By Anne Hedges, Derf Johnson, Nick Fitzmaurice, and Laura Collins
MEIC’s lobbying team is ready for the start of the 2025 session on Jan. 6, 2025.
“We the people of Montana grateful to God for the quiet beauty of our state, the grandeur of our mountains, the vastness of our rolling plains, and desiring to improve the quality of life, equality of opportunity and to secure the blessings of liberty for this and future generations do ordain and establish this constitution.”
The Preamble to Montana’s Constitution speaks to Montanans’ love of this place. Regardless of a person’s political stripes, most Montanans live here for very similar reasons. We all love this place we call home. We enjoy sharing the outdoors with our friends and family, and we want to pass on the beauty and love to our children. This is what we must keep in mind as we head into another legislative session where Republicans control the House, the Senate, all statewide elected offices, and our entire Congressional delegation.
While the news at the federal level was challenging for environmental protections, the news in Montana was somewhat brighter. In the Montana House of Representatives, Democrats picked up 11 seats in the House and two seats in the Senate. In the House, the partisan divide will be narrower than the previous session, with 59 Republicans to 42 Democrats. In the Senate, the political split will be 32 Republicans to 18 Democrats.
While that may not sound significant, it is. Republicans had a supermajority in the 2023 Legislative Session. With a supermajority, Republicans had no need to bother with Democrats, because they nearly always had enough votes to change the law, even over objections of some in their own party. This allowed them to attempt to put constitutional amendments on the ballot regardless of the other party, but MEIC and our allies rallied to ensure that none were even proposed.
This session will be different and, hopefully, better. There are moderates in the Republican party when it comes to environmental protections, though it won’t be clear how many there are until they start voting on bills. There are legislators returning who believe in a functioning government, the opportunities in clean energy development, and making sure people have healthcare. This means that the session will be about coalition-building. Legislators who care about clean air, clean water, and our climate will need to unite, and MEIC intends to connect with legislators across the political spectrum who believe in the beauty and grandeur of this place.
MEIC lobbyists are also preparing for serious attacks on our natural resources. First up will be changes to the Montana Environmental Policy Act (MEPA). The youth climate case, Held v. State of Montana and MEIC’s challenge to the state’s air permit for NorthWestern Energy’s methane gas plant will likely drive proposals to weaken — and potentially eliminate — MEPA. We will need your help to defend this bedrock law and ensure that all Montanans have a right to a healthy climate.
We will likely see bills that try to change water quality protections at coal mines and hardrock mines. Now that President-Elect Donald Trump will be in charge of federal environmental laws, it is very likely that attempts to weaken state law will be looked on more favorably by federal agencies who are required to ensure that state laws meet federal minimum requirements. If federal agencies allow Montana to weaken environmental protections to below the threshold required by federal law, it is likely we will turn to the courts to defend federal minimum requirements to protect Montana’s water quality, air quality, waste disposal, and mining.
We also expect to see another round of trickle-down housing strategies to weaken standards so developers can build more homes for the wealthy under the guise of affordable housing. The Legislature will be asked to weaken zoning, subdivision, land use planning, and water rights laws to allow developers to place houses in areas that cause unnecessary harm to neighbors, water resources and wildlife, among other things. Earlier this year, there was a very positive court decision that found that local governments and the state must ensure that subdivisions have sufficient water resources that don’t harm nearby ground and surface waters, neighboring landowners, agricultural operations, as well as fish and wildlife. We will be on the lookout for bills that try to overturn this decision in favor of developers and government officials who ignore water resource needs of existing agricultural operations as well as fish and wildlife, an especially important consideration in a changing climate.
There will also be bills that remove our basic rights: the right to go to court, the right to know, the right to participate, and the right to an independent judicial branch. These bills may very well be the most difficult, yet important, issues MEIC will work on this session. We will be leaning heavily on you, as constituents of legislators who will vote on these bills. Finally, we anticipate many other attacks on human rights and constitutional rights such as due process and equal protection. We’ll be sure to invite our allies to update you at our regular legislative webinars.
We will be in touch with you in the next month to help give you the tools you need to help protect your rights and our environment. Together, we can get through whatever comes our way.
This article was published in the December 2024 issue of Down To Earth.
