(C) Daily Montanan This story was originally published by Daily Montanan and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Just send the bill to the Montana taxpayers – Daily Montanan [1] ['More From Author', 'April', 'Darrell Ehrlick'] Date: 2023-04-20 Would that it were true that the Montana Legislature is playing with house money. But, the truth is: They’re playing with yours. The legislature is passing many laws the majority of Republicans know are likely headed for the courts, only to be struck down after a long judicial process at the cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Check that: Millions by the time all the outside attorneys’ hourly rates are tallied. The legal toll for many of the bills passed by lawmakers two years ago is still running as more than two dozen lawsuits spun out from the 2021 session, and one has already been filed from this session. As lawmakers contemplate bills that are the legislative equivalent of leftovers, reheated from previous sessions, seasoned only slightly differently with a few minor tweaks, they’ll likely meet the same predictable fate from judges who see legislation, ranging from private schools to abortion, as not just lipstick on pigs, but also eye shadow and rouge. Despite being told by their own lawyers about constitutional problems with some of the proposed legislation, some strident lawmakers like Sens. Keith Regier and Tom McGillvray have instead asserted without any supporting documentation or education that their legal positions and laws are correct simply because they are lawmakers. It’s a slightly dressed-up version of: Because we said so. Heck, on Tuesday, Rep. Josh Kassmier, R-Fort Benton, admitted that his language that would allow Montana to permit energy projects and new power plants without consideration of air quality is all about punishing judges: “We had to come up with a way to make our policy. We are the ones who set the policy, not the judge.” That, of course, completely disregards the fundamental and inescapable truth that lawmakers are charged with making policies and laws that fit within a constitutional framework, and it’s a judge, not lawmakers who decide what that means and how it works. But the frustration by lawmakers at not being able to do what they want, how they want, has boiled over this session and resulted in legislators believing that if judges can overturn laws through court rulings, that the opposite must also be true. The problem isn’t just that these lawmakers are so darned stiff-necked, although there’s an irony about their outrage as they expect residents to follow all of their laws, but then refuse to follow court opinions. The Republican supermajority has so little faith in the legality of their own laws that they’ve tremendously increased – by millions – the money allocated to defending their own lawsuits. Therein lies the rub. They’re not using their own money. They’re using yours. Those legal fees are nothing more than your taxpayer dollars at work, in most cases, used to attack the constitution, not defend it. In the simplest of terms: They’re using your money to fight you. In fact, this session, they’ve made it easier for lawmakers to get tangled up in lawsuits by passing a bill which gives them standing to defend the laws they pass, even if the Department of Justice is already obligated to do so. Voilà, double the lawyers. What’s even worse is that Gov. Greg Gianforte, a Republican, has supported adding legal fees to the state budget without realizing the same concept could be turned against the executive branch. After all, what happens when lawmakers decide the executive branch isn’t faithfully executing the laws that the legislature passes? What this latest episode demonstrates is the profound fact that as the legislature and executive have gone on a bender to show the entire state just how powerful and conservative they are, they have forgotten one thing: It’s much harder to change the constitution and the important concept of separation of powers, which resists the ebb and flow of political power. Try as they might to literally rewrite case law and use the people’s money to defend such ignoble actions, they can’t rewrite the contract they have with the people of the state – the constitution, which establishes coequal branches of government, diffuse in its power. And you have to imagine that they know it’s going to be difficult to get more than half of the state’s residents to agree with them on many issues from abortion to “jungle primaries,” which is why we’ve recently seen folks like Rep. Kerri Seekins-Crowe, R-Billings, write into law what the people refused to pass when it was presented to them on a ballot, Legislative Referendum 131, the so-called “Born Alive Act.” It’s too bad that they get to spend tax dollars defending laws their own lawyers tell them won’t pass muster. I can’t help but wonder if they had to scrape together even 1% of the cost associated with the legal battles they lose, paid for out of their own per diems and legislator pay, if that would have a moderating effect on the type of legislation they propose. Surely, they know passing a bunch of anti-abortion, anti-transgender laws are likely to result in legal losses. And even they know they’re betting on long odds – why else would they bulk up the legal defense fund coffers? They could at least do us the courtesy of dropping the hollow rhetoric about fiscal responsibility and living within our budget. That’s easy to say when it’s not your money being gambled. [END] --- [1] Url: https://dailymontanan.com/2023/04/20/just-send-the-bill-to-the-montana-taxpayers/ Published and (C) by Daily Montanan Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/montanan/