Eric Dietrich

A state district court judge has concluded that Montana’s Republican-controlled utility commission violated the due process rights of a solar energy company, writing that newspaper guest columns published by commissioners as a rate case was pending constitute evidence of bias.

There aren’t too many businesses adding jobs amid the rural fields of north-central Montana these days, but Big Sandy Organics is doing just that. As the company attempts the leap from one-off arrangements with mom-and-pop stores to contracts with national distributors, it’s getting help from a key state jobs program, the Big Sky Economic Development Trust Fund.

The judge presiding over a dispute between Montana Secretary of State Corey Stapleton and Gov. Steve Bullock over the validity of the governor’s veto on a bill didn’t mince words Wednesday.

Montana Secretary of State Corey Stapleton said Wednesday that Gov. Steve Bullock’s veto of a bill tightening the state’s legal definition of “wild bison” is invalid because of a paperwork error that kept the veto document from reaching the secretary’s office for weeks. But the Democratic governor's office called Stapleton, a Republican, “confused.”

A state program that would have offered professional workers grants and tax breaks to settle in rural Montana didn’t pass muster at the Legislature this year. However, the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Joel Krautter, says he’ll take another run at the idea.

By a single vote on Monday, the bill to continue Medicaid expansion in Montana was revived and endorsed by the state Senate, setting up a final vote that could advance the measure closer to passage. The bill to continue the program that provides medical coverage for 96,000 low-income adults in Montana has been stalled in the Senate since last Thursday and faced a crucial deadline on Monday.

A Republican-sponsored bill to extend Montana’s expanded Medicaid program was amended and then voted down on the Senate floor Thursday after five Republican co-sponsors defected in what some said was an effort to tie Medicaid expansion to passage of a “save Colstrip” bill.

A legislative bill that would increase the tax airlines, commercial aviators and private pilots pay on aviation fuel in an effort to route more money to Montana's rural airfields has attracted spirited opposition from airlines and urban airports.

Arts and culture initiatives supported by a Montana state grant program could soon come with an acknowledgment, courtesy of language inserted in a funding bill on March 22: The money comes from coal.

Lawmakers still have plenty of work on their plate going into the week of March 18, including a bill that would clarify the definition of sexual consent, another to make a higher education property tax permanent, and another to revise the legal definition of stalking among others.