Halftime at the Legislature

GOP to push six-bill budget plan when session reconvenes

HELENA - At the halfway point of Montana's 60th legislative session, Democrats were expressing dread and Republicans confidence in their "six-pack" budget in the House.

As the House went into a midterm recess Tuesday afternoon, Minority Floor Leader Art Noonan, D-Butte, made an impassioned plea for Republicans to reconsider their plans to split the state budget into six appropriations bills.

"There are 49 people here who aren't feeling the love, who aren't seeing transparency" in the new approach, Noonan said.

For 30 years, the Legislature has advanced a single spending package - House Bill 2 - that builds on a budget proposal from the governor.

Noonan said that the new process would have "less clarity, less transparency and less public involvement … I've got to say, as we leave here, we're leaving with a certain sense of dread."

House Minority Leader John Parker, D-Great Falls, said Republicans have scrapped a budget that took 1 1/2 years to develop, with input from legal counsel, legislators and the public. And the move undid about two months of work by the Legislature in revising the governor's budget framework, he said.

"There's no time to repeat that process and start from scratch," Parker said.

But Republicans have a different view.

"We're trying to put responsibility into the budget process," said House Appropriations Chairman John Sinrud, R-Bozeman. "When we started in January, we had a budget staring us in the face with a 22 percent [spending] increase. There's no way our economy can sustain such a huge increase in budgeting over the long term."

Sinrud said the House Appropriations Committee will start hearings on the first two bills when the chamber reconvenes Monday. Hearings on the other four bills will be held afterward. Each bill will have the same hearing opportunity that existed with House Bill 2, he said.

Asked whether any chance existed of enough Republicans "defecting" to restore the old House Bill 2 approach, Sinrud said there was "zero" chance of that happening.

Asked whether he thought Republicans would support six bills that could combine for a 13 percent spending increase, Sinrud explained one of the main reasons for breaking up the budget:

In the past, lawmakers have reluctantly gone along with House Bill 2 even though it contained spending provisions they didn't like.

With the new approach, Sinrud said, "you have six opportunities for people to vote their conscience … If they don't like a 22 percent increase in one part of the budget, then they don't have to vote for it."

The new approach is also a tactical maneuver, aimed at asserting more House influence in a process that historically favors the Senate - the chamber that has final control over House Bill 2.

Flathead legislators mirrored the views of their parties.

Rep. Mike Jopek, D-Whitefish, predicted that the budget process will be a nightmare in which lawmakers won't have a comprehensive view of the state spending plan.

Sen. Greg Barkus, R-Kalispell, said breaking a huge bill into digestible components will make it more understandable.

"I firmly believe the six-bill approach will bring transparency and openness to the process," he said.

Barkus said that with a single appropriations bill, many of the most important compromise decisions after the Senate's consideration were made in a House-Senate conference committee.

"You had this massive document that flowed through the process until the very end, when six people would make all the decisions," he said.

Along with Barkus, Sen. Dan Weinberg, D-Whitefish, eventually will weigh the appropriations bills in the Senate Finance and Claims Committee.

Weinberg said he's uncertain about the motives behind the new approach.

"I don't understand them," he said about House Republicans. "I don't know if they are purely politically driven, or if they really have a plan to improve the process."

Weinberg said that deliberations in the Senate have been fairly congenial, with many bills passing with bipartisan cooperation, while the House has split along party lines much more often.

He said he's concerned about many of the bills that were passed by the Senate.

"Who knows what's going to happen to them over there" in the House, he said. "Will they just be dispensed with or will they get fair hearings? It's a real concern. I've worked real hard on a lot of bills … and I'd like to think they will get a fair hearing over there."

As the Senate adjourned for the midterm break Wednesday morning, Sen. Verdell Jackson, R-Kalispell, was carrying an information packet from the Senate's Republican leadership, outlining a litany of "bad bills" passed during the first half of the session.

"I think almost all of them will not survive in the House," he said.

But Jackson also predicts that Senate Democrats will maintain their solidarity and restore much of the spending that House Republicans cut from the appropriations bills.

"I think they will be amending them," Jackson said. "They will be putting what they want back into them … I don't see a crack in their caucus."

Reporter Jim Mann may be reached at 758-4407 or by e-mail at jmann@dailyinterlake.com