by Rep. David Bedey, HD 86, Hamilton
Is Montana’s state budget on fire? Americans for Prosperity (AFP), a libertarian special interest group, would have you think so. So AFP is sending out postcards and online ads claiming that I and other Republicans who worked with Governor Gianforte to produce a balanced budget are “pouring gasoline on the fire.” The problem is that the “accountability information” AFP is peddling is false.
Did the state budget “explode” by $16.5 billion? NO! That number is the two-year appropriation in the General Appropriations Act (HB 2). It is not how much the budget increased. The actual increase in the total state budget was $142 million over two years—a tiny fraction of the amount claimed by AFP—according to the official budget comparison as calculated per state law (17-7-151, MCA) and validated by analysts in the legislature’s nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Division.
Was there a 13.5% increase in state spending? NO! AFP’s number comes from considering only part of the state budget. The total state budget grew by only 0.7%, according to the official budget comparison cited above.
Did the budget grow at “2x the rate of inflation and 7x the pace of population growth”? NO! Budget growth was 0.7%—obviously much less than what AFP claims.
Is Montana running “massive deficits”? NO! The state constitution requires a balanced budget, and the budget we passed is balanced. Montana does not engage in deficit spending. And Montana is the only bond debt-free state in the nation because of legislative actions taken over the past two sessions.
Was this the “biggest budget in Montana’s history”? Yes. But that could be said about any year in at least the recent past (I looked back 10 years). Why is that? A big reason is that inflation drives up the cost of providing the services that most Montanans expect, e.g., law enforcement, a corrections system, mental health and drug treatment, an education system, and management of our public lands, to name only a few. Good government is about providing those services as cost effectively as possible. Governor Gianforte and his allies in the legislature have been doing just that.
Americans for Prosperity might be forgiven if they simply misunderstood a thing or two about state finance. But AFP got so much wrong that one can only conclude that it willfully distorted the truth in order to mislead Montana citizens. Where I come from that’s called lying.