There is about three weeks left in the 2023 Montana Legislative session and currently many bills are being discussed.  Rachel Cone, Director of State Governmental Affairs for Montana Farm Bureau Federation talked to KMON about the current legislative activities that are tied to agriculture.

The House and the Senate have had quite a bit of time on the floor getting everything caught up. We are past a lot of our big transmittal dates when it comes to the general bills. Of course, that transmittal date was way back in March. Revenue bills, that transmittal date was last week. Now the transmittal dates that people are working towards have to do with amendments on bills. There's different dates for those transmittal dates when it comes to general and revenue bills and when those amendments get on, so we're seeing legislature hard at work trying to get bills in their final form to get through the process. A lot of action is being taken in committees and really at this point we're hearing no new bill. It's everything getting through their second chamber and getting the final action taken on it.

Senate Bill 72

At the end of last week, in house judiciary Senate Bill 72 was heard. It's a good example of a bill that needs to get through its second chamber. As a quick reminder, Senate Bill 72 has to do with the future of the water court here in Montana and the future of how we administer water rights. This is a bill we've been talking about since January. One of the bills that came through the Comprehensive Water Review,  Montana Farm Bureau has been in strong support of it the entire way. In judiciary there was an intense hearing with a lot of proponents and a lot of opponents. This bill, there's definitely a lot of different opinions on it. Of course, Farm Bureau's perspective is that this is the right thing to do for the future of water, especially as we see adjudication rapidly being worked through and hopefully at an end soon. Then we're seeing challenges across the state from different farmers and ranchers when it comes to solving whatever dispute it might be for their water right, and the struggles that they've had with that. So again, SB 72 is creating this one stop shop from dealing with the disputes to dealing with your water commissioner to dealing with really anything with water. So that's kind of a quick recap, but that was heard and we expect to see action on that bill coming out soon.

New Springtime Calves

House Bill 2

Some stuff going on this week we've talked about House Bill 2 before, but that Senate Financing Claims, which is the Senate committee that deals with every bill that has some sort of fiscal impact will go through its normal committee and then go to second reading and then be referred to Senate Finance and Claims. They'll talk about the fiscal note on it and then it'll go back to the Senate floor and straight to third, unless there's any amendments. We expect to see House Bill two on the Senate floor soon. That is always a really good indicator about where we're at in the session because of course House Bill 2 is the budget for the state. Once that big bill can get through both chambers, and that is a really good indication that the end of the session is near, we're on day 73 today, which means there's 17 days left of the session to get all the work done. The legislature has 90 working days that they're allowed to use.

Any rain in those clouds?

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