2025 Legislative Review

The Montana Legislature, which meets every two years, recently wrapped up the 2025 session in Helena. So, what happened at the Capitol this year? How do these new laws impact residents and county operations? 

From property taxes to jury duty summons to economic development, there is a lot to cover! This week, the commissioners spoke with Chris Lounsbury, Chief Administrative Officer for Missoula County, for a review of what went down. 

Learn more and see what bills Missoula County weighed in on during this session at missoulacountyvoice.com.

Thank you to Missoula's Community Media Resource for podcast recording support!

Transcript

Dave Strohmaier: [00:00:10] Welcome back to the agenda with your Missoula County Commissioners. I'm Dave Strohmaier, and I'm here with my fellow commissioners Juanita Vero and Josh Slotnick. This week, we are delighted to have Missoula's very own county Chief Administrative officer, Chris Lounsbury. And he's here to talk to us about the legislative session that wrapped up this 90 day session, that wrapped up here just a mere week or two ago. And he's going to talk to us about bills, how the legislature works, everything that folks out there want to know about the 2025 session. So welcome, Chris.

Chris Lounsbury: [00:00:46] Thanks. Happy to be here.

Josh Slotnick: [00:00:47] So Chris, is a legislative day kind of like a dog year. So like 90 days of legislators actually like 180 days of real days or something like that.

Chris Lounsbury: [00:00:56] In some ways that's true because of course they have certain breaks that they have to take in it. So it's not actually 90 calendar days. It is 90 days that the legislature actually sits for the House floor or the House Senate session or both.

Josh Slotnick: [00:01:07] So before we dive into this, I just want to see if we can get this out to the folks who are listening. Can you describe what our legislative team does and how much human resource we dedicate to interacting with this body and keeping track of what's going on?

Chris Lounsbury: [00:01:18] Yeah. You bet. And so let me just start with the fact that 90% of the work is done by everybody other than me. So the reality is our legislative team is made up of six folks, and we kind of divide the work up. Three of our folks, our wonderful communications staff, basically divide up and manage all the messaging that Missoula County is going to do. And so they are the ones in direct contact with our departments, and then also creating our messages that go directly to our delegation when the session is happening. And then there are three folks from the kind of commissioner side of the office myself, our chief operating officer, Anne Hughes, and Mel Fisher, our strategic initiatives manager, who kind of manage the bills themselves. And so we're the ones reading the bill, generally speaking, determining if it has an impact to local government and then saying, hey, these are the departments we think will be impacted, and then our comms folks take over and kind of run the message from there.

Josh Slotnick: [00:02:05] And the comms folks have to be in touch with the departmental folks and then get that message out to our delegation.

Chris Lounsbury: [00:02:11] Correct. Because we're looking for that subject matter expertise, which comes from our departments who do the day to day work.

Josh Slotnick: [00:02:15] And the breadth of subject matter is pretty incredible.

Chris Lounsbury: [00:02:18] Yeah, in 90 days, they really do touch on pretty much every aspect of local government in addition to a whole host of other areas.

Juanita Vero: [00:02:25] So we got six people doing this. And why does Missoula County track bills and the legislative action so closely?

Chris Lounsbury: [00:02:33] Really, it's because most of the county governments in the state of Montana are what we call limited powers government, right. And we've talked about that before, and I know you guys have talked about it on your program, and it's this idea that we can only do the things that the legislature authorizes us to do. So when they are making changes to laws that impact everything from motor vehicles to the clerk and recorder's office to clerk of district court to the way Justice Court operates, it is impacting our day to day operations, things that we have to think about on the staffing level. How will that actually be able to be implemented at the local government level? Can we actually accomplish that thing that the legislature is now asking us to do? At the end of the day, just like is the case, I think for most folks, we are really fortunate in the fact that we have highly trained, professional staff in each one of those offices who really understand what they do at that nuts and bolts level, that folks who might be working on policy in Helena are really looking at the overarching state, and things are done really different in Missoula than they might be in, say, someplace in eastern Montana like Dawson.

Josh Slotnick: [00:03:30] Or.

Chris Lounsbury: [00:03:30] Fergus County or, you know, Golden Valley, where there's just a very different population than there is in a Missoula or a Kalispell or a Yellowstone.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:03:38] Chris, just as far as some level setting for our listeners out there, I think everyone's probably aware and they remember back to their grade school days, perhaps learning about government. And our state government here in Montana has an executive branch, a legislative branch, a judicial branch, judicial still exist.

Josh Slotnick: [00:03:58] I thought they got.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:03:58] Rid well, I. That's right.

Josh Slotnick: [00:04:00] A ghost of its former self.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:04:03] We're talking about the legislative branch here. So could you help us all understand or remind us a little bit about this legislative branch of government here in Montana?

