Category: Montana Legislature 2013

Posted: May 16, 2013 at 6:07 am

National Watchdog Group Profiles Jason Priest’s Dark Money Group

Michael Beckel has just published a new profile on the dark money group a GOP state senator used to influence the Montana state Supreme Court race and block the Medicaid expansion.

The profile shows how Priest used dark money to demonize Supreme Court candidates Ed Sheehy and Elizabeth Best in support of a TEA Party candidate. Priest also used the dark money group to send out attack mailers to kill the Medicaid expansion. Because of Priest’s actions, 70,000 of Montanan’s most disadvantaged working poor won’t be able to get health care.

Beckel, who writes for the Center for Public Integrity, published the report on the heels of a new analysis by the National Institute on Money in State Politics that found Montana is one of 35 states where rules regarding the disclosure of political spending by independent groups are less stringent than federal election law.

There’s much more on this, so check out the links in Beckel’s story above.

Posted: May 14, 2013 at 5:58 am

Small Claims: Wittich sues former client for $93.99 of unpaid bills

Art Wittich, the Montana Senate Majority Leader and Tea Party stalwart, has been in court lately to try to get what he believes is rightfully his.

Wittich, a lawyer, had once provided legal services to a Bozeman couple. There was an outstanding balance of $93.99 that the couple had not paid Wittich. Wittich was not going to abandon the matter, and not only collected the debt but got himself a tidy reward, an additional several thousand dollars.

It appears, as best I can tell from a not-very-clearly-drafted court opinion (the link to the decision is below), that Wittich quietly got a default legal judgment against the couple, for the $93.99, even as his office was in talks with the couple over possibly arriving at a settlement over this piddling amount of money. After successfully getting the judgment, he began efforts to collect it. After some time, he managed to persuade the court to award him not only the $93.99, but $2,900 more for “fees, costs and interests” that he claimed to have incurred as a result of spending his time trying to collect the $93.99.

A divided state Supreme Court, shockingly, upheld the judgment. Justice Cotter dissented, calling the decision [UPDATED pdf] “unconscionable” and an “affront,” scolding Wittich for “financial carnage wreaked upon [the Bozeman couple] for their refusal to pay a disputed $93.” Justice Baker grudgingly voted in favor of Wittich because there was apparently a contract, which Wittich had gotten the couple to sign, including a clause that allowed him, ultimately, to get this outrageous amount of money from them in the event of a collection action. But Justice Baker strongly cautioned him to review the rules of the State Bar which address lawyers and their billing practices, and are designed to prevent lawyers from fleecing their clients.

And Cotter notes that when the dust finally settles, the couple will probably owe north of $5,000 to Wittich, because Wittich will try to recoup additional costs from them, namely, his costs in litigating the case of the $93.99 in front of the Supreme Court.

In essence, Whittich did what he could, not what he should. Nice guy.

Oh, and one other point, which goes without saying: if Wittich ever thought he could run for statewide office, that dream he can now kiss goodbye.

Posted: May 3, 2013 at 6:53 am

Laszloffy’s Losses Part 2

by Cowgirl

The Montana Family Foundation’s Jeff Laszloffy suffered a slew of losses this session, but perhaps none was felt so bitterly as his failure to get a parental consent legislative referendum on the ballot for 2014. The Family Foundation’s legislative referenda work was the organization’s major cash cow last election cycle. Since Laszloffy failed to get the measure on the ballot for 2014, the Family Foundation’s ability to impact elections has now evaporated.

Cowgirl readers will recall that Governor Steve Bullock allowed Laszloffy’s unconstitutional bill to become law solely so that the bill can be struck down in Montana’s courts. As John Adams at The Lowdown reports, the move allows women to immediately challenge the measure in court long before an identical referenda passed by the legislature gets to the ballot in 2014.

Sure, Laszloffy knew that the measure was unconstitutional–everyone knew it. But Lazloffy’s purpose in pushing it was electoral, not policy-driven.

You see, last election cycle Laszloffy raised some $300,000–purportedly for the parental notification legislative referenda which was sent to the ballot by the 2011 legislature. Montana Family Foundation’s Incidental Ballot Committee Reports in 2012 show they were able to raise and spend $320,000 in 2012.

In a typical year, the Family Foundation raises about $20,000 for electoral work. But because of the LR, LR-120, they were able to raise more than 15 times that amount. You can see the reports below.

$18,000 May 8-May 24

$3,000 May 25-June 18

$2,000 June 19-July 3

$6,000 July 4 -Aug 3

$29,000 Aug 4-Sept 3

$191,000 spent Sept 15-Oct 15

$3,000 spent Oct 16-Oct 25

$68,000 spent Oct 26-Nov 19

For one thing, this is money that could be used to supplant Family Foundation funds that had been going toward Laszloffy’s salary. What’s also interesting is that the campaign finance reports for Laszloffy’s ballot committee shows that some of the money he raised was leveraged to actually help the GOP’s top targeted legislative races–not just the ballot initiative.

Here’s a screenshot from his “incidental ballot committee’s” campaign report. It reports the expenditure Lazsoffy made for a mailer that was about the ballot measure on one side, and a top tier targeted GOP race on the other. This means that all of the polling and research Laszloffy did for these mailings was supporting the GOP’s legislative candidates too.

