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EPISODE DESCRIPTION

Host Shaylee Ragar sits down with Mara Silvers and Eric Dietrich of the �ԹϺ��� to get into the latest flareup of drama in the Senate, abortion policy after CI-128 and a new tool to track legislation from MTFP.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Shaylee Ragar: The 69th Legislature is starting week six, meaning we’re about a third of the way through. Today, we’re going to talk about an important public access tool from �ԹϺ���. Then we’ll take a look at legislation to restrict abortion access. This is the session, a look at the policy and politics inside the Montana State House. I’m Shaylee Ragar with Montana Public Radio. 

Mara Silvers: I’m Mara Silvers with �ԹϺ���. 

Eric Dietrich: And I’m Eric Dietrich with �ԹϺ���. 

Shaylee Ragar: Before we dive into today’s episode, we want listeners to know that we are following the rapid developments in the ethics investigation into Hamilton Republican Senator Jason Ellsworth. 

Shaylee Ragar: Several Republicans joined Democrats in voting to kick the investigation out of the Senate and to the Department of Justice. Other Republicans were outraged by the decision in a long floor session last Thursday evening. 

Shaylee Ragar: I will say, as far as the Legislature sometimes feels like reality television. Thursday did not disappoint. 

Shaylee Ragar: It was shocking. There were tears. There was a lot of emotion. 

Shaylee Ragar: And I think what was interesting to me was so many senators speechifying about what their real role is. Why they’re sent here, what they’re meant to do and whether or not they’re upholding their constitutional duties as lawmakers. 

Shaylee Ragar: There is concern that this debacle is taking away from the job that Montana lawmakers are elected to do to make policy. And if you’ve ever tried to track all that’s happening in the state Legislature, you know it is no easy feat. It takes a lot of focus, a lot of time, and there’s a lot of stuff that’s already competing for attention. We mentioned previously that the tracking bills at the state House became a bit more difficult this session with the rollout of a new legislative website. But �ԹϺ��� has relaunched a tool that I know is helping a lot of people breathe easier. Myself included. Eric, this is your brainchild. Tell us about  

Eric Dietrich: Yeah, So the Capitol Tracker’s a system, it basically takes mostly information that’s available to the official website, that pulls it in and reworks it a little bit and presents it in a way that we hope is easier to digest. There are kind of two branches to it. There’s a … web page for each lawmaker, 150 representatives and senators, and hopefully get a better sense about who they are and what they’re doing in the building. New information, like what committees are they on, what bills they sponsored, how many sessions they’ve been in the Legislature. And we also have a page for each bill. There are several hundred bills that have been introduced at this point. Where is the bill at in the process? If there have been votes on it so far, either in committees or on the House or Senate floor? How are those votes broken down? You can look at either kind of both a list of names or by party. I find that that helps me understand the Legislature as a reporter, and I hope it helps other people, too. 

Shaylee Ragar: And as reporters, we’re kind of more generalists in that we often are covering bills based on topic, but I’m thinking listeners might want to know what their personal representative or senator is up to. Can they find that out? 

Eric Dietrich: Yeah, they can. If they know the name of your representative, senator, you can search for that directly from the landing page. If you don’t know who your people are, you can also enter your address, and that’ll be a lookup that tells you who your who your people are. You have one representative and one senator, and then you go to their pages and kind of see what they’re working on and what they’re sponsoring. It’s actually very common for people to kind of focus on a particular topic area. So you can see, like, whether your rep is like a wildlife person or a tax person, you kind of get a sense for like the work your person or people are doing in the Capitol. 

Shaylee Ragar: There’s another component on those pages for those lawmakers that I think is super interesting and I really like to look at. It shows how they’re voting. There’s some percentages. You know, there’s some context with it. How would you describe that information? 

Eric Dietrich: Yeah, there are really three stats that we calculate. We calculate them for all 150 lawmakers, and that’s one. How often do they win? Like, how often are they on the same side of the vote’s winning side, essentially. And then kind of how often are they voting with Republicans and how often are they voting with Democrats? But you can, I think, look at those pages and kind of see, is this person somebody who’s a little bit of a maverick or is this somebody who is choosing to vote with most of their caucus members most of the time? 

Shaylee Ragar: So I have been using the Capitol tracker in the past couple of weeks to follow some bills to address abortion. I know you have two, Mara. We’ve both been covering abortion access for a few sessions now and the landscape has changed. In November, Montanans voted to enshrine the right to terminate a pregnancy in the state Constitution. And the discussions are different in Helena now. For example, in past sessions, Gov. Greg Gianforte called on lawmakers to pass legislation to restrict abortion. He’s made no such public plea this session, but that doesn’t mean he’s changed his position. 

[Gianforte clip]: All life is precious and it should be protected, and we’ll continue to find ways to do that. 

Shaylee Ragar: Mara, how would you describe the approach to abortion this session? 