Chris Lounsbury: [00:04:14] So the legislative branch is the piece that sets the large policy rights, the laws that govern our state. And then the executive branch is the branch that carries out those things. Right. And so at the county level, you are both the executive and the legislative branch that's separate at the state. So we elect our senators and our representatives, and they go to set policy and the law for the whole state of Montana. And then at the local level, you set policy and execute those laws for the state. Things that come down from the state, we're just executing those policies.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:04:41] But as opposed to us, we're in session every day.

Chris Lounsbury: [00:04:44] You are.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:04:44] In session. The legislature is not always over there in the capital, 365 days a year, poised to take action. Talk to us a little bit about kind of the rhythm of them descending on Helena and all of that, really.

Chris Lounsbury: [00:04:58] I mean, you can think of it as the legislative session is the sprint of the legislature, and then the time in between them is the marathon piece. So the sprint is really when they're crafting legislation. And so they do that across these 90 legislative days. Right. And they're meeting every day in multiple committees, pretty much from about 7 or 8 in the morning until 5 or 6:00 at night. And they are hearing bills and making determinations on what laws they want to pass to go for that. And that's that kind of sprint. And that is all packed into 90 days. It's really a very tight deadline for them to get through that. This year. They had thousands of bills, drafts. I don't even want to hesitate at what the number was, but they heard 850 bills. That's just a lot to do in 90 days, if you think about it, because they have to be heard on both sides. So they're going to start either in the House or the Senate. And at some point they're going to switch between those two chambers and they're going to be heard again. So they're still going to have a public hearing. So each one of those bills, for the most part, that made it through and eventually became law had at least two public hearings that happened on them.

Josh Slotnick: [00:05:56] Can you describe what that process is? And when we hear on the news, oh, that died in committee. What does that mean? How do you go from a bill draft to something in the committee to something that's voted on on one of the the floors of either chamber?

Chris Lounsbury: [00:06:07] Yeah. You bet. And so when a legislator or a citizen brings to a legislator an idea for a bill, the first step in it is it goes to legislative drafting. So a staff person takes that idea and says, okay, where would that fit in the Montana Code Annotated staff person?

Josh Slotnick: [00:06:19] That means this person works for the state. They don't.

Chris Lounsbury: [00:06:21] They work for.

Josh Slotnick: [00:06:22] The state a D or an R, they work for the state.

Chris Lounsbury: [00:06:24] They work for the state. And they're going to figure out where in law that new thing or change exists. And once they've done that, then it's going to go back to the legislator who's going to say, yes, that's what I, what I had in my head. Thank you for putting that down. And they are going to pick that what we call pick that bill up. They're going to sign their name at the bottom to say, yes, this is going to be my bill. And they're going to they're going to introduce it. That introduction happens on the House floor. So every new bill starts out on the House floor and it gets signed. It's official bill number and it gets assigned to a committee. It's going to go to that committee. And the chairman for that committee is going to schedule the hearing. And that's a chance for that person who wants to change that law to get up and testify and say, here's why this is a really good idea. And they're going to bring with them proponents, people who really like the bill and potentially opponents who folks who really don't like the bill.

Chris Lounsbury: [00:07:04] And it's going to have that hearing the next thing that will happen at some point after that bill hearing is over, the committee itself will weigh in on that bill and they'll make a determination. We think this is a great idea. We're going to move it to the floor of whatever house where it'll be voted on by everybody, and there'll be a debate about it, or we're going to table this bill. We don't think it's a good idea and it's going to go on the table. Usually bills that go on to the table, for the most part, don't move any further in the legislative process. Once they've been heard on their respective floor, then they move to the next House, assuming they get a pass vote and they go through that whole process all over again, it's going to go to a committee. It's going to have a hearing. What we call executive action means the committee will vote on it one way or another. Table it, send it to the floor.

Juanita Vero: [00:07:42] So but what happens when it's changed from one house or amended from to the other.

Chris Lounsbury: [00:07:46] So if it gets if it gets changed it, once the change gets approved, it will get sent back to the other house for them to agree to. Before it will go to the governor for signature.

Josh Slotnick: [00:07:53] And that executive action, the vote on a bill in a committee that doesn't happen. At the same time that the committee hears a bill, meaning they get to hear testimony from proponents and opponents. Is that accurate?

Chris Lounsbury: [00:08:04] Generally, they try to give 48 hours, except for as we get closer to the end of the legislative session, there isn't always 48 hours to kind of have that time between when a bill is heard and executive action. So at that point it can be faster. You can actually have executive action on the same day that the bill is heard.

Josh Slotnick: [00:08:19] So do committees usually have like a couple days a week where they're doing hearings and then a couple days a week where they're doing executive action? How does that how does that divvied up?

Chris Lounsbury: [00:08:26] Yeah. So they're doing executive action almost every day. At the end of Committee on Bills, they heard 1 or 2 days before.

