The Montana state capitol pictured after a late-night Senate vote on Jan. 9, 2025. (Micah Drew/Daily Montanan)
At the Montana Capitol on the fourth day of the session, the people’s work was getting done in different ways.
In one room, the Montana poet laureate talked with lawmakers about the importance of the arts and Indigenous people.
In another room, Senate President Matt Regier gave a fiery speech to his fellow Republicans, urging them to hold together and undo action driven by Minority Leader Pat Flowers the first day of the session — with help from some Republicans.
Montanans elected Republicans to control the chamber, Regier said. He said he would fight for them, but he also asked members of his party not to cede their power in a vote the GOP needed to reset committees the way leadership wanted.
“I will not let the Democrat minority run the floor,” said Regier, R-Kalispell. “That is my line. OK? We can have our differences. We do. I’ve always preached that. We will. But I will not — Montanans did not send the Democrats to run the show. They sent us.”
Most of the way through the first week of the 69th legislative session, the Senate remained stalled, but the work continued in the Capitol.
A joint committee took up grants for the arts Thursday, for example, and in the House, committees had heard dozens of bills since Monday, with a total 4,298 possible pieces of legislation listed to date on the legislature’s website.
Like some other committees, Senate Tax met, but it didn’t take up substantive business, even though property taxes and affordable housing are among priorities for a lot of lawmakers this session.
Instead, lobbyists, Department of Revenue staff and legislative staff introduced themselves.
Bob Story, with the Montana Taxpayers Association, told legislators his association had been active for more than 100 years, and he’d be at many of their hearings.
“Hope we see some of your new members eventually,” Story said.
Three senators weren’t in attendance Thursday, including the chairman, Sen. Greg Hertz, R-Polson, but like some other committees, its membership is in limbo because of the Senate dispute.
After the meeting, Vice Chairwoman Becky Beard, R-Elliston, confirmed the committee will go the entire first week without a bill hearing. Three hearings are scheduled for Tuesday.
In the same caucus where Regier called on Republican senators to stand together, a couple of other senators also said their committees wouldn’t meet until Tuesday, and Beard expressed frustration that some members of her party weren’t going along with the leadership they elected. She asked them to trust their leaders.
“We are up here to do some good work getting some good bills passed for the state of Montana,” Beard said. “We promised that we would get some tax reform accomplished. And we have frittered away now four days dealing with this when we should be serving the state of Montana and our voters.”
The delay frustrated Sen. Cora Neumann, a Bozeman Democrat, too.
Neumann is a new lawmaker this session, and with just 90 days to roll through 4,000 bills, she said she was expecting to dive in and start legislating.
Instead, the majority of her committees have been canceled.
“The Senate president and leadership have put committees on hold,” Neumann said.
Lawmakers are sworn in to uphold a duty to serve their constituents, she said, and she wants to roll up her sleeves and do the people’s business.
“I’m hoping that we come to a resolution today so that we can get straight to work next week and hopefully make up some lost time,” Neumann said.
In the afternoon, the Senate postponed its floor session because Republican leadership wanted to grapple with rules and try to assuage some members who were upset — about committee assignments, but also the way they were handled by leadership — and had voted with Democrats earlier.
They planned to return at 6 p.m. At the meeting, though, Senate Majority Leader Tom McGillvray said he apologized to senators who felt dismissed or looked down upon.
Elsewhere at the Capitol, the work continued.
Work underway
Earlier in the day, the joint committee on long range planning met to take up an appropriation for cultural and aesthetic grants.
Art leaders from Montana talked about the benefits of theater and the arts for children, and poet laureate Chris LaTray greeted lawmakers in multiple native languages before speaking in support of a new event this year, IndigiPalooza.
LaTray, Chickadee Community Services, and the Missoula Public Library are hosting the event this summer, a celebration of Indigenous art and storytelling, according to the Chickadee website. It has a mission to support Indigenous-focused education.
In committee, LaTray spoke in support of a $13,000 award for the program, through the Montana Arts Council.
He said the first Indigenous poet laureate of the United States, Joy Harjo, will be in Montana for IndigiPalooza, but not everyone knows Montana is rich with the arts.
Once, he said, a newspaper reporter based on the East Coast told him people around the country would assume Montana doesn’t have any culture.
“What do you have to say about that?” LaTray said the reporter asked him.
At the meeting, he said Montana has the most independent bookstores per capita, and he anticipates IndigiPalooza will draw people from beyond Montana.
Money from the state would help bring people to the event who wouldn’t be able to attend it otherwise, including people from rural communities, he said.
Too many people think only of traditional dances and “old culture” when they think of Native Americans, said LaTray, enrolled member of the Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians.
“For people of all ages, I think it’s important for people to see and recognize and understand the things that we are doing today in the modern world,” he said. “We are not anachronisms.
“We are a living, breathing, key ingredient to everything that happens, not just in Montana, but all across Turtle Island, as we refer to North America in Anishinaabe culture.”
Editor’s note: Reporter Micah Drew contributed to this story.