Former Senate President Jason Ellsworth, middle, signed a $170,100 contract in the final days of 2024 that is now under investigation.
On Monday morning, Sen. Jason Ellsworth, R-Hamilton, dropped off signed termination documents at Legislative Services Division to dissolve a $170,100 no-bid contract he’d signed on the last day of 2024 to award state funds to a former business associate.
Ellsworth has defended the deal as above board, but news of the rushed contract, first reported last week by the Montana State News Bureau, raised questions with Republican leadership.
The contract was inked with Bryce Eggleston of Agile Analytics to comprehensively evaluate, track, assess and report on 27 bills from the Senate Select Committee on Judicial Oversight and Reform that Ellsworth convened and chaired last year.
However, Ellsworth’s actions flew in the face of a committee decision not to hire outside contractors to perform such work, and raised questions among GOP leadership, prompting a probe into Ellsworth’s actions.
Agile applied for registration with the Secretary of State’s Office just a couple of weeks before the contract was awarded, and Eggleston has not responded to questions about the deal.
“It’s very concerning,” current Senate President Matt Regier, R-Kalispell, said Monday. “A tremendous black eye to not just our party, but to the Senate and to the state.”
Regier said that he is still investigating the specifics of how the contract came together, but said a formal ethics complaint would be filed “sooner rather than later” to look into the matter further. As of publication time, that complaint had not materialized.
Speaking to the press Monday morning, Ellsworth said the contract was “properly vetted and approved,” he does not regret his actions, and believed he was working in the best interest of the Republican-led Senate. However, he said the contract had become a political “distraction,” and Eggleston no longer wished to do the work.
“Republicans, I believe, are united, especially behind judicial reform,” Ellsworth, the former president of the Senate said. “I want to continue down that path and not get distracted by something … that’s probably being politicized.”
However, in a prepared written statement distributed to members of the press, Ellsworth took a harsher line, calling the probe into his actions a “manufactured controversy.”
“The attacks on the contract are a thinly-veiled political ploy,” he wrote, tying it to a rift in the Senate GOP that emerged on Day One of the 69th Legislature when Ellsworth and eight other Republicans joined Democrats in a vote bucking the majority’s chosen Senate rules.
Ellsworth lost his bid to stay Senate President to Regier in November.
He called the attacks part of the “sharp backlash,” from his vote, claiming that they are about manipulating committee assignments, punishing appointees, and distracting from “questionable spending proposals and inadequate meeting notices.”
Regier said that Ellsworth’s moves to terminate the contract only created more questions given his earlier strident defense of it.
“So terminating the contract? Just more question marks.”
Documents show roundabout way to contract execution
At the final meeting of the interim judicial oversight committee the first week of December, committee chairman Ellsworth asked about hiring outside staff to track, analyze and report back on the status of the 27 bills on a regular basis. Committee members demurred, saying legislative staff could take care of tracking and give basic reports.
At the time, Ellsworth said he was fine with that decision.
But on Dec. 26, Ellsworth originally submitted two contracts with Eggleston to the Legislative Services Division, one for $88,200 and one for $81,900, splitting the bills to be tracked. However, legislative staff flagged the contracts as “problematic,” and reached out to staff with the Department of Administration, which handles government procurements more than $100,000.
According to emails between Ellsworth, Legislative Services and DOA, staff from both agencies worked to merge the contracts into one before the end of the year, when the funding allocated to the Select Committee would expire.
The Administrative Rules of Montana state that a sole-source procurement contract that exceeds $100,000 must be publicly noticed for 10 days, but no public notice was posted by the Department of Administration.
DOA staff did not respond to questions about the decision not to notice the contract due to the short timeframe, but emails show agency staff working up through mid-day on Dec. 31 to pull together the elements of the contract.
It was signed that day, including by Ellsworth, a DOA procurement officer and a legal representative.
Regier said that the initial attempts to enter into two separate contracts, with a personal business associate, amounted to an “obvious” circumvention of the law.
“If it was a legitimate contractor on the other end, with legitimate deliverables, which I’m not seeing … there’s multiple, deep, deep concerns with what transpired,” Regier said.
Regier also reiterated that the interim committee had chosen to go with a staffer instead for the scope of work.
“It’s, I mean, utterly ridiculous for $170,000 for 27 bills,” Regier said. “That’s something my nephew could do.”
Ellsworth told reporters he viewed the committee’s decision as strictly about bill tracking, whereas the contract was for much more robust analysis. However, at least one other committee member, Sen. Daniel Emrich, R-Great Falls, earlier told the Daily Montanan the committee hadn’t wanted to spend the funds, and he felt “lied to,” by Ellsworth’s actions.
Ultimately, Regier said that an investigation is still underway to determine the extent of Ellsworth’s actions, but that many of the former president’s actions threw up red flags, and a formal referral to the ethics committee will be forthcoming.
“When you’re doing it in the dark of night, not even telling incoming leadership… not telling your committee … all those are red flags,” Regier said. “If this was up and up, why would you not share?”
“We’re making sure that due process for everyone involved is there, and that truth comes to light,” Regier said.
He said the ethics complaint “won’t be rushed, yet it won’t be delayed.”
Under Senate Rules, a senator may submit a letter of complaint alleging a violation of statute or rule to the Senate Rules Committee, which can then refer the complaint to the Senate Ethics Committee.
Sen. Barry Usher, R-Billings, who served as vice chair of the judicial oversight committee, said he would “absolutely” welcome an ethics investigation.
As of publication, no letter had been submitted to the Rules Committee, according to committee chairman Sen. Tom McGillvray.
In his written statement, Ellsworth preemptively called out any potential ethics complaint as “frivolous” and a “retaliatory tactic,” though he also said elected officials should be held accountable.
Earlier Monday morning, Jeff Essmann, a former state legislator who served as Senate president a decade ago, said on the Montana Talks radio show and wrote on social media that Ellsworth should be expelled for his actions, calling it a “stain against the public trust.”
Eggleston, with Agile Analytics, the company registered three weeks before the contract was signed with no other digital presence, filed the first of what would have been 24 invoices for $7,087.50 on Jan. 10.
Eggleston did not respond to texts or emails with questions about the contract and its subsequent termination.
On Monday afternoon, Legislative Services Executive Director Jerry Howe stated that no payment had been made on the contract and the contract’s cancellation was in process.