4 March 2019 — 1624 mst
At the legislature’s midpoint, some good bills
are dead — and several bad bills are still alive
There are also bad bills that died, and good bills that are still alive. The list below is far from comprehensive, but it’s a start, and it ends with proposals for improving Rep. Jessica Karjala’s bill that bans lunch shaming.
Bad bills that died
- Bills by Republican's John Esp and Lola Sheldon-Galloway to rob Montana of the benefits of Daylight Saving Time died in committee. Esp's bill would have put Montana on Mountain Standard Time all year long. Sheldon-Galloway's would have asked Montanans to approve a referendum to put Montana in the Central Standard Time zone all year long. CST is Alabama's time zone.
- Three bills to make avoiding mandatory vaccinations were shot down in the MT House last week. One, SB-23, passed the MT Senate and is still alive.
- Rep. Nancy Ballance's raw milk legalization bills were tabled in committee. Rep. Walt Sales' raw milk legalization bill was defeated two to one on its second reading. The result? Effective public health policy was upheld, and the cultists who think unpasteurized milk is safe and healthy will either have to give up their bacteria laden liquid or continue to buy it on the black market.
- Rep. Forest Mandeville's (R-Columbus) HB-148 — short title: Require 2/3 of legislature to enact a new tax or fee or a tax or fee increase — passed the MT House 53–47, but was tabled in the MT Senate's taxation committee. A companion measure, LC-1277, that would try to impose the two-thirds requirement through a legislative referendum, is still in the drafting process.
Bad bills that are still alive
- SB-278, Sen. Tom Richmond’s (R-Billings) sweetheart bill that would enable Northwestern Energy buy Colstrip for as little as one dollar, and then allow the company to soak the ratepayers without review by the Public Service Commission is in its second committee in the MT. Senate. It’s an outrageous bill that's been condemned by former budget directors for Montana. If it’s approved by the legislature, Gov. Bullock surely will veto it — and provoking that veto may be the bill’s true purpose, as it could be cited as proof that Democrats killed Colstrip.
- HB-86, Attorney General Tim Fox’s bill that proves he's tough on drugs, would limit prescriptions of narcotic painkillers. It passed the MT House, and was approved 8–2 in a MT Senate committee, but has not been scheduled for its second reading in the MT Senate. The bill does not appear to rely on the latest available data. Deaths from opioid overdoses in Montana have been declining for years, making HB-86 a solution in search of a problem.
- As noted above, Rep. Forest Mandeville˚s (R-Columbus) LC-1277, would attempt to use a legislative referendum to inflict a supermajority requirement for raising taxes or fees or creating new taxes or fees. Whether this measure will be introduced is uncertain. The notion that Montana needs a supermajority requirement for raising or creating taxes or fees has not met with universal acclaim.
A good bill that died
- Rep. Marilyn Marler’s (D-Missoula) bill to phase out single use foamed polystyrene food containers was tabled in committee. This was a very mild bill that provoked a Chicken Little response from the fast food and grocery industries. My sense is that there was not a powerful, organized, campaign to push the bill. Fortunately, similar legislation undoubtedly will be introduced in the 2021 legislative session.
A good bill that's still alive
What do loan sharks and some public school administrators have in common? A belief that an effective way to collect debts from deadbeat adults is by harming their children. On the street, the sharks’ collection thugs send the children home with a black eye and a warning that if pappy doesn’t pay his gambling debt, junior will suffer a broken arm. In the schoolhouse, an unpaid school lunch debt results in lunch shaming, the reprehensible and cruel practice of singling out children with lunch debts for public humiliation.
Billing Democrat Rep. Jessica Karjala is carrying a bill, HB-414, that would outlaw lunch shaming in Montana. Last week it passed the MT House 67–32 on the third reading. As introduced, it was opposed by the Montana School Boards Association. As amended (and weakened), it was grudgingly supported by the association. It also received support from the Montana Medical Association.
In my judgment, the bill has three significant defects. First, it retains for administrators the option of sending a scarlet letter home with students whose lunch accounts are in arrears:
Section 1 (2). A school district shall direct any communications regarding a student’s unpaid debt for previously served school meals to the student’s parent or guardian only. Nothing in this subsection prohibits a school district from sending a notice that is addressed to the student’s parent or guardian home with the student. [Highlighting added.]
Sending a letter home with the student is not a scheme for saving postage. It’s a scheme for singling out students:
Crystal Jarek, a retired teacher in Lee County, Fla., said she remembered the staff taking debt notices to class. “The cafeteria staff would come in at noon, wearing their hairnets, and hand out letters,” she said. “All the kids would turn around to see who was getting one.” [New York Times]
The sentence beginning “Nothing in this section prohibits…” should be removed from HB-414. Send the letter via the U.S. Postal Service. Do not conscript students for delivering “Pay up, you irresponsible deadbeat” bill collection letters.
The second defect is the absence of a section forbidding school districts from turning school lunch accounts that are in arrears over to collection agencies. The MT Senate should add such a provision.
The third defect is the absence of penalties for violations of the anti-shaming law. The MT Senate should add criminal penalties to the bill, including a mandatory day in the hoosegow for shamers.
The fundamental problem, of course, is the imbecilic way American schools provide meals for students. Hungry students have slow brains. That’s why enlightened school systems, such as in Sweden, provide students with breakfast and lunch, rolling the cost into the cost of education and not equipping a school’s cafeteria with a cashier. But in our balkanized school system, there are various sources of funding for school meals, including means tested subsidies for students from low income households (whose families must endure the indignity of confessing to being too poor to pay for their child’s school lunch). This results in gratuitous administrative complexity, inevitable mistakes and embarrassments, never ending problems with school lunch financing, and a surplus of sanctimonious proclamations about personal responsibility and having skin in the game. HB-414 forbids hurting students to collect money from their parents, but it does nothing to reform our bad system for financing school meals.