the abortion industry.

- [Jackie] And governor Greg Gianforte pledging to cut taxes, generate jobs, and restrict access to abortion on his first state of the state address.

- Ladies and gentlemen, the state of our state is strong.

- I'm Jackie Coffin and the Rundown capital 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 capital report is based primarily in Helena, which is the original land of the Salish, Pondera, Blackfeet, Shoshone, Bannock, and Obselica people.

Welcome and thank you for joining me again in Helena.

This week action on more controversial bills ranging from abortion to trans rights, sanctuary cities, to free speech on college campuses.

Also give you the highlights from Governor Greg Gianforte's first state of the state address and my special guest this week is here to talk about Montana's mental health crisis and the proposed cuts to the department of health and human services.

That's Lenette Kosovich, CEO of Rimrock in Billings.

As always there's a lot to talk about, so let's begin.

Here in the House chambers for the first state of the state.

- Serving you is the highest honor and privilege of my life.

- [Jackie] The state of the state is delivered by the governor every other January during the legislative session.

In governor Greg Gianforte's first address he talked about the hardship of COVID-19 and the resilience of Montanans.

The need to reopen our economy and say goodbye to masks.

- The pandemic remains the biggest challenge we face today.

Addressing it is my top priority as your governor.

We've begun improving how we confront this pandemic.

On my second day in office we changed the state's vaccine distribution plan to protect the most vulnerable.

These changes are saving lives.

We have proven in Montana that we can get the vaccine quickly into the arms of our most vulnerable, we just need more vaccines.

That is why today I asked President Biden to do everything in his power to ramp up production and send more vaccines to Montana, we need them.

- [Jackie] The governor also talked about his plan to improve Montana's economy with tax cuts, deregulation, and cutting red tape.

And attracting out of state businesses with a cut to capital gains tax.

- Taken together, these measures will make Montana more competitive but it doesn't matter if no one knows about it.

That's why we need to effectively promote a more competitive Montana to job creators.

- [Jackie] Gianforte talked about fighting Montana's meth epidemic.

- The crisis is heartbreaking and it has to stop.

There is no silver bullet but there are steps we can take to confront it.

My budget begins to take some of those steps, it will make investments.

Let me be clear, tax revenues from the sale of recreational marijuana today should go to confronting the epidemic of addition in Montana.

- [Jackie] And the missing and murdered indigenous people crisis.

Pledging to sign legislation combating it.

- Time is of the essence.

We must act urgently to curb this tragic trend.

It's critical that we bring all the voices to the table and that all the voices are heard.

- [Jackie] He also pledged to sign legislation restricting abortion.

- Since we're talking about saving lives, we must protect the lives of the most vulnerable, unborn children.

(audience applauding) - [Jackie] Overall the governor says the state of the state is strong.

- But it's more than strong, the state of our state is resilient.

We are ready for our Montana comeback.

- [Jackie] After the address, Democrats gave their response.

- A few minutes ago governor Gianforte, for the first time since taking office, shared his vision for our state.

A vision that is limited to massive giveaways for Montana's wealthiest and gives quiet approval for an unprecedented barrage or attacks on the freedoms of Montana's women and children.

Democrats have a better plan that aims to meet the challenges of our time by creating jobs and opportunity for Montanans rather than prioritizing out of state interests.

Democrats are investing in the people who live here, who have roots here.

- [Jackie] In legislative business this week began with six controversial bills, four restricting abortion and two limiting the rights of transgender Montanans that made it out of the judiciary committee last week and onto the floor Monday.

- It is my honor and with a strong personal statement that I bring before you today House bill 136.

- [Jackie] Before we dig in, how does a bill get to the floor?

Bills have to be carried by a legislator and sometimes this legislator does so at the request of a different entity, like the governor, or an agency like fish, wildlife and parks or Montana highway patrol.

Or it's the legislator's idea that they propose at the bequest of their constituents.

The bill language is drafted, submitted for review to the legislative services and if all the language checks out it gets a first reading either on Senate side if the bill is sponsor is a senator, or the House side if the bill sponsor is a House representative.

The first reading is quick and procedural with no vote attached in a descent to the legislative committee it categorically matches.

Like the House health and human services committee or Senate education.

Committees are small, specialized groups of legislators.

The bill is then presented by the sponsor in front of the committee and this is where public testimony is allowed.

This session, public testimony is allowed to be in person or remote.

Throughout the bill's committee hearing public testimony is divided into opponents, proponents, or informational witnesses.

Committee members can ask questions of the bill's sponsor or people there to testify.

Things can get contentious.

