Legislative Report
Rep. Dan Salomon | Hagadone News Network | UPDATED 13 years, 8 months AGO
Last week was a short one in Helena as we recessed on Wednesday. The budget was put into the Governor’s hands and he had until this past Saturday to veto, amendatory veto or accept it. The Speaker of the House, the Senate President and the Governor did come to some agreements last Friday. There will be a lot of amendments waiting for us when we return Monday afternoon and start back in session Tuesday morning. We will especially be looking at how many dollars have been added back and how much is left in the ending fund balance.
School funding also has an agreement coming out of conference committee. This should be decided quickly as it is a very large part of the budget.
Medical Marijuana is also going to be decided this week. SB 423 is out of committee and going to be discussed on Tuesday. It is the last remaining opportunity to make some real changes to this out of control situation. The repeal was vetoed so this bill will be directed at reining in growers. It will also mean you will need a real doctor’s prescription to become a legal user.
Hopefully we will know the answers to a lot of these questions by the end of this week. Thank you for all of your comments. I can be reached at dansalomon12@gmail.com or 253-9724.
ARTICLES BY REP. DAN SALOMON
Commission member rebuts op-ed on CSKT water compact
The following opinion piece is a rebuttal to a recent column written by Sen. Verdell Jackson, R-Kalispell, about the proposed Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes water compact.
Guest column: Sorry, Mr. Jackson
Sen. Verdell Jackson is mistaken in arguing (in a recently published opinion piece) that the proposed CSKT water compact violates the US and Montana constitutions by taking water rights from individual irrigators served by the Flathead Indian Irrigation Project and transferring them to the Tribes.
Legislative Report
The end is starting to come into sight here in Helena as the budget will be back from conference committee and ready to pass on to the Governer this week. He will not like it as is. It will be balanced to the revenue projections and they are still going down each month. The positioning with vetoes, amenditory veto and all the conference committees means that things can change every hour.