As the 2025 session begins, here’s a short summary of notable bills some of our Cascade County legislators have pre-filed.
Note: The MT legislature bill search site is at: https://bills.legmt.gov/
To search for a requester first tick “on” the requester field in the Columns dropdown at upper left.
Then you can enter a legislator’s name in the search bar to produce a list of bills introduced. If there is a little PDF icon next to the bill number it means there’s actually something to read.
SD 10, Jeremy Trebas ( R )
Senator Trebas seems to have as one of his primary goals asserting more top-down legislative control from Helena over local government. He’s also all in on creating additional political polarization and partisanship as well as punishing/disqualifying Medicaid recipients.
- LC0255 would prevent county commissions from removing elections duties from the clerk and recorder mid term. It says the effective date would be immediately, which might mean it would negate the action previously taken against Sandra Merchant, as she is still serving her elected term.
- LC0256 would have people start registering to vote by party, which would of course make that information available to anyone.
- LC0521 revises recall election laws to eliminate any requirement for a reason.
- LC0584 would drastically revise Medicaid expansion, eliminating some activities that count as community engagement, eliminating some reasons for exemption from the community engagement requirement including chronic homelessness, finds new reasons to terminate the entire program, and etc etc etc. Really worth a read: https://bills.legmt.gov/#/lc/bill/2/LC0584 (LC text tab)
- LC1887 would eliminate the Board of Public Assistance that provides a method for taxpayers/citizens to protest/appeal actions and decisions of the DPHHS, and require people to protest/appeal to the exact same administrative department that denied them in the first place.
SD 11, Daniel Emrich ( R )
- LC0058 would require the Judicial Standards Commission to send a copy of anything about any investigation of any judicial officer in the state to the House of Representatives, whether there was any finding of wrongdoing or not.
- LC2440 eliminates “failing to seek reasonable medical care for a child suffering from an apparent acute life threatening condition” as a cause for Criminal Child Endangerment, and targets CPS personnel for tough placement decisions they have to make.
SD 12, Wendy McKamey ( R )
Sen. McKamey has a lot of bills dealing with elections administration minutia as apparently there are not nearly enough laws and statutes devoted to the subject already. Besides those:
- LC0314 creates a whole raft of new regulations for amusement ride operators, which might be good, but then oddly also creates a bunch of new code that would regulate people who ride those amusement rides. Really? Who is going to read these before they go to the fair?
SD 13, Josh Kassmeier ( R )
Many bill numbers pre-filed; nothing particularly questionable or unreasonable. So far.
SD 39, Wylie Galt ( R )
Very few bills pre-filed. Only one has text, and it is about muzzle-loader season.