Josh Slotnick: [00:08:32] Okay. So these committees are just regular people, right? They have all the normal sorts of occupations. And then they come as volunteers and have to learn all this stuff for a few months, a year. I mean, they have to become fluent in a handful of really specific languages, like things like Medicaid expansion or property taxes or housing. I mean, these are deep subjects that are really complex. How do you think they handle that? And having to jump from subject to subject all day long.

Chris Lounsbury: [00:08:57] Just like I think is true for most folks. They really rely on those subject matter experts. And so the legislature has its own staff. They have folks who work in the legislative finance office who are incredibly versed in how tax policy works and how general funding works, how grants work, all of those things. So they rely on that staff. They also rely on the executive staff. Right. So the governor has a budget office. They rely on those folks to come and testify. The Department of Revenue that deals with taxes, they have the Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks, right. That deals with those areas. So those folks come and testify on those bills often.

Josh Slotnick: [00:09:25] So the committees have staff persons attached to them, or do the staff people roam from community to community, depending on the subject of the bill in question?

Chris Lounsbury: [00:09:34] It's a little bit of both. Every committee has at least two legislative staffers, one who, generally speaking, is an attorney. So they're there as the legislative legal division. And then they have a staffer who's kind of tracking all of the actions on the committee and has good knowledge of the bills that are going to be in front of that committee. So they're usually also somebody who has experience in drafting a bill.

Josh Slotnick: [00:09:52] So are these positions political appointees or are they just folks who work for state government?

Chris Lounsbury: [00:09:57] Yeah, for the most part, they are just folks who work for state government. There are a few. So, for example, the speaker of the House and the president of the Senate get to appoint their own staff like a staffer for them. Think of them like kind of like a chief of staff for those two positions. Those are political appointees. Most of the folks work for the Legislative Services division, and so they're just regular state employees.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:10:16] So just to round out our level setting of the legislature. So a bill passes in one house or the other, it swaps over to the other House if it passes there. If there are discrepancies, there might be a conference committee of some sort that would come together, iron out the differences. At some point this will go to the governor. And so the governor, the chief executive here for the state of Montana, then has the ability to sign into law veto or line item veto the bill. And only at that point does it become law. Correct?

Juanita Vero: [00:10:49] Yep. No changes can be made. The only change is the line item veto.

Chris Lounsbury: [00:10:52] If for the most part, yes.

Josh Slotnick: [00:10:54] No additions but subtractions.

Chris Lounsbury: [00:10:55] There can be subtractions. If the legislature is still in session, then they get a say in whether or not the governor's veto stands. But once the legislature is out of session, it's generally very difficult. They do have a process where they they poll the legislators, in essence, ask them if they want to try and override the governor's veto. But it's unusual once the legislature is out for something that the governor has vetoed, line item vetoed or signed to change in any way.

Josh Slotnick: [00:11:17] So the beginning of this session, we had talked about some of our goals for the session, and a lot of it was playing defense. We were pretty modest in what we wanted to get done, but I felt like we were a little more robust in what we wanted to stop. What are some victories on both sides of that? The defense and offense. We're always accused of being offensive, though.

Juanita Vero: [00:11:34] Well.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:11:35] I'm offended by you just saying that.

Josh Slotnick: [00:11:37] Exactly. There you go. So so some victories on the defense side and the side of getting things done.

Chris Lounsbury: [00:11:41] Sure. You bet. So let's start with the things that we got done. Just a few examples of that. So we were successful in getting about $500,000 in funding for a bridge up in the Condon area, called the Styler Creek West Bridge.

Josh Slotnick: [00:11:52] Way to.

Chris Lounsbury: [00:11:53] Go. Which was when that came out of House Bill 11 and House Bill 12, which is another bill for around historic preservation. We were able to get about $350,000 for the engine building.

Josh Slotnick: [00:12:04] That's almost all the way covered costs.

Chris Lounsbury: [00:12:06] Yeah.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:12:06] We'll be moving in next week.

Chris Lounsbury: [00:12:08] And and the Historical Museum was successful in getting $114,000 to match their grant for continuing their project around the internment work that they do out at the Historical Museum.

Josh Slotnick: [00:12:18] Those are great victories.

Chris Lounsbury: [00:12:19] Yeah, a huge victory that our county attorney worked really hard on. So credit to Matt Jennings for his hard effort on this House Bill 643. For the first time, we'll provide funding for state inmates who are being held, waiting to be placed at Warm Springs or our state mental hospital for evaluation. Counties will now actually be reimbursed for the next biennium for those holds. Previously, that cost was borne entirely by local property tax taxpayers, even though. Yeah, even though these are folks who are state holds, not local holds.

Josh Slotnick: [00:12:47] And we're not talking holds for 48 hours sometimes we had these folks at our jail for a year or more.