- I'd like to make an observation that there's a clear violation of decorum of the presenter of the next two bills.

Because he's choosing not to wear a tie and a jacket which has long been the historical president of attire for men in this chamber and on the House floor.

In light of that, if the young man doesn't have the respect to do that for his constituents, I'm not gonna respect the position he has on this bill.

I will not attend the meeting, thank you.

- [Presenter] Mr.

Chair, can I respond?

- [Mr.

Chair] No, you can't 'cause you're the presenter and we have not opened that.

- [Jackie] After the bill hearing, the committee takes executive action on the bill.

Meaning they vote to advance it on to the legislative body as a whole or it dies.

Committees also hammer out language in bills, amendments to bills, and more.

If it passes committee it moves up the chain to the House or Senate again depending on which branch the sponsor is elected to for the bill's second reading.

The second reading is just legislators, no public testimony and they can speak in favor of it, against it, or ask questions of each other or propose amendments.

- Mr. Chairman, sponsor, the question I have of you, - [Jackie] A vote is held after the second reading to move it forward with a yes vote or shoot it back to committee with a no vote.

Sometimes a no vote kills the bill for good.

If it passes the second reading, a bill moves forward to a third reading in the same chamber, typically the next day and it typically moves quite quickly with little to no discussion.

- [Chairman] House Bill 163 has passed the House.

- [Jackie] If it passes the third reading, it's off to the other chamber to begin the process again.

If a bill is amended by the other chamber and passes it has to pass through it's original chamber once again before it can ultimately land on the governor's desk to be signed into law or be vetoed.

Okay, so now that's all, hopefully, clear.

I'll break down the action of the six controversial bills that have been gaining a lot of attention since they passed through the House judiciary committee last week.

The four anti abortion bills are House bill 136, House bill 140, House bill 171, and House bill 167.

Each sponsored by a different House republican.

- Mr. Chairman and members, you have before you House bill 171.

A bill to rein in what has become the Wild West of the abortion industry.

That is the dispensing of the impotent inducing drugs through the mail.

- [Jackie] These bills prohibit abortions after 20 weeks unless it's physically life threatening for the mother, limit the distribution of abortion inducing drugs, and keep records of who takes them.

Require a physician to offer a pregnant person the option to see ultrasounds or hear a fetal heartbeat before an abortion.

Lastly, saying an infant born alive after an abortion is a legal person and has all the rights afforded to it by the state.

Some of these bills, the penalty for healthcare providers who violate them is a felony, prison time, or loosing their license to practice medicine.

- The person performing an abortion after 20 weeks is guilty of a felony.

Montana code annotated 5020 112.

Not to exceed $1,000 imprisonment in the state prison for a term not to exceed five years or both.

- [Jackie] Legislators debated these bills for hours.

- Lord, make me an instrument of your peace, thank you Mr.

Chair for calling on me.

I wanna rise in support of the bill.

- Let's just all be honest with ourselves, if one of our rovers on Mars had found a single celled organism tomorrow, every single headline in every single newspaper on the face of planet earth would be, "Life found on Mars".

I think at the very least, within the confines of this argument, we should be treating the reality as reality and admitting at the very least that we are taking about an actual life, Mr. Chairman.

- Speak to you today on this bill.

I stand before you today and oppose House bill 171.

I'm sure you're thinking that it's just another democrat preaching pro choice.

But what I'd like to share with you is that I was born and raised Catholic and I have my own views of what abortion is.

I also firmly believe that pro choice is not pro abortion.

- Do we want a government that tells us how many kids we can have?

There are governments in the world that tell people the size of their family.

Bodily autonomy, relationship between patients and doctors, this is a bad bill.

Montanans value our right to privacy.

So much that it's enshrined in the constitution as many people on both sides of the aisle have mentioned.

I urge you to respect privacy of women and people going forward in medical care.

I'll just close by saying to my friends and my family who have had abortions, I'm sorry you have to listen to some of the judgemental language on the floor today.

I love you and I respect you and I support you.

Please vote no.

- I stand in support of this bill because I am a woman who chooses life and a woman who knows that an abortion of a five month old preborn baby has nothing to do with women's health but it has everything to do with the child's health.

The premier characteristic of an advanced society is that we value life.

If you look at citizens in undeveloped countries you see that the lives of individuals are cheap and expendable.

As Americans and Montanans, we recognize that individuals are important.

We recognize the potential of anyone to achieve or improve his or her circumstances.

- [Jackie] Something I found interesting is some of the legislators this session are faith leaders in different communities.