Mara Silvers: Yeah, sure. I mean, just to draw a little bit more contrast to what we’ve seen in past sessions, I think it’s helpful for listeners to remember that up until this session or up until the November election, the whole debate about abortion rights in Montana centered on the interpretation of the right to privacy that already exists in the Montana Constitution. So that framework meant that lawmakers that came to Helena that were opposed to abortion rights could try to work around the right to privacy by suggesting various types of legislation that kind of tried to chip away at the way that the courts have interpreted that right in the past. So we would see, you know, really specific, really nuanced types of bills that would suggest prohibiting abortion at certain times in pregnancy by certain methods. It was really complicated. Right? And the whole point was to try to get those cases in front of judges and start to say, ‘well, the right to privacy protects reproductive autonomy in these situations, but not in these situations.’ Now, we should say that a lot of those court cases are still pending and they have not been decided yet. So this time around, with CI-128 set to go into effect this summer in 2025, Republican lawmakers who are, you know, feel pretty strongly about this issue, kind of have to go back to the drawing board. They have to reset and figure out how to advance their interests with a different constitutional landscape in place. 

Shaylee Ragar: Let’s talk about what’s been proposed so far. Republican Representative Lee Deming of Laurel is is calling for a ballot measure that would basically undo the constitutional amendment that voters approved in November. We’ve seen this proposal before, but it’s being brought in a new landscape, like you said, Mara. 

Mara Silvers: So Representative Demings’ bill is as beginning at the moment of conception, which, like you said, is a proposal that we’ve seen before. It would require a two thirds vote of the Legislature to advance. It has failed in prior sessions. But I will say one of the interesting things to hear it being debated now is just the difference in tenor from opponents and proponents since the CI-128 has passed. 

[Deming clip] This bill is not only a matter of legal clarity, but.also it’s a reflection of a fundamental truth that life begins at conception. 

Mara Silvers: One other thing that’s important to note is that many of the opponents spoke specifically about their experiences with IVF. 

[Bill testimony]  Should a bill like this become law, access to in vitro fertilization, IVF will be dramatically impacted.

Mara Silvers: And Deming was very clear and as were other proponents, that they realized that this bill would certainly complicate, if not outright prohibit IVF from happening in Montana in the future. And he said that was something the Legislature should debate further. But for the most part, many of the opponents came back to CI-128 and said, what House Bill 316 will do is:

[Bill testimony] Disregard the majority of Montanans who have voted time and time again for access to abortion in our state. 

Mara Silvers: We heard a lot of testimony to that point. 

Shaylee Ragar: There’s another bill that I want to touch on that I would say is abortion adjacent. It would define in law that fatherhood begins at conception. What is this all about, Mara? 

Mara Silvers: Yeah, this is an interesting bill from Representative Courtenay Sprunger out of the Flathead, a Republican lawmaker who’s been around for a couple of sessions. Her philosophy, as she told the committee that heard this bill: 

[Sprunger clip]: At its core, this legislation affirms a simple truth. If we are to say that life begins at conception, then we must acknowledge that responsibility. 

Mara Silvers: That gives people an option to try to determine paternity earlier than it is typically done. That starts to reflect the the cost and the responsibility of fatherhood beginning at conception rather than at birth. There was a lot of testimony from family law experts, also doctors, who said that this bill was in some ways unnecessary with current law, but also potentially dangerous. 

[Bill testimony]: I would urge the representatives in the room to think about the unintended consequences of this bill because of how difficult it is to test paternity during pregnancy.

Mara Silvers: It was a very interesting discussion. But again, I think the point that Representative Sprrunger was trying to make was that despite the 128’s clear support in Montana, there is an interest in continuing to assert that life begins at conception, which Representative Deming also echoed. 

Shaylee Ragar: And once again, the debate around abortion is is really layered. So we will definitely be keeping an eye on these bills and report further as they move forward. But I think we’ll leave it there for today. But as always, before we go, I want to hear from you both about what your favorite moment from last week was. 

Eric Dietrich: It must have been Thursday. I was just coming out of a kind of a wonky tax hearing and get outside and see a bunch of lobbyists clustered around one of the TV screens that’s streaming from the Senate chamber. And they’re just all glued to that as the other Senate drama was going down. And fortunately, somebody else in the Free Press team was covering it. So I just got to stand there and gawk like a lobbyist. 

Shaylee Ragar: My favorite moment from last week was when we were on the planning call for this episode of The Session, actually, �ԹϺ��� editor Holly Michels was working from home that morning with her very, very cute kid, Murray. Shout out to Murray, you can be on any planning call for the session you want. He was giggling and it just brought so much joy into this kind of dark and gloomy office I have down here. This has been The Session, a look at the policy and politics inside the Montana statehouse. Thanks for your reporting, guys. 

Mara Silvers: Thank you. 

Eric Dietrich: Glad to be here.