Local state legislators give overview of 63rd session

Residents of Sanders and Mineral County gathered at the St. Regis Community Center on Thursday for a panel discussion on the 63rd session of the Montana legislature.

The discussion featured Senator Jennifer Fielder, Representative Nick Schwaderer and Representative Carl Glimm. All three serve districts that include Mineral County as well as portions of Sanders and Missoula counties.

“Everything tonight we could spend a long time on,” Sen. Fielder said after introductions, a prayer and the Pledge of Allegiance were concluded. “We are just going to try to touch on several different topics and leave some time at the end if you want to follow up with greater detail.”

Sen. Fielder began the discussion with the topic of redistricting. Every ten years the state is charged with realigning districts in order to ensure there is an equal number of residents in each district.

“How that affected our area is with Senate District 7, part of Frenchtown was taken out of it and part of western Flathead County was moved into it,” Sen. Fielder said. “This is one of the reasons Rep. Glimm was invited here tonight.”

According to Sen. Fielder the redistricting “is not ideal” for average citizens when it comes to accessing their representatives at the state level because the new districting splits up many areas of the state.

“We tried to make it as compacted as we could so we have access to you and you have access to us,” Sen. Fielder said.

However, the final decision on the redistricting went to a commissioner appointed by the legislature and according to Sen. Fielder there was “a lot” of gerrymandering – the process of manipulating district boundaries to give political advantage to a particular party – that took place during the process of redistricting.

“I don’t think a lot of the decisions were made for the benefit of the average person,” Sen. Fielder said.

Rep. Glimm sat on the house appropriations committee which dealt with what Sen. Fielder called “one of the biggest things” the legislature has to tackle in a session.

“The one thing we are cast by the state constitution to do is produce a budget and it has to be balanced,” Rep. Glimm said. “We can’t spend like the federal government does so I guess we have more work to do then.”

The process of creating a balanced budget began this session with “something new” – the committee beginning with looking at what was spent in 2012 and working with things such as inflation and laws passed in the last session that could increase department spending this year.

“We actually made them bring those things to us to be looked at individually and normally those things just get automatically rolled into the budget,” Rep. Glimm said. “That was a way for us to really get a finer look at how it’s growing and I think we did a really good job.”

After the committee concluded its work on the budget, the increase came to 1.62 percent for this year’s budget. Other bills that came out this session and added to the budget brought the increase in state spending to 13 percent.

“So while we held House Bill 2 down pretty good we lost in a lot of other areas of spending,” Rep. Glimm said. “Hopefully next time we can do a better job and I think our committee is lined up a lot better to have more control over spending next time.”

Rep. Schwaderer sat on the house tax committee and began his overview by first thanking attendees of the panel discussion.

“This is how a representative government works,” Rep. Schwaderer said. “It’s when folks go out to actually meet their legislatures… We have a very involved community and I think that is a healthy thing to have.”

The tax committee deals with the revenue side of state government and the numbers. Rep. Schwaderer said the committee is “a little more dry” than other committees due to this and they do not get as much media attention as the others but they deal with “very important” issues.

“We had a couple major tax simplifications bills come up,” Rep. Schwaderer said. “We were actually able in both cases to simplify them (the two major bills brought to the committee) to the extent where it would reduce the personal tax rate and still be revenue neutral.”

Both of the bills failed to pass and according to Rep. Schwaderer they would have taken out tax credits that “aren’t used that much but are very expensive” to the tax payers.

In what Rep. Schwaderer called “a few bright spots” from the committee, one of which focused on taxes for business equipment.

“That can really have a direct effect on jobs and attracting businesses to the state that hire the hardworking men and women of our state,” Rep. Schwaderer said.

Prior to this sessions legislature, a threshold existed with business equipment where one dollar over or under meant the difference between paying property tax on all of the equipment.

“This changed it from a threshold to an exemption,” Rep. Schwaderer said. “Where if you are $10 over, that first amount was still alright so you weren’t trying to game the system by having just the right amount of value.”

Sen. Fielder added that the change in the code is “a big success for our small struggling businesses” when it comes to how much tax those businesses have to pay for equipment.

Finally, Rep. Schwaderer said that any bill proposed in the committee that would have increased taxes died in the committee.

The legislatures present discussed other committees they were involved in during this session and gave highlights. Sen. Fielder served on the Natural Resource Committee, which voted on a bill to look at how public land management is currently working and whether or not there are ways to run it that will benefit populations living in areas dominated by public land.

“We can’t wait for the Fed to find solutions,” Sen. Fielder said of the committee.

In the committee on education, Rep. Schwaderer said the “big bill” was Senate Bill 125, which created a “few new innovations” for schools – including enabling schools to be more flexible on how they utilize levy funds.

A short question and answer session concluded the panel discussion.