Gunderson lays out Montana's Action Plan

Legislative Day 22 has come to a close! The Legislature is running “full steam ahead” right now, bills are coming into the committees and onto the Floor faster and faster. If it’s busy for me and getting harder to keep track of all the bills here in Helena, I can only imagine what it is like for those of you back home watching and keeping track over 300 miles away. Maybe I can help a bit by condensing what we are doing into a smaller sound bite.

Republicans in the Montana House and Senate released an Action Plan at the beginning of the legislative session, outlining our six major priorities. Let me share the plan with you, to help you understand the issues and legislation that is really fundamental to what’s going on here in Helena in “The People’s House”.

Here are the six points of the Action Plan:

1. Strengthen jobs and the economy. We can do this by opposing income tax increases, eliminating unnecessary regulations and holding bureaucrats accountable.

2. Protect individual rights and freedoms. We’ll be focusing in particular on private property rights, constitutional rights, and privacy.

3. Support essential infrastructure projects. Montana’s Republican Legislators plan to prioritize necessary developments like water, sewer, and critical transportation projects.

4. Put students and parents first. We aim to improve education in Montana by increasing local control and choice.

5. Safeguard healthcare options. Here on my side of the aisle, we believe in free market health care solutions that ensure the long-term stability of Montana’s health care system.

6. Guard Montana’s outdoor heritage. We plan to pass legislation that extends access for multiple uses of public lands and defends our hunting and fishing heritage.

Every legislative session, hundreds of bills get drafted. Which ones will do the most good for Montanans, and which are an assault on our rights and way of life can sometimes be a difficult and long process to wade through. The 2017 Republican Action Plan helps answer some these questions. Which bills are most important? The ones that advance the above mentioned goals.

So far we have heard both good bills and bad bills in committee and on the floor. Some bill drafts we have seen are great, others not so great. Some bills are good and we hope they will make it through the Senate and onto the Governor’s desk to be signed into law. The point is, we need the Governor’s signature to turn good ideas into laws.

In other cases some good bills won’t pass simply because this is a tight budget session and we need to tighten the fiscal belt. We are mandated to produce a balanced budget and there is a much smaller ending revenue balance to work with to fund every bill. We have to make some hard decisions when passing bills that require large amounts of funding. We must be fiscally smart and responsible to keep this budget balanced as we have been mandated to do by The People and the Montana Constitution.

We’ve got some great ideas for legislation. It’s turning them into actual laws that’s tough. Also, this can’t happen without YOU! I hope you’ll continue providing your input and testimony, so we; the Legislature, can do its work in a way that reflects the voice of the people. You can contact me or any other legislator at any time by visiting leg.mt.gov or by calling (406) 444-4800. Thanks again, and I’ll try to write more in the coming weeks.

Representative Steve Gunderson

Montana House District 01