The problem of high turnover remains the same across Montana where 65% of rural schools in remote settings report difficulty filling vacancies compared with 35% of nonrural schools. This school year, with the coronavirus pandemic making it even harder to bring in teachers from elsewhere, education leaders in the state issued 122 emergency waiv...
Gianforte Signs Public Health Revisions Bill
Governor Greg Gianforte has signed House Bill 121 into law. It revises how local public health officials can respond to the pandemic or a future public health emergency. It requires either county commissioners or city council, whichever entity oversees a local health board, to approve of that board or officer’s regulations put in place. ...
MSU To Give Screenings To Blackfeet Children Through Grant
The U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in a case that will determine who is eligible to receive more than $530 million in federal virus relief funding. $8 million was set aside for Native American tribes more than a year ago that hasn’t been distributed. Universal testing and business closures and historically have had limited f...
State Legislature To Resume After Positive COVID-19 Case
The state Legislature will be back to normal Tuesday with floor sessions and in-person committee meetings with the House gaveling back in at 10 and the senate at one. This comes after fewer than a dozen legislators who were close contacts of a lobbyist COVID-19 case announced they are quarantining following public health protocols. No legislat...
Senator Daines Cosponsors Support For Veterans Suffering From PTSD
Montana reported 57 COVID-19 cases and the COVID-19 death of one person according to a Sunday update to the state case mapping and information website. Active cases in Montana are at 1,014. COVID-19 has killed 1,546 Montanans. Active COVID-19 hospitalizations were at 50 as of the update. In total 4,909 people in Montana are reported to have be...
Glacier National Park Revises Ticket System Announcement
Glacier National Park officials have clarified an upcoming ticketed entry system for Going-to-the-Sun Road this summer. They first proposed visitors validate their seven-day tickets on the first day in an effort to manage congestion and avoid potential closures because of the pandemic and road construction but have since removed the requiremen...
Montana Supreme Court Justices Issued Subpoenas From Legislature
Legislative leadership issued a new round of subpoenas for all seven Montana Supreme Court justices and the court administrator Thursday in an ongoing inquiry into the GOP’s claims of misconduct through the court’s email system investigating the judiciary for polling judges on pending legislation regarding the courts. Democrats hav...
New Survey Shows Majority of Montanans Oppose Colstrip Bill
A bill to spend $2 billion in federal COVID-19 relief money inched forward in the Senate on Thursday passing a preliminary vote in the same form as it emerged from a budget panel last week. House Bill 632 appropriating money coming to the state from the federal American Rescue Plan Act passed second reading 32 to 18. If what’s been nickn...
Legislative Bill Could Potentially Change Daylight Saving Time
Under a bill advancing through the Legislature, if enough other states around Montana moved to year-round daylight-saving time, the Treasure State would follow suit. Lawmakers have weighed doing away with the twice-yearly springing forward and the falling back either through adopting daylight saving time permanently or only keeping Mountain St...
Annual Maintenance To Voter List Now Law In Montana
Thursday evening COVID-19 Panel Chair and Deputized public health official Senator Jason Ellsworth was notified that a member of the government affairs committee has tested positive for COVID-19 and because the Legislature’s contact tracer requires time to do her work the decision was made to postpone today’s legislative floor sessions out of ...