Montana's 61st Legislature convenes at noon Monday. During its 90 days of regular session, you can expect issues like hunting access, wildlife management and the FWP commission's powers on things like licensing to be discussed and voted on in a number of bills.
But so far, legislators are keeping many of their bills - at least, their fish and wildlife bills - a secret from the public. Some legislators have been keeping them a secret for a long, long time.
How do they do it? They do it by massaging the legislative process just a bit. They request a bill draft. The draft gets an extremely vague, short title on the bills portion of the Legislature's Web site. And then, the legislator puts the bill on hold.
For example, Sen. Keith Bales made a draft request in December 2007 - a year ago - that got assigned the number of LC0027. It has the vague title of "Generally revise fish and game laws." Then, in April, he put the bill draft on hold.
If it's on hold, you can't see the text of the bill draft over the Internet. You can't tell what it's about from its generic title. You certainly can't get behind it or get against it. And you never know when it's going to see the light of public scrutiny. Political insiders may know what the bill is about. The lobbyists may know what the bill is about. But the general public doesn't have a clue.