Like representative Scott Kerns, a republican from Great Falls who is also a Lutheran pastor and representative Ed Staffman, a democrat from Bozeman who is a rabbi.

But these two faith leaders were at odds over the bills based on their religions.

- I would ask you to please do support this legislation.

- We believe that, to quote my denomination's website, "Life is sacred and the life and well being of the existing life must be prioritized over the possibility of potential life."

I'm not asking you to agree with any of this.

You have the religious freedom to come to a different conclusion.

If your conclusion mandates that you shouldn't have an abortion, please don't have one.

But I ask that you grant Montana's Jewish women and families and others who don't share your view, the same freedom of religion to follow their understanding of the Bible and their conscious as you demand for yourselves.

- [Jackie] Ultimately, the four anti abortion bills pasted the second reading and right on their heels were two bills targeting transgender Montanans both brought by representative John Fuller, a republican from Whitefish.

- [House Speaker] We are trying, in this bill, to protect women's athletic opportunities.

- [Jackie] House bill 112 will require trans athletes to compete in sports based on their assigned birth sex.

Representative Fuller and supporters say this would keep women competitive in sports.

Opponents say the occurrence is pretty rare and it could cost the state money and participation in NCAA sporting events.

The next bill, House bill 113 would prevent trans youth from accessing sex altering medical procedures.

- [House Speaker] House bill 113, the youth health protection act is designed to protect children.

Children, from the administration of drugs and chemicals and from the imposition of surgical procedures for the purpose of causing the child to physically appear more like a person of the opposite sex and less like his or her own sex or to conform to a gender identity incongruent with the child's sex.

- [Jackie] This session republicans hold a strong majority in the House, Senate, and of course in the governor's office.

In the House, there are 67 republicans and 33 democrats.

The four anti abortion bills drew a pretty clear line in the sand between democrats and republicans.

With democrats opposing them and republicans supporting them.

One member of each party crossed over to vote in favor or against the bills.

But the anti trans bills were not so clear and drew republican opposition.

- This bill, I think, is a solution looking for a problem.

Why do I say that?

Because I called the school board association, they don't even have a policy on this.

I thought, okay, I'll call the Montana high school association, they rule everything for sports.

They tell you when you can practice, when you can't.

If you can play if you didn't practice, all kinds of things.

The guy's been there for 24 years, hasn't had an issue on this.

This party always says that were about local control.

So, I'm thinking the boys and girls that are in local control, the elected school board trustees who get big bucks, (speaker imitates a laugh).

They don't even get paid and they do a ton of work for the good of all.

So where's the local control?

As the colleague across the aisle just said, I think this bill's unconstitutional.

It's probably gonna die by fiscal rule or the fact that it goes to court.

I think this is much ado about nothing.

We haven't really had a problem, so I'm gonna be voting no on this one.

- After three hours of testimony, all six controversial bills passed their second reading.

But something interesting did happen the next day.

- During the third reading which moves quickly through the voting process, all four anti abortion bills passed, as expected.

But House bill 113 restricting medical procedures for trans youth failed.

- Shall the bill be passed by the House?

Those in favor will vote aye, those opposed will vote no.

Has every member voted?

Does any member wish to change his or her vote?

If not the clerk will record the vote.

- Mr Speaker, 49 representatives have voted Aye, 51 have voted no.

- House Bill 113 has failed to pass the House.

- Republicans who voted yes the day before voted no.

One of the changed votes came from House majority leader Sue Vinton, a republican from Billings.

The unexpected vote shutting the bill down happened Tuesday.

The next day, Wednesday, bill's sponsor representative Fuller tried to bring it back for another third reading vote saying he thought the vote had been recorded wrong.

But with another no vote on even wider margins, legislators refused to bring it back.

However, in a blow to the LGBTQ community, House bill 112, the bill affecting trans athletes did pass it's third reading and now moves over to the Senate.

But it's not enough to have just one day of controversial hearings.

In the House judiciary committee where we have been spending a lot of time in the past couple of shows, there were bills about free speech on campus, sanctuary cities, and challenging the authority of local health boards to make decisions.

- The state of Montana, we do not want sanctuary cities.

I fully understand we do not have sanctuary cities at present, and like I said, this is a proactive bill to prevent the development of them.

We do have a couple of communities in Montana that have it in their wording already.

They could very easily convert it over to being their codes and actually put in a sanctuary city very quickly.

- Like the Chairman said, we should be talking about immigration status here, and not race.

I would like to voice that Bozeman and Missoula are open and welcoming places.

We think the diversity increases the quality of our populations.

We think the diversity and cultural diversity especially improves Bozeman and Missoula.

