Legislative Update – 2/27/23

We passed the first benchmark of the session and have the second coming up fast. Friday was the last day to introduce general bills, and this Friday is transmittal where all general bills must pass at least one chamber. Revenue bills still have some time, and we believe an ADU bill will be introduced that would qualify as a revenue bill.

Transmittal is a big deal for us because we generally now know what the landscape is for the rest of the session. Things still pop up, amendments are made to bills, and bills that where tabled get attached to other bills that didn’t. But we generally already have figured out what a bill says and our position, and the number of bills more manageable.

Last week was just nuts in terms of the volume of bills we had to track, decipher, and provide testimony on. I will save the details for an update next week that will set up the landscape for the second half of the session.

The next two weeks will be a little quite on our end. This week there are no hearings scheduled that we plan to testify on. It will be a busy week in Helena as Committees will be focused on Executive Action and there will be plenty of debates on the House and Senate floor.

Below is the list of bills we testified on last week, check our bill tracker for our position and the status on these bills. We update it daily.

SB 268 – Revise Laws Relating to Short Term Rentals

SB 301 – Revise property laws related to lakeshore regulations

SB 331: Revise condo and townhouse exemptions

SB 379 – Revise zoning laws

HB 483 – Generally revise land survey laws

SB 382 – Create the Montana Land Use Planning Act AKA the Working Group Bill

HB 553 – Housing for Montana Families Act AKA ADU Bill

HB 606 – Revise laws related to home-based businesses