{"id":547,"date":"2007-02-23T14:47:14","date_gmt":"2007-02-23T18:47:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/shlep\/2007\/02\/23\/montana-legislative-update\/"},"modified":"2007-02-26T12:44:07","modified_gmt":"2007-02-26T16:44:07","slug":"montana-legislative-update","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/2007\/02\/23\/montana-legislative-update\/","title":{"rendered":"Montana Legislative Update"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Well folks, it has been a bumpy ride but we&#8217;re still on track. <a title=\"Access to Civil Justice Act\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/data.opi.mt.gov\/bills\/2007\/billhtml\/HB0060.htm\">House Bill 60<\/a>, which would establish a statewide self-help\/<em>pro se<\/em> program, was heard by the House Judiciary Committee on the 7th of February (more back-story on the bill in <a title=\"HB 60 + MT Chief Justice\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/shlep\/2007\/01\/19\/montanas-chief-justice-speaks-who-listens\/\">this previous post<\/a>). The hearing went fairly well, with over 20 individuals from organizations ranging from the AARP to the Montana Trial Lawyer&#8217;s Association to God&#8217;s Love Homeless Shelter testifying as proponents for the bill. No opponents were present and after short deliberation the Committee passed the bill during executive action on a vote of 10-7 (3 Republicans and all 7 Democrats voted in favor).<\/p>\n<p>Questions raised by the Committee dealt mostly with concerns about the increase in frivolous litigation, but the proponents rebutted with provisions in the bill that call for education of alternative dispute resolutions. A Vice Chair of the Committee, Democractic Representative Dave Gallik, proposed an amendment to add an appropriations clause to fund an alternative dispute resolution component of the program. The bill then moved as amended to the House Floor, where it was seemingly due for the formality vote to re-refer the Bill to the House Approriations Committee. However, in the highly partisan environment following the <a title=\"House Bill 2 Dead\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/helenair.com\/articles\/2007\/02\/23\/legislative\/top_copy\/76_01.txt\">death of the Governor&#8217;s Budget Bill<\/a> (1 page Newspaper article), the Bill temporarily died on a 50-50 vote (majority is required to re-hear a bill). A little wheeling and dealing later, the Bill was finally referred to the Appropriations Committee, albeit with a significantly reduced Fiscal Note.<\/p>\n<p>House Appropriations will hear the Bill this coming Monday (February 26th). A few District Court and Courts of Limited Jurisdiction Judges are slated to testify as proponents for the bill, to reassure the committee that the increase in litigants is not a signifcant concern to the stakeholders. What obstacles have state-appropriated funds for <em>pro se<\/em> litigants faced in your area? How have the sponsors dealt with them? Hopefully we will see a positive end here in Montana, I will have more updates as soon as they are available.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Well folks, it has been a bumpy ride but we&#8217;re still on track. House Bill 60, which would establish a statewide self-help\/pro se program, was heard by the House Judiciary Committee on the 7th of February (more back-story on the bill in this previous post). The hearing went fairly well, with over 20 individuals from [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":723,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[991],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-items"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/723"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=547"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}