Chris Lounsbury: [00:12:52] Yeah, I was going to say, and so successful in that, thanks to our county attorney's hard work on that one. Major changes in the jury front for our clerk of District Court and our sheriff, that will allow them to more speedily follow up with folks who fail to return their notice that they've been summoned for a jury.

Josh Slotnick: [00:13:11] Does this mean sheriff's deputies won't have to go hunt them down in person?

Chris Lounsbury: [00:13:15] They will no longer have to go door to door, knocking on doors or showing up at folks employment. They'll be able to publish the names, either on the website or through social media, or with the with what we call a paper of general circulation. So Missoula County, some sort of.

Juanita Vero: [00:13:29] Newspaper.

Chris Lounsbury: [00:13:29] Juanes TikTok. Uh, commissioner for bureaus. Tiktok is one option, but it will allow them just different ways, including telephone calls, as a way to to remind folks that they've been summoned for jury duty. Just as an example, this week we have a trial that's going on where they summoned a little over 200 folks, and only 40 folks responded to that. So it's actually a really big problem, even though it doesn't seem like it should be. That will be addressed. So counting that one as a definite win, that's.

Juanita Vero: [00:13:53] A huge win.

Chris Lounsbury: [00:13:55] For Missoula County, a huge.

Josh Slotnick: [00:13:56] Win for public safety. And that we don't have these trained officers with arrest authority out knocking on doors saying, hey, you got to go to jury duty.

Chris Lounsbury: [00:14:02] Another big one here. On the kind of monetary front, House Bill 853 revises the fees that are paid by folks who have to have for local businesses that have to have inspections for food safety, helps to increase that fee. That fee hadn't been increased since 2009. It's 2025. And so that fee did not obviously keep up with costs over the time. So local property taxes were supplementing those kinds of inspections. So quite a few wins from my perspective. That's just a quick smattering of some of the things that we had for wins during this last glass.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:14:33] Half empty.

Chris Lounsbury: [00:14:34] Glass half empty. Moving on to a few places where we weren't as successful. Uh, House Bill 334 E34 would have provided it was generally revised. Disaster and emergency laws would have provided about $3 million per year to disaster and emergency services across the state. When an event occurred that didn't necessarily rise to the level of a state disaster declaration, it would have helped local governments to actually be able to bear those costs without having to levy additional property tax dollars to be able to do that. Unfortunately, that bill did not pass the legislative process.

Juanita Vero: [00:15:01] I didn't realize that that hadn't passed. That's a bummer.

Chris Lounsbury: [00:15:04] Yeah, it is a huge bummer on that one. House Bill 451, which would have as you know, we've created a few targeted economic development districts. This bill would have actually allowed us to exempt the school debt pieces. So when the school issues a bond from being captured inside those tax increment districts, that's something that the commission has done on its own as we've created Ted's. But this actually would have brought it into law, which would have been great for school districts to make sure that when they're bonding for projects, that all of those bond funds go directly towards that and that unfortunately.

Josh Slotnick: [00:15:33] So is this kind of an example of something like this feels like attempting to address some of what people would call the injustices of of a Ted, and that certain taxing jurisdictions get plenty of responsibility that grows over time, but the revenues don't grow to match. And here's a way for school districts to help deal with that. So legislature said no to this, but simultaneously limits the amount of revenue that can come from a Ted when the Ted or IRD sunsets. So so which version of these things would you like? Legislature. They kind of went both directions simultaneously.

Chris Lounsbury: [00:16:04] Yeah, a little bit. That's a great, great way to look at it. Last one I wanted to highlight unfortunately, was a House Bill 714, which was revised laws related to the division of land exempt from the Subdivision act. So think family transfers, which you guys deal with a lot. This one added a lot of additional steps, not only for local governments, but for folks who are looking to use this related to the notice piece, which will make it more complicated for folks when they want to use a family transfer to be able to pass land on to their subsequent generations of family.

Josh Slotnick: [00:16:31] So the legislature made it more difficult to do a family transfer.

Chris Lounsbury: [00:16:35] They made it more difficult to do a family transfer When?

Josh Slotnick: [00:16:37] Last session two years ago. They made it so you could give land to your minor or puppy. Maybe not puppy, but. But they made it so you could give land to someone in your family. Your child who's under 21.

Chris Lounsbury: [00:16:50] Yeah. So again, in this case, they made it more difficult by putting public notice requirements on the person who wants to use the family transfer.

Juanita Vero: [00:16:57] What was their reasoning?

Josh Slotnick: [00:16:58] What's the reasoning there?

Chris Lounsbury: [00:16:59] It's a great question. We really don't know. There was never a very good argument for why these additional requirements needed to fall on that. The interesting part is it falls on the landowner to do that, but it follows on local government to make sure that the landowner did that, which means we're going to get kind of caught between the landowner who's going to say, why am I having to do these things?