Thanks to Cowgirl tipsters for pointing out these fundraising anomalies. Reader tips are the essence of this blog. Send tips to mntnacowgirl (at) gmail.com

Posted: May 2, 2013 at 7:13 pm

Family Foundation Says “God Governs the Affairs of Men”…but had trouble passing bills

by Cowgirl

The leader of the religious right group called the Montana Family Foundation proclaimed in a recent podcast that “God still today actively governs in the affairs of men.”

If it was the will of God that Jeff Laszloffy introduced such right-wing bills this session— as opposed to the will of the people the legislature is elected to represent — how does Laszloffy explain the fact that so many of his bills failed? Especially when the session was overwhelmingly dominated by members of the Republican Party.

Here’s a sampling of bills Laszloffy was backing which failed to pass.

Clayton Fiscus’s bill to require the teaching of creationism alongside evolution in all Montana schools failed.

Kris Hansen’s private sectarian school voucher bill HB 357

Mary Caferro’s bill to legalize religious ponzi insurance schemes, which was vetoed by both Schweitzer and Bullock. SB 181

Cary Smith’s anti-science sex-education bill. HB 239

Krayton Kerns bill to take away the right to death with dignity. HB 505

But it wasn’t just that his pro-active bills failed, bills that he had hoped to defeat were passed and became law.

Tom Facey’s bill to remove from the books Montana’s law that made being gay an imprisonable felony. SB 107

And Laszloffy had tried to defeat Llew Jones’s SB 175, which made major investments in public schools.

To be sure, Laszloffy did get his way on one very prominent national issue. He allowed religious boarding schools in Montana like Pinehaven Ranch to remain unregulated. These religious schools, which have no licenses, no accreditation and employ teachers who are not certified, are now dealing with allegations that staff used violence to discipline students. And yet the Montana GOP has voted, on a party line, to allow such schools to continue to go unregulated. CNN ran a big story about it on the Anderson Cooper 360 show. Ellie Hill’s HB 236 would have addressed the problem. Laszloffy lobbied hard against Hill’s bill.

Before you start questioning God and his plan in light of this new information, make quick review of Laszloffy’s failed agenda–and how out-of-touch these bills make their sponsors appear. Sure enough, Laszloffy will prove to be the answer to the prayers of local Democrats next fall.

Posted: May 1, 2013 at 7:15 pm

Tea Party plays defense after rejecting $6 billion in federal funds

Keith Regier is out of touch. — Keith Regier

by Cowgirl

State legislator Keith Regier, who once compared women to pregnant cattle and a fetus to an unfinished barn, has written an editorial in the Flathead Beacon that attempts to defend his party’s destruction of Access Health Montana, Bullock’s Medicaid expansion proposal to bring health care to 70,000 working poor Montanans which never made it out of the legislature.

Regier makes the Tea Party’s stock argument, which can be easily debunked.

He makes the claim that Medicaid will “worsen health outcomes” for the Montana poor. How? He points to supposed studies that show that Medicaid patients are more likely to have surgical complications, and are statistically more likely to die, than the population as a whole. Essentially, he is arguing that Medicaid makes you sick.

This conflates cause with correlation. Medicaid clients are indeed less healthy than the greater population, that is true. But it’s not that Medicaid makes you sick or that the care is somehow worse –its delivered by the same hospitals and doctors by the same standards. It’s because of the profile of the average Medicaid enrollee. They have likely come to the Medicaid program they are so sick that they have spent down their savings on their illness and are now eligible; or because they have been rejected by private insurance companies due to expensive pre-existing health conditions; or because they have lacked healthcare for many years until their condition has become difficult to treat. Also, the current Medicaid population is heavy on seniors, who have more health problems than the population on the whole.

In other words, Medicaid is a repository for many of the most ill and least treated citizens.

So it is true that Medicaid enrollees are among the least healthy. It is not caused by their enrolling in Medicaid. This is not a difficult thing to understand, even if Regier and his Tea Party have trouble understanding it.

There are some legislators who deserve mention for having tried their best. Democrats who worked hard to bring in the new Medicaid reforms, Dave Wanzenried and Christine Kauffman and Chuck Hunter, and even some Repubs like Ed Buttrey and Alan Olson, deserve some credit for trying to get it done. And many executive branch employees in the governor’s office and the health and human services department–and of course the citizens’ groups and their members who did the most work.

They all understood, if nothing else, that you should try to find room for $6 billion dollars for healthcare when the federal government offers it.

Posted: April 29, 2013 at 7:26 am

The Ties that Bind

by Cowgirl

While embattled Montana state senator Jason Priest has tried to separate himself from American Traditions Partnership, his donor sheet tells a different story. Continue reading →

Posted: April 25, 2013 at 7:22 pm

Thanks to Bullock, Courts Can Strike Down Unconstitutional Bill

by Cowgirl

Governor Steve Bullock allowed an unconstitutional bill to become law today solely so that the bill can be struck down in Montana’s courts before it can reach the ballot. The bill, House Bill 391, requires parental consent before a teen – even a teen in danger – can access a safe and legal abortion.

As John Adams at The Lowdown reports, the move allows women to immediately challenge the measure in court long before an identical referenda passed by the legislature gets to the ballot in 2014.

Continue reading →

Posted: April 22, 2013 at 9:27 pm

Political Quick Hits

by Cowgirl

Thanks but no thanks

The Lewis & Clark County GOP meeting scheduled for Monday night to select three more candidates for the county commission seat has apparently been cancelled. Three of the five people who were interested in the position have withdrawn from consideration, perhaps due to the ineptness of the leadership of the group. Continue reading →