The success or failure of the proposed Salish and Kootenai tribal water compact will probably be determined today in a battle over how procedural rules will be applied in the state House of Representatives.

On Monday, 11 Republicans in the House’s 21-member Judiciary Committee attached 10 amendments to the compact bill Monday, then gave the bill a do-not-pass recommendation.

That status normally requires a 60-vote supermajority of the House to blast the bill out of committee without amendments, but an agreement this session allows each House caucus to designate six “silver bullet” bills, meaning they can be brought up for a floor vote by a simple majority.

Whether the “silver bullet” provision overrides a committee’s adverse recommendation is the source of the procedural dispute. House Speaker Austin Knudsen, R-Culbertson, says no, but last week Democrats were joined by about a dozen Republicans to form a majority and override Knudsen, allowing a silver bullet to apply to a Medicaid expansion bill that had also received a do-not-pass recommendation.

The same process began playing out during the floor session Monday afternoon, with House Minority Leader Chuck Hunter, D-Helena, appealing to Knudsen to rule the committee’s report out of order.

“Procedurally, the House has made a decision that that would be out of order,” Hunter said, referring to the vote on Medicaid expansion.

Knudsen, however, remained steadfast that the silver-bullet rule does not supersede the committee report, and Hunter immediately appealed to the Rules Committee, where it will be heard today at 11 a.m.

Asked afterwards whether this fight will shape up any differently than last week’s, Rep. Keith Regier, R-Kalispell, said it comes down to how many votes Republican leadership can muster on the floor. In addition to being the House majority leader, Regier is also on both the Judiciary and Rules committees.

“I anticipate the procedure will be the same, and when it comes to the floor to uphold the ruling of the rules committee, that’s where we don’t know where people are going to pull,” he said, adding, “It’ll be tight.”

During the Judiciary Committee’s executive action on the bill, several Democratic members accused Republicans of amending the bill for the sake of killing it. Because the compact is a settlement resulting from negotiations between the state, tribes and federal government, proponents have repeatedly said that such unilateral changes would be unpalatable to the other parties, which have spent more than a decade in shaping the complex agreement.

“As we heard in committee hearings many times, to amend this bill is to kill this bill,” said Rep. Jenny Eck, D-Helena. “I don’t think it’s OK for the Legislature to come in now and make one-sided changes.”

Regier, who provided seven of the 10 amendments, rejected that argument and said the Legislature has an obligation to make the laws it passes as good as they can be.

The amendments, which each passed with an 11-10 vote along partisan lines, include requiring the bill’s $55 million state obligation to be included in this biennium’s appropriations, striking language giving the tribes off-reservation water rights, increasing irrigators’ water delivery entitlements and suggesting that the tribes do not have any treaty claim to water east of the Divide.

One of Regier’s seven amendments struck language in the compact bill that he said would exempt the tribes from complying with state water laws. 

Melissa Hornbein, an attorney with the state compact commission, told the Inter Lake in an interview following the committee meeting that those exemptions would only apply to newly available water from Flathead Lake and Hungry Horse Reservoir. She argued that the compact commission went through a far more rigorous environmental review than the state would have required in securing the same exemptions.

“The reason we did that was to streamline the change-of-use process to help nontribal users to gain access to that water off the reservation,” she said.

Addressing another pair of concerns among compact opponents in Northwest Montana, Regier brought amendments requiring the compact to maintain established seasonal levels in Flathead Lake and abide by Hungry Horse Dam’s hydroelectricity and downstream salmon habitat requirements.

Hornbein said those requirements are redundant and that the compact already upholds Flathead Lake’s existing levels. She said that the concern arose from a “minimum lake elevation” below those levels that would only apply if Kerr Dam were no longer there. She said the current electricity generation and salmon habitat protections for Hungry Horse Dam also would not change under the compact.

Asked after the committee meeting whether some of the amendments were already addressed in the bill, Regier responded that he felt the changes addressed issues that were critical to Northwest Montana and needed to be nailed down.

“I just wanted to make sure that it was in the compact to solidify that,” he said of one of the proposals.

Reporter Samuel Wilson can be reached at 758-4407 or by email at swilson@dailyinterlake.com