Josh Slotnick: [00:17:15] Isn't this already done? And when a family transfer comes before us, we make these decisions at a public meeting that's well noticed and the agenda is out there for anybody to want to look.

Chris Lounsbury: [00:17:23] Yeah. So the way the state set up these notice requirements, they would actually need to notify the adjacent landowners. So think more similar to like when you.

Juanita Vero: [00:17:29] Were a subdivision.

Chris Lounsbury: [00:17:30] A subdivision or a zoning change where you actually have to do direct notification of.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:17:34] I bet, I bet it is still easier even under these new this new statute. I bet it's still easier to do a family transfer than a full on subdivision.

Josh Slotnick: [00:17:44] So here's.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:17:45] So the one thing we have not taken a full dive into yet is taxes. That was a big deal at the legislative session. I know it's something Josh does not care a bit.

Juanita Vero: [00:17:56] And I owe it.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:17:56] Whatsoever. But Chris, could you talk to us a little bit about how that all played out in the session?

Chris Lounsbury: [00:18:02] Yeah. So I so I would start with saying we, we had some wins and it's a great place to talk about a win and a loss. Right. So we had a loss in the fact that Commissioner Slotnick really worked very hard to get introduced. This idea of being able to do a local tourism tax to help offset property taxes, that bill actually made it further than any other bill that we've had in front of the legislature around that, which was great. Unfortunately, it did not pass at the end of.

Josh Slotnick: [00:18:24] Supported.

Chris Lounsbury: [00:18:24] It. Mako Montana Association of Counties did support it. But really, I mean, I think the thing most folks want to talk about is what are the property tax bills that did pass. So the two major bills are Our House Bill 231, which was put forward by Representative Llew Jones and SB 542. Senate Bill 542 was the other property tax bill. Each one of them is about 42 pages long, so if you have a lot of time late at night, I highly encourage you. If you're needing sleep 84 pages, a tax policy that you can read there, but we'll distill it down into some really easy pieces for folks. So first piece is similar to the previous two years. There will be a one time rebate from the state of about $400 per residential property tax owner. You will have to apply to be able to get that rebate. So at some point, the state will have a process by which folks will have to go on and say, yes, I owned a residence during this time and I would like my $400 rebate.

Josh Slotnick: [00:19:14] It's also called the buy one lunch in Bozeman rebate.

Chris Lounsbury: [00:19:17] The buy one lunch or one night stay or one night stay in Bozeman.

Josh Slotnick: [00:19:21] With no breakfast, no breakfast.

Chris Lounsbury: [00:19:23] Breakfast not involved. And then the other thing that it did was for this property tax year, the bills that will be due in November of this year, is it adjusted the residential and commercial property tax rates. And it's a two step process. So for 2025, that looks like the first $400,000 in a home's value will be taxed at about 0.76% versus the 1.35 it was last year.

Josh Slotnick: [00:19:48] So that's just to say that piece again, that's a huge shift. That's almost a 50% reduction in the first $400,000. Now if you live in Missoula, they might be like, yeah, whatever, whose house is worth that much? But this is statewide. So for people who live in other parts of the state, this is a huge deal. Their house might be only worth $380,000, and it could be a completely wonderful house and their taxes could go down by half.

Chris Lounsbury: [00:20:08] So just to be clear. So it changes the tax.

Josh Slotnick: [00:20:11] Rate, tax rate, tax.

Chris Lounsbury: [00:20:12] Rate, not necessarily.

Josh Slotnick: [00:20:13] What they what folks will.

Chris Lounsbury: [00:20:14] Value. Yeah. Not taxable value and not necessarily what people will pay in taxes. Then it breaks out kind of those additional rate tiers above that for homes that are over 400,000 to 401,000 to a certain amount. Right. Slightly higher tax rate up to 1.5 million, where it goes up to the to the full rate.

Josh Slotnick: [00:20:29] So for median house in Missoula, I think it was 1.1, which is still better than 1.35.

Chris Lounsbury: [00:20:35] It is better than 1.35. That is for this first year that we have that in 2026, it goes to a different structure, which is much more tiered. And that one will start with the first 50,000 being that. And you might hear this referred to as the homestead exemption that the legislature passed, but the homestead exemption doesn't actually kick in until 2026. There's two different pieces to the two bills that passed, one that goes into effect this year and that's that 400,000. And then when the homestead exemption goes into effect, which actually reduces the amount that we calculate the value you pay on your home for. Then we have this tiered rate structure that starts off for the first 50,000. That's a certain amount from 50,001 to 100,000. And that's the kind of much longer laundry list of tax rates that folks might hear or see in a in a news article.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:21:20] Could you describe a little more what homestead means in this context? It's not your great grandfather out there on the eastern plains plowing a Or 160 acre parcel.

