“She said, ‘My gosh, what have you done? We’re going to take that away from you,’ ” he recalled.
So Kim Sinrud, a newly minted Montana State University accounting graduate who had taken a job as a contract auditor for the Department of Defense in Los Angeles, took immediate charge of the family finances.
Today, 20 years later, Sinrud serves as chairman of the powerful House Appropriations Committee. The panel has recommended that Montana spend $7.5 billion in total funds to run state government the next two years.
He is quick to add he has long since learned how to handle money, both personally and for his Bozeman-area architectural design business. He told how he and his wife lived frugally in Los Angeles, setting aside just $5 a week for entertainment.
“I learned to work within the parameters of budgets and income,” he said. “If you don’t have the money, you can’t spend it.”
Sinrud is at the center of the political maelstrom at the Legislature over setting Montana’s budget for the next two years. He is in a bitter fight with Democrats over the Republicans’ decision to break the traditional single state budget bill into eight measures.
The flak doesn’t bother Sinrud.
“I’ve been described as a bully and everything else,” he said recently. “If we don’t try something new, we’re never going to get any other results.”
His goal is to reduce the increases in state spending and return more of the projected $1 billion surplus to taxpayers.
“You’re only here for a time,” Sinrud said. “If you can’t vote your conscience and make a change, what are you going to accomplish? If people don’t like what you’re doing, and you believe what you’re doing is right, then let your critics run against you. You have to live with yourself.”
The way Sinrud sees it, he is doing exactly what he promised.
“I ran on a ticket of pro-life, property rights, less taxes, being fiscally astute and responsible, and if I can’t get elected on those fundamental principles, that’s OK,” he said.
House Speaker Scott Sales, R-Bozeman, said Sinrud, an old friend who goes to the same church, didn’t seek out the Appropriations chairmanship.
“He has that tenacity where he wants to know and he wants to know why, and that’s why I picked him,” Sales said. “I picked him because he has a keen zeal for wanting to learn the process.”
House Minority Leader John Parker, D-Great Falls, said he opposes what Sinrud and other Republicans have done to the budget process.
“However, I’ve found him to be a staunch supporter of protecting the public from sex offenders,” said Parker, a prosecutor.
Rep. Jon Sesso, D-Butte, who sits on the Appropriations Committee, called Sinrud “a hard-working legislator,” but added, “I wish he was a little bit more open-minded to all points of view.”
Sinrud is a Washington state native whose family moved to the Bitterroot Valley when he was 2 years old. After graduating from Hamilton High School, he enrolled at MSU where he took architecture for five quarters, dropping out when he came down with mononucleosis.
In Los Angeles, Sinrud worked nights monitoring machines for an alarm company. He later worked for an architectural firm and picked up his Computer Automated Design and Drafting credentials at a community college there.
After four years in California, the Sinruds were ready to return to Montana and wanted to become active in politics. He worked for some area architectural firms before opening a business in 2002 to do architectural design and land planning.
“It’s difficult to run a business and be in the Legislature,” Sinrud said, estimating he will lose $70,000 over the session’s four months. “Only by the grace of God do I have good clients and I am able to make it.”
While working full time, Sinrud went back to MSU and completed his bachelor’s degree in 1998, but in political science, not architecture.
One of his political science professors was Rep. Franke Wilmer, a freshman Democratic legislator from Bozeman.
“He was always a very good student - very attentive and very engaged,” Wilmer said. “I enjoyed having him in class. He was a hard worker, articulate and in some ways a kind of naturally gifted speaker.”
As a legislative colleague, however, Wilmer criticized what Sinrud and other Republicans have done to the budgeting process.
“It’s not about John,” she said. “It’s about a political move he played a leadership role in.”
Sinrud was picked to fill a vacant legislative seat in 2002, winning the race for it later that year and twice since.
Sinrud doesn’t see himself seeking higher office, but wants to make a difference as a legislator. That’s why he and others have taken on the budget fight.
“If most Montanans came up here and looked at the (former) budgeting process, they’d be amazed at how we’ve made it,” he said. “They would see why there’s a continual increase in government spending. We never look at any existing programs. You only evaluate the new ones.”
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