The 2025 Montana Legislature

The 2025 Montana Legislature ended in early May (the Montana Legislature meets in odd

years only). As your Senator, I want to share a few of our biggest accomplishments:

• Balanced budget. We passed a balanced budget, as required by the Montana Constitution. Since 2021, I have served as the Senate Minority Vice Chair on the budget committee and was involved in building the budget.
• Property Tax Relief. Legislators successfully passed a series of bills to reduce property taxes on primary residences and long-term rentals. Because the bills only became law in late Spring, the first year of relief is through a rebate; in subsequent years, the relief will be reflected on property tax bills.
• Maintained Impartial Courts in Our State. We defeated numerous (slightly different) bills that would have made judges run in partisan elections. The majority of legislators do not want judges to be loyal to any Party (Republican or Democrat); we just want our courts to be strong and independent – and our judges to be fair and listen to all sides of every argument.
• Reauthorized Medicaid for more than 90,000 working Montanans. This reauthorization is especially important for veterans, low-income workers, and rural communities (and their healthcare clinics).
• In addition, we also made major strides in housing, education, and defending reproductive rights, among other topics.

I successfully sponsored several pieces of legislation and amendments, including ones that:

• Create a Bowhunters with Disabilities Program (SB 238) in the state that will collect donations to be used to modified archery equipment for disabled hunters to use during archery season.
• Revised public record laws (HB 100) by requiring all public agencies (including all state agencies, the Secretary of State, Attorney General, Auditor, and Office of Public Instruction) to establish a public information request process. This bill also revises fees for public information requests.
• Require Disclosure of Artificial Intelligence (AI) Use in Elections (SB 25). This bill essentially requires that deepfake AIs used in elections carry a disclosure identifying the material as deepfake AI generated. NOTE: because of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizen’s United decision, it is almost impossible to regulate communications in elections; the best we can do (now) is identify when this material is being used.

I was also able to add several amendments to the state budget, including:

• Extending the deadline to spend $3.7 million to reimburse schools for testing and mitigation work for water faucets and fountains under the lead in public school drinking water program (a program at the Montana Department of Environmental Quality);
• Added $2 million to assist will cleaning up underground storage tanks that are leaking petroleum products into groundwater (another program under the Montana Department of Environmental Quality);
• Secured the use of $100,000 for weed control and riparian enhancement of fishing access sites, as well as taking care of fishing access issues due to increased recreation (a program under to Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks).

I look forward to working for you through 2026 and beyond. Please feel free to reach out with your concerns and ideas!

Senator Janet Ellis