Latest news with #HouseBill764
Yahoo
10-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
‘It's been 50 years': Bill to update public transit law awaits governor's signature
Mountain Line, Missoula's community bus service, provides zero-fare fixed-route bus and Paratransit service in and around Missoula and the University of Montana. (Courtesy photo) Right now, the City of Billings MET Transit buses can't serve nearby Lockwood because of a 1973 law. Legislation awaiting a decision by Gov. Greg Gianforte would change that, as well as an issue regarding transportation districts highlighted during the past few years in Bozeman. If signed, House Bill 764 would make changes to Montana's urban transportation districts and bus systems. Under current law, transit systems owned by a municipality can't serve communities outside the city limits. Legislators also used the bill as an opportunity to revisit laws surrounding urban transportation districts. The new law would open up cities with larger transportation systems — like Billings — to expand their reach outside town. Rusty Logan, an assistant director with the City of Billings who leads MET Transit, said the legislation could potentially lead to new routes. 'It allows the city to more openly negotiate inter-local agreements to provide regional transit service,' said Logan, who is also the president of the Montana Transit Association. 'As far as the urban transportation districts goes, the intention of the bill was to make it easier to establish an urban transportation district; and in saying 'easier,' just easier to get the vote on the ballot so that the voters could decide.' Currently, municipal bus routes can't go further than eight miles from city limits. The bill adds language allowing municipalities to exceed that mileage if funded by another state, federal or non-profit source. The bill was brought by Rep. Brian Close, a Bozeman Democrat, whose community was part of the reason the legislation was brought in the first place. 'It's been 50 years since you looked at these statutes,' Close said during a House hearing on the bill on March 4. 'And I think the statutes need just a small amount of reform.' The 2020 census put the Bozeman population at more than 50,000 people, an important milestone as they were now federally required to create a Metropolitan Planning Organization. It also opens up the city for increased federal funding, including for transportation. While the Bozeman area already had some transit services run by a non-profit, a new funding structure had to be created in order to continue receiving federal funding. Gallatin Valley Urban Transportation District was formed in the wake of the changes to Bozeman's population. Creation of the district required 20% of all registered voters in the boundaries of the proposed district to sign a petition to get it on the ballot. It was a drawn out process, said Sunshine Ross, who is the transit director at Gallatin Valley Urban Transportation District. 'A lot of effort, a lot of time, but it really did pay off,' Ross said. Gallatin County voters approved the district, with 79% voting yes. HB 764 will simplify the process by allowing a county commission to put creation of a transportation district directly on the ballot. 'It eliminates this really onerous threshold,' said Jordan Hess, who is the CEO of Mountain Line and a former city council member in Missoula. Gallatin Valley was the fifth transportation district in the state, which includes larger cities like Missoula and smaller ones like Glendive, which is served by Dawson Urban Transit. The bill also gave a clear definition of 'direct transportation service,' saying it was 1.5 miles from the nearest route used by 'a vehicle that provides general or special service to the public on a regular and continuing basis.' Clarity was needed in cases where a property owner wanted to get out of the boundaries of the transportation district, which can be used to generate funding through taxes. 'Our board has had to essentially define the term in statute by policy, since it is not defined in statute,' Hess said. 'We're happy to be in a situation. We're happy to be in an environment where that's clarified and we're not having to interpret unclear statutes.'
Yahoo
11-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Idaho now has a powerful mini-legislature within its official Legislature
The Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee, the Idaho Legislature's powerful budget committee, meets daily during the legislative session. (Pat Sutphin for the Idaho Capital Sun) Idahoans can breathe a sigh of relief now that the Legislature has folded its tent and gone home. The bright side of this year's session is that it could have been worse. The session lasted two weeks longer than expected, costing taxpayers about $20,000-$30,000 per day. The main reason for the delay was the inability of the Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee (JFAC) to finalize budgets for state programs. JFAC set many budgets even before it knew how much revenue would be available, and it then squandered time figuring out how to operate without defined procedural rules. Without a guiding script, Idaho Legislature's budget committee strays from voting procedures Adding to the delay was JFAC's decision to ignore the constitutional order of setting budgets. Since statehood, general legislation, which establishes state laws, was the job of the entire Legislature. Committees hold hearings, take testimony and produce bills for debate in both houses before sending them to the governor. JFAC's job has been confined to providing the funding to finance the programs established through that policy-making process. However, in recent years JFAC has had the nerve to set itself up as a mini-legislature within the official Legislature. That is, to fund legislative policies with appropriation bills but also to set its own policies with 'intent language' in the bills. JFAC co-chair, Rep. Wendy Horman, justified the committee's use of policy-making intent language, claiming it is the committee's job to set 'conditions, limitations and restrictions' on spending. She said, 'it is the job of JFAC to set fiscal policy.' The Idaho Constitution would disagree. Appropriation bills are to fund the government, not to set state policy. Several JFAC members have raised legitimate concerns. Sen. Julie VanOrden said the use of intent language to set policy skirts the public vetting process and is 'a real abuse of power.' Sen. Janie Ward-Engelking correctly observed that JFAC is 'a budgeting committee, it's not a policy committee.' JFAC's constitutionally improper policy-making has created memorable problems in the past. In the 2022 session, JFAC put intent language in House Bill 764, saying that federal money designed to make up for pandemic-related learning loss was to serve 'school-aged participants ages 5 through 13 years.' When about 80 legitimate schools and child care centers received grants, the extreme-right outrage machine swung into action, claiming fraud and abuse because some kids under 5 might have benefited from the federal money, which federal guidelines allowed. That resulted in a flurry of pointless legal actions and investigations, which ended up costing the state way more than the miniscule amount that may have been incidentally spent on kids under 5. In 2024, JFAC put intent language in House Bill 770, the funding bill for the Department of Transportation, that killed a favorable sale of the bedraggled transportation department building on State Street in Boise. The restriction resulted in litigation and will end up costing the state millions trying to renovate an outdated building that will be an unusable money pit. This year, JFAC has picked up the pace of its unlawful policy-making. In House Bill 459, the Department of Labor appropriation bill, the mini-legislature required the preparation of several reports, including one requiring 'an analysis of the impact of illegal immigration on the state's labor market and the potential costs and benefits of using E-Verify.' This should be done through legislative action, not in the funding process. Senate Bill 1209 calls for several legislative items. Among other things, Section 4 requires Idaho State University to lead any negotiations toward acquisition of the Idaho College of Osteopathic Medicine. Section 6 requires the State Board of Education to develop a new outcomes-based funding model for Idaho's colleges and universities. Section 7 requires audits of state institutions of higher learning for compliance with Idaho's ill-defined diversity, equity and inclusion laws. In essence, the DEI laws prohibit many of the virtues that Jesus taught in the New Testament. Senate Bill 1196, requires the Idaho Commission for Libraries to report on compliance by state and school libraries with Idaho book ban laws. There are a number of other similar policy-making bills the JFAC mini-legislature churned out this session, but the list is too lengthy to lay out here. It is high time for JFAC leadership to establish procedural rules to expedite the funding of programs enacted through the established legislative process. More important, however, is that the committee get back into its proper lane of setting budgets, rather than establishing state policy. If not, it may be necessary for those affected by its improper policy-making to institute court proceedings to get JFAC to comply with its limited duty of funding programs enacted by the official Legislature. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
