26 April 2021 — 1044 mdt
Montana’s legislators requested
a record number of bill this session
In Montana’s 1997 legislative session, 1,424 bills were requested, 1,088 were introduced, and 608 were adopted. Twenty-four years later, as of 25 April, legislators had requested a record 3,357 bills and introduced 1,313 (the tally of bills adopted becomes available when the session ends.)
Approximately half of the bills introduced are adopted.
Some legislators request more bills than others. This year’s champion requester is Sen. Steve Fitzpatrick (R-Great Falls), who requested more than 200 bills.
If each bill request had to be accompanied by a 20-page college quality research paper on the subject addressed by the bill, I suspect the number of requests could be cut by at least 50 percent, and the quality of the bills introduced might increase by a similar amount.