64th Session of the Montana Legislature Ends

The 64th session of the Montana Legislature has ended with a new budget for Montana, a CSKT Water Compact signed by the Governor, and without the passage of a group of controversial infrastructure bills.

The House attempted to call an end to the session on Monday, but needed Senate approval to do so because it was more than three days away from the scheduled end of the legislative session (April 30). The Senate was trying to put pressure on the house to pass an infrastructure bill (S.B. 416), but that pressure was missing today, April 28, as the legislative rules freed up the house to call an end to the session without further approval needed from the Senate.

Republican Senator Matt Rosendale gave an outgoing message to the Senate before calling "sine die." He later asked the public to focus on "the 93 million dollars worth of investments into infrastructure that did take place."

Rosendale said investing in infrastructure in the developing oil and gas regions of Montana was an investment, but says he regularly cautions locals in Eastern Montana that they are going to have to learn to be self reliant rather than wait for the governor to agree to an infrastructure bill.

"A lot of communities have already started doing that (investing in infrastructure at the local level)," Rosendale said. "They discovered a long time ago that waiting for Governor Bullock to provide money for infrastructure is like Charlie Brown waiting for Lucy to hold the football... it's going to get yanked out. There's a lot of communities that just went ahead, and begged, borrowed and stole so they could put packages together so they could go ahead and start."

Video of the final moments of the legislature can be found here.