If we want folks to feel welcome in our cities, we need to make sure that law enforcement can interact with them in a way that makes them feel safe and secure.

This isn't gonna do that.

It doesn't give law enforcement the choice in how they will interact with the immigrant population, it actually takes that choice away from them.

- [Jackie] As we have seen, the legislator hears a lot of different bills but the only thing that they have to do when they meet for 90 days every other year is pass a budget for our state.

In this session, that is House bill two carried by representative Lu Jones, a republican from Conrad.

Right now the budget, hose bill two, is being worked out amongst a lot of different committees.

One point about it has gained a lot of attention but also a lot of ire, is a big change in funding proposed for the department of health and human services.

The joint sub committee on public health and human service on day five of the session, republican legislators moved to change the starting operation point from what's proposed in the 2021 budget to it's starting operation point in 2019.

That is nearly a billion dollar reduction over two years to the agency which has one of the largest budgets in the state.

But serves tens of thousands of Montanans providing healthcare, food, housing assistance, and assistance to the elderly, those with disabilities, and children, along with many other services.

Taking a closer look at the DPHHS rollback, it would take more than 20 million dollars from child and family services, about 20 million from senior and long term care, 115 million from health resources, and another 20 million from addictive and mental health disorders.

Along with high dollar cuts to other services in DPHHS.

Democrats strongly oppose the cuts.

Recently there hasn't been much movement on renegotiating this starting point of the DPHHS budget and it's still set at the 2019 funding point.

But because it affects so many people, it's not something we should lose sight of as the weeks pass.

I called up Lenette Kosovich, the CEO of Rimrock in Billings.

Rimrock is the state's largest substance abuse treatment facility and provides mental health counseling.

I met Lenette in the 2019 session when I was covering Medicaid expansion and she invited me to her clinic for a tour in that year.

We connected over Zoom so I could get her perspective on the proposed cuts and how they might affect Montana.

- [Lenette] Hi, I'm Lenette Kosovich, I'm the CEO of Rimrock foundation in Billings Montana.

- [Jackie] You and I met two years ago talking about Medicaid expansion and one of the things we discussed at length was Montana's mental health crisis.

In two years, how has the needle changed on that?

Has it worsened?

Has it improved?

Has it stayed about the same?

- With the advent of COVID about a year ago, really early on in this pandemic we had heard it's likely to cause an increase in mental health issues or even substance use issues.

We always say the opposite of addiction is isolation.

Boy, you get a COVID virus coming down the pike and what does everybody do?

They hunker down by order or by self preservation and that isolation really tends to push people towards habits that maybe have been out of control in the past and again are.

They lose their coping mechanism or they lose their support system.

We were hearing there's gonna be this tsunami of mental health issues and substance abuse issues and they were right.

I am concerned about hearing about the rollback now to the 2019 department budget for DPHHS.

I'm not sure what the right year was to rollback to.

2019 really was when we were starting to get restored And it wasn't until half way through the year in July.

We really never got back up to or stride, I guess.

I don't know what the answer is.

I would be fearful if it did stay there because the increased expenses that are here to stay, I believe, with COVID.

We have a workforce shortage.

We're paying premium for councilors and support people.

We have a huge increase in PPE and how we serve food and just changing so many different types of procedures because of COVID, which I think will last for a long time and they're expensive.

It's really gonna be interesting to see what happens.

What I'm worried about is I know in the last decade we have seen people come into our services that are so much sicker than they were even 10 years ago.

They come with a co-occurring affliction.

They might have depression, anxiety, along with their substance abuse.

They have two or more co-morbidities.

It's not unusual for us to have five or six patients in our service right now that all have diabetes, hypertension, COPD, hepatitis.

From a physical standpoint, they're a lot sicker.

If some of this budget is rolled back, especially for the Medicaid population, to be served and it affects their physical care, it's just spinning our wheels.

We gotta treat the entire person.

- If you could say something to law makers, if you could make a case for them to move the budget back to where it was or reconsider putting it at that point, what would it be?

- I think the best advice I could give our law makers is you actually have to spend a dollar to save a dollar.

If we are really taking care of the needs, the health needs of our population, it is gonna save on the other end.

All those things that they are continuing to pour money into, incarceration, CPS services, those types of things, we really hope that we can reverse this if we're taking care of the entire health of an individual.

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

Thank you to all of you who have written to me with comments, concern, constructive criticism, and kind words, I really love to hear from you.

If you'd like to get in touch with me, you can email me at jackie@montanaPBS.org Thank you again for joining me, I'll see you next Sunday.

The Rundown is made possible by the Greater Montana Foundation.

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