Polson lawmaker introduces, then kills tribal law enforcement bill

In the policymaking sprint of Montana’s every-other-year Legislature, not every bill is destined to pass. Nor are they necessarily intended to, as was the case with House Bill 450.

Sponsored by Rep. Greg Hertz, R-Polson, the measure would have obligated Montana to pick up Lake County’s prosecution, detention and court costs for felony cases involving tribal members on the Flathead Indian Reservation. After narrowly passing the House Judiciary Committee on a 10-9 vote, the bill was unanimously voted down by the House on Friday, 100-0.

Speaking on the House floor before the vote, Hertz urged his fellow lawmakers to vote down the bill.

“The sole purpose of this is to document what’s going on in Lake County and to document what the state of Montana believes this cost is,” Hertz said.

The bill addressed an arrangement between Lake County and the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes that’s unique among Montana’s seven federally recognized Indian tribes.

Under a federal policy known as Public Law 280, Lake County has since 1964 had responsibility over crimes committed by tribal members on the reservation. The county currently handles only those cases involving felony crimes after that agreement was scaled back in the 1990s.

“For many years this was not a problem on the Flathead reservation,” Hertz said during his remarks on the House floor on Friday. “However, during the last decade or more, there’s been a significant increase in felonies in Lake County, mostly due to drug cases.”

The governor’s budget office estimated that if the state of Montana were to assume those costs, it would amount to more than $4 million per year.

The rising costs of enforcing Public Law 280 and recent drops in property-tax collections have prompted residents and officials in Lake County to explore withdrawing from the agreement, in which case federal agencies including the FBI and Bureau of Indian Affairs would assume responsibility over those cases.

During a committee hearing on the bill last month, county officials drove to Helena to testify that the added responsibility also increases the burden on the state court district’s two judges and its already-overflowing county jail.

County commissioner Bill Barron had noted that he and law enforcement officials on and off the reservation believe the partnership is working well and don’t want to see it end. But he said tribal members amount to 70 percent of the county’s caseload and about half of the jail population is comprised of inmates processed under Public Law 280.

Hertz added that the cost of a new county jail and an additional courtroom to handle the ballooning caseloads could run as high as $15 million for the county taxpayers.

In an interview Monday, he said that while House Bill 450 likely would have passed its preliminary floor vote Friday, it would have then headed before the House budget panel before a final floor vote.

“It would have died immediately in appropriations because we don’t have this type of money right now,” he said.

But, he added, “If the federal government would help fund a portion of this ... I think we could come to an agreement that’s best for all parties, and we could continue to help provide what’s one of the best jurisdictional laws across the U.S.”

Hertz acknowledged that the doomed bill was an atypical approach to boosting statewide awareness of the difficulties facing Lake County’s criminal justice system. But he hopes it will translate to renewed efforts by Montana’s congressional delegation to push for federal funding to offset the county’s burden.

“I think I met my goal of bringing it to the attention of the public and documenting what these costs are,” he said.

Reporter Sam Wilson can be reached at 758-4407 or by email at swilson@dailyinterlake.com.