Cuffe outlines his 2015 legislative agenda for upcoming session

For veteran legislator Mike Cuffe, the 2015 session of the Montana State Legislature is bringing an entirely new set of challenges.

Cuffe, a Republican from Eureka, has spent most of his legislative career working on natural resources, forestry and wildlife issues. This session Cuffe will move off the Natural Resources Committee to chair the powerful Appropriations Committee’s Joint Subcommittee on Long-Range Planning.

Cuffe arrived at the office of The Western News with an enormous booklet, several inches thick, containing Governor Steve Bullock’s proposed budget. Understanding that budget and making the cuts necessary to keep Montana in the black falls to the members of the appropriations committee. Cuffe’s joint subcommittee is comprised of both house and senate members and negotiates compromises between the two bodies on spending bills.

Given the sheer amount of work involved in creating the two-year budget, Cuffe doesn’t anticipate having a great deal of time to carry his own bills as he has in years past. “This is my world this time,” Cuffe said, holding up the budget book.

He is sponsoring a couple of “smaller bills,” as he called them. One would alter state fishing regulations for youth. That bill is intended to make a youth fishing derby legal in the Yaak for the fourth of July.

Another bill he is proposing would establish a fund that would help ranchers put up grizzly-proof electric fences in areas that suffer from frequent livestock loss due to grizzly attacks. The state currently has a fund to compensate ranchers for losses, but Cuffe’s idea is to be more proactive and prevent the loss.

“We want to eliminate the conflicts,” Cuffe said. “The government protects the grizzly population, especially a very fragile population up in the Yaak. When a bear attacks it is either destroyed or captured and transported to another area. Both options make that population smaller and more fragile. If we prevent the attacks it works better for everyone.”

Cuffe, who has served in the House since 2011, said he was at first reluctant to accept the post when leadership first offered it to him. He’s changed his position on that hesitation, though. “It’s a workhorse committee, but I like it. It touches every part of state government.”

The Montana legislature meets every two years for a ninety-day session. The next session begins Jan. 5, 2015 and is scheduled to end in early April.