Montana Senator Greg Hertz filed a lawsuit today regarding SB 542, including comments from the three plaintiffs. The plaintiffs allege constitutional violations due to Representative Jones’s actions regarding SB 542 and rate restructuring. The plaintiffs, including Greg, Keith, and Tom, encourage people to reach out to them or their attorney, Matthew Monforton, with questions.
Sen. Hertz: “I’ve heard from many of my constituents who are suffering from the tax shift these bills created. Lifelong Montanans are struggling to figure out how they’re going to afford to pay their massively increased property taxes, and many will likely have to resort to selling their homes and cabins that have been in their families for generations.”
“When Montanans testified in good faith on a simple valuation freeze, Rep. Jones had already decided to gut SB 542 and replace every word with complex rate restructuring copied from his own failing bill. Internal messages prove it.”
“When asked about bundling $90 million in cash rebates to buy votes, Jones admitted on the record: ‘sometimes, that’s the cost of doing business up here.’ That’s a confession to the exact constitutional violation Montana’s framers prohibited in 1889.”
“I’ve been critical when Montana courts overstep their constitutional boundaries. The Legislature must abide by the same standard. The courts exist to enforce constitutional limits when the legislative process itself has been corrupted.”
Sen. McGillvray: “Montanans pride ourselves that our Legislature debates each policy idea on its own merits, with genuine public participation. We’re not Washington, D.C., where massive bills get cobbled together behind closed doors and shoved down legislators’ throats as ‘must pass’ legislation.
“Senate Bill 542 was Washington DC-style corruption. Representative Jones’s internal messages prove he planned the whole scheme ten days before the hearing. He treated our Constitution as a technical obstacle, not a binding constraint.”
“Senator Hertz and I saw this coming. We read the bills—actually read them, not just the talking points. We warned our colleagues on the floor that SB 542 violated Article V, Section 11. We voted to send it to the conference committee to fix the constitutional violations. The conference committee ignored the constitutional issues and passed it out with no changes – a sham hearing”
Keith Regier: “Proponents of the tax shift legislation claim they were standing up for Montanans by only sticking wealthy out-of-staters with higher taxes. Instead, they’ve accelerated the land grab by significantly raising taxes on multigenerational properties that will force Montanans to sell their family legacy property to someone with the financial means to pay the tax bill.”
“The chairs of both taxation committees—Senator Hertz and Representative Fielder—warned during floor debates that SB 542 violates the Constitution. The courts must step in, otherwise, constitutional limits mean nothing.”
“If legislators follow a constitutional process and debate their ideas on the merits of the policy instead of the personalities involved, I’m confident they will produce a better result that is grounded in consensus and compromise instead of threats, backroom deals, and power plays.”
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