MISSOULA — In some surprise votes, Montana legislators have taken action to quell three bills that were seen as a threat to public lands.
On Tuesday, the House killed one unpopular federal lands resolution while Senate committees amended one bill to remove a threat to state lands and tabled another. All had garnered strong opposition in committee hearings.
House Joint Resolution 24, sponsored by Rep. Tom Millett, R-Marion, died on the House floor by a wide margin of 34-66. HJ 24 would have given the support of Montana’s Legislature to the state of Utah in Utah’s lawsuit challenging the federal government’s ownership of “unappropriated” land.
Utah’s lawsuit claims that perpetual federal ownership and management of U.S. Bureau of Land Management lands is unconstitutional. So the state of Utah tried to take its case directly to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to hear the case in January. If it wants to continue, Utah must file in federal district court. It has yet to do so.
During the committee hearing on March 24, no one testified in favor of HJ 24 while 47 Montanans testified in opposition. In spite of that, the House Energy, Technology and Federal Relations committee passed the resolution four days later on a party-line vote with Republicans voting in favor. But on Tuesday, 24 House Republicans voted with Democrats to kill the resolution.
Another resolution, SJ 14 sponsored by Sen. Tony Tezak, R-Ennis, would have asked the U.S. Congress to remove protections from all wilderness study areas in Montana to allow more uses to occur, including natural resource extraction, grazing and motorized recreation. During the March 25 committee hearing, 35 people spoke against the resolution while nine spoke in favor. Several on both sides argued for local control but for different reasons: proponents wanted the areas opened up to any and all local uses while opponents said local collaborative efforts should drive what happens to the land.
On Tuesday, the Senate Energy, Technology and Federal Relations Committee voted to table SJ 14 with four Republicans joining Democrats on the vote of 9-4. However, it can still be taken off the table for a future vote.
Finally, public lands advocates were most concerned with House Bill 676, which would have gone much further than a resolution. HB 676, sponsored by Rep. Brandon Ler, R-Savage, would have allowed the state to sell landlocked state land parcels to adjacent landowners who own a water right on the land. That would result in the loss of around 1.25 million acres of school trust land.
The bill was prompted by a recent court battle regarding a Gallatin County farmer, Sidney Schutter, who had a water right to use a well on his property to irrigate four parcels, one of which was state land he’d leased for decades. The Montana Land Board said in 2019 that the portion of the water right that was allocated to state land belonged to the state. The issue went to the Montana Supreme Court, which sided with the state in May, angering some water rights owners.
Opposition to HB 676 crossed party lines since it dealt with both water rights and state land. The House already passed HB 676 in early March by a vote of 56-43, but the votes in the House Judiciary and Appropriations committees were close. Bipartisan opposition was reflected inSenate committee testimony on March 21 as 20 people rose to oppose the bill.
When the Senate Judiciary committee took up the bill on Friday, Vice Chair Vince Ricci, R-Billings, introduced an amendment to strike the language in HB 676 allowing the sale of state land. Chair Barry Usher, R-Billings, said the amendment “takes out basically the thing everyone’s been getting emails about: the sale of land and the other thing.”
It’s not clear who made the amendment, however, Sen. Wylie Galt, R-Martinsdale, is the cosponsor in the Senate. The committee unanimously approved the amendment, and HB 676 passed as amended by a vote of 5-3.