Chris Lounsbury: [00:21:31] Yeah. So that's a that's a great point. Think primary residence if you want to talk about what is a homestead exemption. So it's a home that the legislature has defined that you live in. Beyond being a Montana resident for at least five months out of the year, it serves as your primary residence. Um, and.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:21:46] So so Josh is going to have to pay more for residences over in Yellowstone Club and Moonlight Basin for.

Speaker5: [00:21:52] His second home because he didn't get invited.

Josh Slotnick: [00:21:54] To.

Speaker5: [00:21:54] My birthday party, Yellowstone.

Chris Lounsbury: [00:21:56] So he will he will have to pay more on his second homes. Uh, but but this primary residence exemption will go into effect in 2026.

Josh Slotnick: [00:22:04] So in 2026, the graduated tax rates, how do they compare to the graduated tax rates in 2025? For somebody in Missoula whose house is worth, in the eyes of the state, probably somewhere between 5 and $600,000?

Chris Lounsbury: [00:22:16] Yeah. So they'll look very similar to that in reality as you look at how they kind of tear up. It's a very similar breakdown to what we're seeing as far as the actual tax rates that are available in 2025, even though that just uses a flat amount. And the reason it uses that flat amount is they recognize that door would have to do a lot of reprograming of the tax system to create 5 or 6 different tax rates, versus just 1 or 2. Hence the two for this next year. And that's why it's being implemented over a couple of years.

Josh Slotnick: [00:22:41] So it's not that it's substantively much different. It just is more nuanced. Year two and all that work couldn't be done in time for year one. If year one is 25 and year two is 26.

Chris Lounsbury: [00:22:51] Correct. And so they picked a flat amount and just said, we're going to break it at 400,000 and say we're going to have this rate.

Josh Slotnick: [00:22:57] And similar thing happened for some commercial property owners as well.

Chris Lounsbury: [00:23:01] Yeah. So a lot of commercial properties actually in class four, which we normally think of as the residential rate, but actually most small businesses are in that. What you don't see in those are the folks who have multiple locations around the state. So things like a Walmart or Target or things like Northwestern Energy, BNSF, right, where they're what we call centrally assessed or they're assessed across the totality of their business and then divided among the states.

Josh Slotnick: [00:23:23] So in the world of property taxes, people talk about the burden shift and the burden has shifted onto residential, and it feels like the gist of this bill is to shift that burden away from residential a little bit by lowering the tax rates. Where is that burden going to fall?

Chris Lounsbury: [00:23:37] That burden will fall more to those other property tax classes that shift that we saw over these last two years and that we expect to see. Again, just to be clear, this year, because we know that residential property values went up substantially again this year. When we look at reappraisal, this is basically trying to rebalance some of that. When you look at it across the entire state, it's probably not the entire shift that occurred, but it's probably around a third to maybe 40% of the shift that happened towards residential. So folks should see, we're being told, and we don't have numbers by county yet. So I just want to let folks know that we're kind of trusting in the process, that by November, we'll be able to give folks a much more detailed picture. But what we're being told is that folks should see, in addition to the $400 rebate, somewhere between a 20 and 40% reduction in what occurred during the shift.

Juanita Vero: [00:24:30] What class took on the greatest burden?

Chris Lounsbury: [00:24:33] It will be centrally assessed, most likely, that sees the largest shift to that and then large scale commercial, not the kind of mom and pop down Main Street business.

Josh Slotnick: [00:24:42] So I'm definitely a cup half full kind of person, but in this case, I'm worried that the cup's just going to get knocked over and the water is going to spill onto your lap. That thinking about these centrally assessed industries are well resourced and well lawyered up. Would they think, go to door in 2027 and say, oh my goodness, our properties they have they've dropped in value so much since last time and give fantastic arguments. What we would see is their taxable values drop so much that the proportion of burden actually remains the same, even though residential property has lower tax rates. Now it's all about taxable value anyway. What do you think on my nightmare scenario? Is this possible?

Chris Lounsbury: [00:25:20] Is it possible? I yes I don't want to speak for for what those industries will do by adjusting the tax rates, even if they adjust their taxable values down to some extent, they're still paying that higher rate than folks, but it could result in some shift back for sure.

Josh Slotnick: [00:25:35] I mean, taxable value is a result of assessed value multiplied by tax rate. If they still have a tax rate, but their assessed value drops precipitously, the burden could just stay with residential. Am I am I being too cynical here?

Chris Lounsbury: [00:25:47] I want to think that maybe you're being a little too cynical. Only in the fact that I want. I want to have hope that the legislature really understood the pain that occurred because of the property tax shift. It was certainly an issue that they started working on in the first few days of the legislative session. It took them the entire session, write these bills past the last week of the legislature, because they did work on them so carefully to try and figure out a way to do some of this shift in a way that also felt, for lack of a better term, fair in trying to recognize that, yes, residential values grew by a lot, but we did also have this tax shift that was a piece of it. And what they really tried to do was recognize that, yes, residential values grew, and we needed to offset some of that shift that occurred while still recognizing some of that.

