The Montana Legislature began its 69th regular session on Jan. 6, kicking off a 90-day frenzy in which lawmakers, lobbyists, constituents and the governor’s office will work together — or, often, in competition — to pass a state budget and consider a litany of bills related to everything from tax policy to bathroom access for transgender Montanans.
Beneath the fray of high-profile legislative debates, officials with local governments across the state have their own list of priorities. The Pulp spoke with Missoula Mayor Andrea Davis and Missoula County Chief Administrative Officer Chris Lounsbury to get a sense of their wishlists for the session.
The city also maintains a database of bills it’s tracking this session, available here. The county’s legislative homepage is here.
Andrea Davis, mayor of Missoula
The city has four high-level legislative priorities, Davis told The Pulp last week: Property tax reform, behavioral health and homelessness, housing and land use, and tax-increment financing.
In sum, Davis said the city is looking to lessen the burden of property taxes on residents, build more housing and provide services to the city’s most needy. Perhaps chief among these priorities, she said, is advocating for cities to be able to levy a local option tourism tax that could help shore up city budgets while reducing the tax burden on local owners and renters.
“That is a pot of money that could really offer some tax relief for homeowners and renters alike,” she said.
That said, the city is waiting on endorsing the proposal until it emerges in its final form, she said.
Davis added that the city is interested in something akin to Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte’s proposed homestead exemption, which would lower tax rates for primary residences and long-term rentals while increasing taxes on second homes and short-term rentals. The homestead exemption was the chief proposal to emerge from the state property tax reform task force that met last year.
She said she’d also support efforts to implement a so-called property tax circuit breaker that would offer relief to low-income homeowners. Democrats unsuccessfully brought a similar measure in the 2023 session, and are working on another effort this year.
More broadly, Davis said, Missoula is a member of a statewide housing coalition that supports a suite of housing affordability legislation up for consideration this session. Its priorities includeOf three potential bills, one would establishing a state housing tax credit to incentivize the development of affordable homes and allow draw-down from federal housing tax credits, to bolstering funding to the Montana Housing Trust Fund, and to reauthorizinge funding for the Coal Trust Multifamily Homes program.
“TIF is one of the only tools we as a city have for sustainable economic growth.”
That last bucket — the coal trust program — uses revenues generated through Montana’s coal severance tax to issue low-interest loans for the development of multifamily rental housing throughout the state. The 2023 Legislature added an additional $50 million to the fund, but it has since been almost entirely depleted.
Finally, Davis said the city will insist that the state preserves tax-increment financing, an economic development tool that allows cities to set aside portions of future property tax revenues to incentivize redevelopment in districts deemed “blighted.” Although sometimes controversial — detractors argue that TIF funds, which go towards public-facing needs like sidewalks, street lighting and sewer lines, amount to a public subsidy of private development — most city leaders have defended TIF as an essential tool.
“It’s one of the only tools we as a city have for sustainable economic growth,” Davis said.
In the realm of behavioral health and homelessness, the city is supporting the efforts of the Montana Coalition to Solve Homelessness, which is backing legislation to bolster state grant funding for shelter services, provide public funding to expand permanent supportive housing for the highest need, and expand Medicaid access for homeless Montanans, among other proposals. Of highest priority, though, is renewing Montana’s expanded Medicaid program, which expires this year and is expected to be one of this legislative session’s biggest debates.
Medicaid expansion covers adults between the ages of 18 and 65 with incomes up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level. Supporters of expansion say that losing the program could jeopardize the healthcare of thousands of Montanand and seriously destabilize the budgets of healthcare centers, especially in rural areas. In Missoula, Davis said, programs like the city’s mobile support team are Medicaid eligible.
“When people don’t have consistent access to healthcare, you start to see their lives unravel,” she said.
Chris Lounsbury, Missoula County’s chief administrative officer
The county is also closely monitoring property tax reform efforts this Legislature, especially the tourism tax, Missoula County Chief Administrative Officer Chris Lounsbury told The Pulp.
“The idea here in essence is it works similar to the local option tax,” Lounsbury said. “The community would vote to adopt it, vote on the percentage and the items that are subject to that — hotels, guides, car rentals, for example. The money that is collected would go back as a minimum of 50 percent to 100 percent in property tax relief.”
Any money that doesn’t go to property tax relief under the proposal would fund public safety infrastructure, Lounsbury added.
The county is also opposing a proposal to require governments to put levies to voters for some local services in dollar amounts only, as opposed to mill levies that adjust to inflation and tax values. Supporters of the idea said the change would stabilize growth in property taxes, but local governments have argued it would hamstring their ability to fund public services on an ongoing basis.
“We want the law to reflect the need for there to be an inflationary piece,” Lounsbury said.
The county’s other chief area of concern is potential changes to election administration law. Lounsbury said that most of the bills the county is monitoring are technical — rather than partisan — in nature, a departure from the tenor in some previous legislative sessions that prominently featured heavily politicized debates about election integrity.
“The legislators spent a lot of time working with the Montana Association of Clerks and Recorders and others to understand how local elections are conducted,” Lounsbury said. “Most of the bills that are coming forward are more about that administrative piece. Mostly we’ll be in support or pretty neutral.”
On a final note, Lounsbury said the county is for the third session working with Sen. Willis Curdy of Missoula, a Democrat, to bring forth a bill that would allow the county to set speed limits below 35 miles-per-hour in developed areas.
“It’s one of those weird things,” Lounsbury said. “We can set a speed limit lower than 35 on a dirt road, but when a development goes in and they pave it, we can’t.”
Research shows that the risk of a pedestrian dying in a crash with a vehicle substantially increases when the vehicle is traveling at least 35 mph.
While Lounsbury said he couldn’t point to a specific incident that underlies the county’s effort to change this part of the law, he said that when some developments are built, residents put up their own 25 mph speed limit signs.
“We’d like them to actually be enforceable,” he said.
