By Alanah Griffith EBS COLUMNIST
We are now one third of the way into the session and we have seen a number of bills that address issues important to all of Montana, and to Big Sky, West Yellowstone and Gallatin Gateway. There are two that directly hit home.
The first is HB 490, which is the first swing at trying to balance how we deal with the issues of wildfires which include the viability of our utilities, ensuring that we all continue to have home insurance available and our damages should our homes and businesses burn down. This is a serious conversation, and the current bill only addresses protecting the utilities. I believe that we need more of a balance, and a more holistic approach to wildfire liability.
The other is SB 260. Currently, this will allow registered voters in an area that cannot access services provided in their county to move their area into another county’s “service district.” The property taxes for that type of service would shift to the other county, but other property taxes would still go to that original county. Basically, this would allow our Big Sky people in Madison County to join the Big Sky School District and have their school property taxes go to the Big Sky School District.
There have been two very, very good hearings in their respective committees on these issues. Committees are where the bill is first heard, and people come from near, far and Zoom to speak on the bills. Then we, the legislators, have the ability to ask questions of the witnesses. This is a good way to educate yourselves on the issues, and to participate in those hearings if you feel that you want to add your experience.
For this article, I want to be sure that each and everyone of you can not only participate (which was covered in our last article) but watch our committee hearings, floor hearings and every other hearing at your leisure or stream it live. Knowing what is going on in your legislature is important, and it means that my district is more informed and can give me more ideas on how to best serve you.
For any hearing, go to the home page for the Montana Legislature. If you look at the top right of the page, you will see “Now Streaming.” If you click this, you will be taken to the legislature’s website which has all of the legislatures archived, streaming and upcoming hearings. This is the place where you can watch or listen to any hearing of the legislature.
To focus on the right hearing, you need to know the date, time and committee in which the bill was heard. You can find this on the “Bill Explorer” page, which we discussed in an earlier article. Here is a link to the Bill Explorer. https://bills.legmt.gov/.
In this case, after looking up Bill Explorer, we know that HB 490 was heard in the House Judiciary Committee on Feb.19. On the hearing website, a person can click the calendar date of Feb. 19and it will open up another site. Next, click on House Judiciary, and it will open up the video or audio (your choice.) of HB 490’s hearing.
As you might note, this was a very long hearing. To skip directly to the hearing on HB 490, you can click the “agenda” button to the right of the video/audio screen and then click HB 490. This will take you directly to the portion of the hearing on HB 490. Enjoy!
Similarly, SB 260 can be found the same way. On Bill Explorer, you will find that SB 260 was heard on Feb. 12 in Senate Taxation. You can tune into the recorded SB 260 hearing online.
Enjoy watching this video. You will see a lot of local Big Sky residents who drove the hours to the capitol in order to present their testimony to support SB 260. We are currently working on amendments to the bill to address some of the issues raised in the hearing. This is a normal part of the process and please keep looking up this bill. The next step will be Executive Action (EA). The hearing for EA for both bills have not been set, but because there is no public participation, they can be set the morning of the EA. The EA is on the videos.As always, I am very blessed to be serving all of you in the Montana Legislature. Please keep reaching out to me with your thoughts or concerns. You can reach me at my email. I also had a recent meeting with some constituents in West Yellowstone. They mentioned that updates on Instagram and Facebook would be helpful. I will be doing my best to post updates from the capitol on various votes and issues. If you would like to follow me, please do so on Facebook and Instagram.
Alanah Griffith was born in Big Sky and returned after law school to raise her son and practice law. Griffith represents Big Sky and the surrounding area in Montana’s House of Representatives. She can be reached by email at alanah.griffith@legmt.gov, on Facebook and on Instagram at, @griffithformt.
