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PLUS: What ALEC thinks of Montana school law

The tool provided by the Chamber will allow you to search more than 9000 hours of video transcripts

The tool provided by the Chamber will allow you to search more than 9000 hours of video transcripts

Democratic lawmakers from Montana’s American Indian Caucus entered the 2021 legislative session with the numbers stacked against them. Minorities within a minority party, Native American lawmakers often found themselves trying to snuff measures seeking to restrict voting access, limit the presence of wild bison on Montana lands, and rework public assistance programming. But there were successes, too. Native American lawmakers passed legislation to support Indigenous language education, and funding to address the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous people was again approved by the Leg...

A few dozen of the 721 bills that passed the Montana Legislature this year grabbed the public’s rapt attention — hot-button social issue bills and big-dollar spending measures that prompted headlines and drew, in some cases, thousands of public comments as lawmakers wrangled over their fates. Most of the state’s new laws, however, took far quieter paths en route to the hallowed chapters of Montana Code Annotated. A tally of public comments produced by legislative staff, reflecting web and phone messages sent to lawmakers through the Legislature’s information services desk, indicates t...