Schweitzer issued his official call for the special session Monday afternoon. It came after the Legislature adjourned its regular session April 27 after failing to approve a state budget, despite a $1 billion surplus.
Nine bill draft requests had been received by Tuesday afternoon, with most coming on behalf of Schweitzer and a few by other legislators.
Asked if the Legislative Services Division would be ready for the session, Executive Director Susan Byorth Fox said, “We’re trying to be, and we’re earnestly working toward it.”
She said the division will try to get the bills pre-introduced Wednesday so lawmakers can at least have some hearings on them as soon as the session begins Thursday.
Although Schweitzer has said the special session can be concluded in three days, Fox said the Legislative Services Division is preparing a “feed bill” to appropriate $305,786 to cover the costs of the session and to pay legislators a salary for six days and per diem expenses for eight days.
State law requires that lawmakers be paid for the day before the session begins, she said. Legislators are paid a salary for each day they work, but not on Sundays, which they take off. They draw per diem expenses every day they are in Helena during a session, regardless of whether they work, to cover the costs of housing and meals.
If not all of the money appropriated in the feed bill is spent, it goes back into the state treasury.
The Montana YMCA Youth Legislature, scheduled for early next week in the House and Senate chambers, has been moved out of the Capitol to other space because of the session, Fox said. Instead, the youths will use the Montana Supreme Court chambers and space at Carroll College to conduct their business.
Meanwhile, Legislative Fiscal Analyst Clayton Schenck said the Legislative Fiscal Division staff will have Schweitzer’s proposed budget done before the session meets. However, division staff members were awaiting the specific budget recommendations, by agency program, from the governor’s budget office.
“It will be ready for pre-introduction today or tomorrow,” Schenck said. “We will have to do as much analysis and summarization as we can, but we can’t do it till we have the numbers. I just want to have as much information as we can.”
Schenck said the Legislative Fiscal Division won’t be able to put together a narrative to explain the various budget proposals as it does during the regular session.
“We’ll probably provide a comparison with where the budget bills stood at the end of the session with what the governor’s bill is,” he said.
In a memo to legislative leaders Tuesday afternoon, Schenck wrote: “With just over two days’ notice of a special session and getting the governor’s budget proposal just over a day before the start of a special session, LFD staff will be scrambling just to get just a cursory summary and analysis to legislators of the executive budget proposal. That will be our top priority.”
The Fiscal Division staff also is working to find the starting point for the financial status sheet it publishes to keep lawmakers informed on how much money has been spent and how much revenue the state expects to collect.
Schenck said it’s a moving target because Schweitzer has signed and vetoed a number of money-related bills from the regular 90-day session, with a number more arriving on the governor’s desk every day for action.
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