By Jason Stuart
Ranger-Review Staff Writer
While Glendive city officials have expressed optimism about a comprehensive statewide infrastructure funding bill introduced in the Montana House of Representatives, local Rep. Alan Doane threw cold water on the chances of the bill making it through the Legislature intact.
Hope for water plant
HB 14, also titled the “Jobs in Montana Act,” introduced by Rep. Jim Keane, D-Butte, funnels new monies secured by issuing government bonds into existing state infrastructure funding programs as well as creating entirely new programs paid for with bond sales. Because the bill would use bonding, it would require a two-thirds majority approval by both houses of the Legislature.
Most enticing to Glendive officials is an entirely new $50 million infrastructure grant program that the bill proposes to create through the sale of government bonds to assist local communities with critical infrastructure.
City Director of Operations Kevin Dorwart expressed his hope that the proposed new grant program would come to fruition at Tuesday night’s meeting of the Glendive City Council.
In 2016, the city had applied for a $625,000 Treasure State Endowment Program grant for a desperately needed multimillion dollar renovation of the city’s water treatment plant. However, when the Montana Department of Commerce released the list of TSEP recipients in December, Glendive was not included. Having the new program would give the city a very good shot at securing grant funding for the water plant renovation, Dorwart noted.
Lack of trust
Doane, however, is less enthusiastic about the proposed new grant program.
His first concern is that the proposed new program would, like TSEP, be administered by the Commerce Department, which he believes is problematic as long as Steve Bullock is governor.
Doane said that past experience — from the city not getting its TSEP grant in the first place to the $35 million infrastructure grant program for oil-impacted Eastern Montana communities that Bullock vetoed in 2013 — has proven to him that Bullock and his administration cannot be trusted to do right by Eastern Montana.
“The first thing that gives me a headache is to see the Department of Commerce be the administrator of that,” Doane said of the proposed new grant program. “The last time I looked, the Department of Commerce works for the governor, and Eastern Montana has not been the recipient of this governor’s good graces.”
Instead, Doane said he would much rather just see a line item appropriation bill for critical infrastructure projects around the state.
“I would be way more comfortable with a bill that lays out specific projects for our area,” he said. “I’d rather just see a line by line bonding bill at the end of the session so we know exactly what we’re getting for our buck.”
GOP legislators are not showing lock-step opposition to paying for infrastructure improvements with bonding as they did in recent sessions when the state’s coffers were flush with cash and revenues were soaring.
No pet projects
However, Doane said while Republican legislators are not unilaterally opposed to bonding this time around, he and his colleagues are opposed to several other provisions of HB14. First Doane would prefer to continue funding the TSEP program from the Coal Tax Trust Fund rather than with bond sales.
Even more objectionable to Doane is the $25 million included for the renovation of Romney Hall at Montana State University in Bozeman and funding for a new museum facility in Helena for the Montana Historical Society at a cost of $27.6 million.
The inclusion of those two major capital projects in the infrastructure funding package presented to the 2015 Legislature was a primary reason Doane and other GOP legislators voted against it, ultimately killing the entire bill.
Doane said as long as Bullock and his administration insist on trying to include those things in the infrastructure package it will not gain the support of most Republicans, who control both houses of the Legislature.
“We’ve had some preliminary bonding conversations, and there is some appetite for bonding in the Republican Caucus as long as it doesn’t include buildings,” he said. “That seems to be the consensus amongst Republicans, that non-essential buildings are a non-starter with the declining revenue we’re in.”
Ultimately, Doane does not expect HB14 to survive in its current form.
“That bill is going to be dissected into several different parts, just like the governor’s infrastructure bill last time,” he said. “It’s going to be a totally different bill by the time I vote on it.”
Reach Jason Stuart at rrreporter@rangerreview.com.