Josh Slotnick: [00:26:28] There's any chance the greater we out there could get the director of the Department of Revenue to make sure that when centrally assessed industries appeal their valuations, they have to do that in public.

Chris Lounsbury: [00:26:39] Yeah, I mean, that is a policy decision from the the leadership both.

Juanita Vero: [00:26:42] When was.

Chris Lounsbury: [00:26:43] The.

Juanita Vero: [00:26:43] Last time that was.

Josh Slotnick: [00:26:44] Under Dan Bucks.

Chris Lounsbury: [00:26:45] Yeah.

Josh Slotnick: [00:26:46] And this isn't Schweitzer administration.

Juanita Vero: [00:26:48] Oh okay.

Josh Slotnick: [00:26:48] Yeah. This isn't an act of law. It's just culture. And Dan Bucks did it. But subsequent directors of Dor, I have been told, did not.

Chris Lounsbury: [00:26:55] Yeah. And I will admit it is probably complicated trying to make those decisions because businesses and others have some version of intellectual property that they want to keep protected and shielded. And so how much do you make public and how much do you have to keep protected?

Josh Slotnick: [00:27:10] That's a good point.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:27:10] The proof will be in the proverbial pudding as far as how this works out.

Chris Lounsbury: [00:27:16] But yeah, so still a lot to see. But I feel like again, the legislature did good work and we're hopeful that it will.

Juanita Vero: [00:27:22] Oh, you got to ask the question. If Chris was out for the day.

Josh Slotnick: [00:27:25] Yeah, yeah. So, Chris, we, the three of us were just at City Club and it was great presentation. Senators Ellie Boldman and Greg Hertz were there talking about the legislature, and they both did a great job. And the three of us at our little table came up with this question where we asked them, if you were the czar, the legislature. You got to remake the system in any way to make it more efficient. What would that look like? And we said this to them or asked them this after each of them talked about the shortcomings of the current system. Too many bills to read, too much to get done in too short a time. So if you got to remake it, what would it look like?

Chris Lounsbury: [00:27:56] So not to be too cynical, uh, because I have a cynical answer, but not to be too cynical. What I would say is two things. One, not very popular term limits seem like a really great idea, but they really do hamper the legislature because people can't become subject matter experts in these really complicated and difficult things. And so we lose a lot of institutional knowledge by the fact that folks can only serve for a short period of time in the legislature before they're required to be out for, a number of years. And so I think that is a challenge, especially in a legislature that only meets every other year. I think if they met every year, which I would not advocate for, maybe term limits would make would still make sense. But it's really tough within every other year legislature. The other piece I would say is there are too many bill drafts. It's not that every idea isn't a good idea and doesn't deserve some amount of vetting through that, but I do think if legislators were a little more limited in what they could put forward as far as the number of bills, it would probably also make it easier both for them and for constituents and local governments and others who want to try and track that process and understand what's going on. When you get towards the beginning of a legislative session, there are literally thousands of bills which have what we know, what we refer to as an LC, which means they haven't gotten legislative concept. They're just a concept. They're just a concept, and it just results in literally the inability to read every single bill that's out there. We often get folks who reach out and say, well, hey, have you looked at this LC and the answer is we don't look at them until they get a bill number, because we can just keep up with the bill numbers. There's no way for us to look at every concept that's out there.

Juanita Vero: [00:29:27] So why would you not want them to meet every year?

Chris Lounsbury: [00:29:30] Why would I not want them to meet every year? It sounds really good to say that we're only, you know, I think, uh, Senator Hertz put forward the idea. Well, one year we deal only with the budget, and one year we deal only with policy. With policy. But the reality is, the budget takes up so much time. And if you want to, if you truly want to understand the state's budget, they don't just spend 45 days on the budget. The budgets are almost always the last thing to pass. It takes them the full 90 days to get through that. It's in part because other things are happening, but I don't think that's the only reason. And I just don't think the idea of them trying to split it up into two different sessions where it's just budget and just policy, will actually give them the time or the expertise.

Josh Slotnick: [00:30:07] Don't a lot of policies have budgetary implications?

Chris Lounsbury: [00:30:09] Almost every policy has a budgetary impact for right, whether that's the need for additional staffing or just in the need for resources to carry out those policies, even if it doesn't necessarily take a.

Juanita Vero: [00:30:20] Is there a state system that you think Montana could aspire to? Because I just learned today that we're only one of four.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:30:27] We are only the 51st state that we.

Juanita Vero: [00:30:30] Know we have to do this every other year. Citizen legislature, sort of.

Chris Lounsbury: [00:30:35] Yeah, I think it is really hard, right. And especially in a state as diverse both geographically as Montana. Right. When we talk about the size of the state of Montana and having to meet for one year, how do you do that? If you if you don't do that? I think it's much easier in those smaller states to have something like an annual legislature that meets for 90 or 100 days.

