Four Flathead Republican legislators on Thursday offered their perspectives of trade-offs in the recently concluded legislative session, including their views on why Medicaid expansion did not pass.

At a Kalispell Chamber of Commerce luncheon, House Speaker Mark Blasdel, Sen. Jon Sonju, Sen. Bruce Tutvedt and Rep. Scott Reichner all expressed general satisfaction with the way the session turned out.

They explained how the session started with a $500 million general fund surplus that was pursued by competing interests.

It eventually was divided among tax relief, addressing public employee pension liabilities, providing pay raises to public employees, funding state agencies  and providing for an ending fund balance of $182 million.

Reichner led the charge for a bill that would have provided about $100 million in permanent property tax relief.

“Unfortunately, it fell to the other interests that are out there,” Reichner said, noting that the bill faltered toward the end of the session.

Tutvedt, chairman of the Senate Tax Committee, said this was one of several bills that had to be weighed against each other, and in the end it was a business equipment tax reduction of about $8 million that prevailed.

It was noted that Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock wanted tax relief in the form of $400 rebates to homeowners at a cost of $100 million, but that also didn’t survive.

Tutvedt said the Legislature ended up kicking about $70 million toward pension fund liabilities, and that took up a big share of available money.

“It’s one of the reasons that $500 million went away,” he said.

In the end, he said, the pension funds are on track to becoming actuarially sound.

Reichner said he and several other legislators were tasked with exploring potential reforms in the state’s Medicaid system in advance of the session. The group was looking for efficiencies to serve more people without increasing costs, and good headway was made.

But when a U.S. Supreme Court ruling came out last year declaring that states could opt in or opt out of Medicaid expansion, “the game changed,” Reichner said. “You were either for it or against it.”

Reichner said he personally preferred reforms before expanding the program “because then you’re not just dumping money into a system” that he described as broken.

Sonju said that’s what unfolded after Gov. Bullock’s proposal came out halfway through the session. “The proposal was just this: full expansion.”

The plan that would hastily add 70,000 “working poor” to the Medicaid rolls was not well-received by many lawmakers.

“This is a recipe to not only bankrupt this state, but bankrupt the nation,” Sonju said, explaining his reservations about federal funding for the program drying up and leaving Montana taxpayers on the hook.

Expansion supporters, he said, took the position that “once we have the money we will figure out where the efficiencies are. What kind of business model is that? It’s shocking.”

But Bullock may continue pursuing Medicaid expansion.

“We may end up in a special session because of this,” said Tutvedt, who preferred an option that would have made an exchange available to provide people with federally subsidized health care.

Reichner said that’s what will happen with no state action, and he believes it will extend health care to more than 70,000 people if they are willing to put some “skin in the game.”

Under the Affordable Care Act, the federal government is supposed to establish the exchanges by the start of 2014. Reichner said the exchanges are designed to provide subsidies so that a person making $11,000 a year would only pay $250 a year in insurance premiums.

He views that as an upside and said “it lifts the responsibility from the state and shifts it to the feds.”

Blasdel was roundly praised for marshaling an unprecedented House vote of 100-0 to pass the state’s general budget, House Bill 2, and in leading final negotiations for the Republican-controlled Legislature with the Bullock administration.

“House Bill 2, I’m proud of it. It was a good product,” Blasdel said, adding that the unanimous vote prevented “a lot of bad blood” that would have developed if there had been days of dissent and debate.

“The speaker, I think, negotiated a good final agreement,” Tutvedt said.

Reporter Jim Mann may be reached at 758-4407 or by email at jmann@dailyinterlake.com.