Josh Slotnick: [00:30:54] Can drive home at the end of the day.

Chris Lounsbury: [00:30:56] But when you look at those legislatures that meet every year, most of them, not all of them, but the vast majority they're meeting for, you know, four to 5 to 6 months out of that year. And they are covering both topics, but it still takes them that amount of time just because of the level of complexity.

Josh Slotnick: [00:31:11] So when you're talking about bill drafts, would you be for limiting saying every legislator gets to do X number of bills and no more. Is that how you'd want to do it, or would there be some oversight committee that just vets them before they become an LLC even?

Chris Lounsbury: [00:31:24] Yeah, I think either way could work. I think from my perspective, limiting it at the legislature legislator level is what actually makes sense, because it helps them to prioritize. What are the things that I'm really most interested in helping? And I've heard the most from my constituents.

Juanita Vero: [00:31:39] You mean the whole body or individual? Individual?

Chris Lounsbury: [00:31:41] Individual legislators yeah. Whether whether they get, you know, just making up a number right. When they get 25, whatever the number is that they come up with so that they can help to focus on these are the things that are most important to my constituents, because when you try and cover every topic, we see legislators who literally use really broad titles and try to cover every topic.

Juanita Vero: [00:32:00] Generally revised property taxes.

Chris Lounsbury: [00:32:02] Generally revised property taxes, right? Generally generally revise the health code.

Juanita Vero: [00:32:06] Yeah.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:32:06] Generally to rein in local government.

Chris Lounsbury: [00:32:09] Yes. Yes. It's it's really hard.

Josh Slotnick: [00:32:11] All right. So Chris, first, thanks so much. Not just for coming today but for being a part of this team of six folks. And thanks to all of those other people on that team who spent so much energy over the last 90 plus days making sense of the legislature and making sure that our comments were timely and smart. So thank you.

Chris Lounsbury: [00:32:29] Yeah, thank you guys too. I mean, just to be clear, it's not that just for folks who are out there listening, the commissioners play a huge role in this too, because we look to you for the direction that the county wants to take for all of the policy issues, and you work on that all year long. And without that, we would not be able to have a sense of where the areas we need to watch.

Josh Slotnick: [00:32:45] It's an honor. So our last question, anything you run into in the world of culture, in the last bit of recent past, a podcast, a song, a lyric, a poem, a short story, a TV show, anything you run into, you thought, well.

Juanita Vero: [00:32:58] Even a.

Josh Slotnick: [00:32:59] Book. Even a book. Thanks. That was a worthwhile and worth worth repeating.

Chris Lounsbury: [00:33:04] So on the nonfiction front on books, huge Brene Brown fan boy so have really been enjoying her Braving the Wilderness book Recently, which is a reread for me on that one, but it's just a good reminder of what's.

Josh Slotnick: [00:33:18] The wilderness.

Chris Lounsbury: [00:33:19] For? So in this case, it's just the idea of that you need to be vulnerable in the work that you do and, you know, in order to actually show up authentically and to work with folks in an authentic way, you have to be willing to be vulnerable and admit the things you don't know, even when that makes you really uncomfortable or makes you maybe stand out. So that, on the nonfiction front, is one that I've been really enjoying. And then on the fiction front, because I do enjoy a good fiction book, but I always get the title wrong is a book called Red rising, which is a great kind of counterculture futuristic book that's just fits our time, shall we say.

Juanita Vero: [00:33:53] When did that come out?

Chris Lounsbury: [00:33:54] Uh, I am not sure what year it came out. It was recommended to me by a friend. It's not a new book. Martin Page, I believe, is the Red rising.

Josh Slotnick: [00:34:03] Great.

Juanita Vero: [00:34:04] Great.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:34:04] Okay, well, thanks for joining us.

Chris Lounsbury: [00:34:07] Thank you.

Josh Slotnick: [00:34:08] Yeah. Thanks a ton, Chris. And check us out next time. Thanks, everybody.

Juanita Vero: [00:34:12] Thanks, everyone.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:34:13] Thanks.

Josh Slotnick: [00:34:14] Thanks for listening to the agenda. If you enjoy these conversations, it would mean a lot if you would rate and review the show on whichever podcast app you use.

Juanita Vero: [00:34:22] And if you know a friend who would like to keep up with what's happening in local government, be sure to recommend this podcast to them.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:34:28] The agenda with the Missoula County Commissioners is made possible with support from Missoula Community Access Television, better known as MCAT, and our staff in Missoula County Communications Division.

Josh Slotnick: [00:34:40] If you have a question or a topic you'd like us to discuss on a future episode, email it to communications@missoulacounty.us.

Juanita Vero: [00:34:47] To find out other ways to stay up to date with what's happening in Missoula County, go to Missoula.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:34:55] Thanks for listening.