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House approves account to fund Missing Indigenous Persons Task Force after heated floor debate
Summary
The Montana House recommended that House Bill 83 create a state special revenue account to fund the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons Task Force; debate on an amendment to bar use of state funds for the account drew strongly divided floor debate but the bill passed by voice vote and was reported as passed 100-0 on second reading.
Representative Jonathan Running Wolf, sponsor of House Bill 83, successfully pressed the House Committee of the Whole to recommend that the bill do pass. The bill would create a Missing Indigenous Persons Task Force state special revenue account to allow the task force to accept and generate funds to support equipment, operational costs and its mission, with an appropriation and an effective and termination date specified in the bill.
The bill’s sponsor said the task force was created to break down jurisdictional barriers that hinder investigations on Montana’s eight reservations and stressed the importance of funding to purchase equipment and maintain operations. “When an indigenous person goes missing on a reservation, the first 24 hours are the most crucial,” Representative Running Wolf said. He cited clearance-rate figures presented in committee and described the account as enabling the task force to carry out its mission.
Representative Nick Schubert offered an amendment (posted as HB0083.002.001) that would have prohibited state funds from being transferred into the new account and instead limited the account to private contributions; Schubert framed the amendment as preventing taxpayer dollars from being used for a program he said would “discriminate by omission.” Schubert urged colleagues to support the amendment as a protection for nonindigenous Montanans.
Multiple members of the House strongly opposed Schubert’s amendment. Representative Running Wolf said the task force’s purpose is collaborative and targeted to address disproportionately high rates of missing indigenous people. He described the bill as “not a discrimination of one side or another” and emphasized the task force’s role in coordinating tribal, state and federal partners. Representative Jeff Overstreet said he would donate private funds and urged members to “show the sponsor and more importantly, the native population of this state, our respect by voting to appropriate $1.”
After floor debate the motion that House Bill 83 do pass was taken and the clerk reported the vote: 100 representatives voted aye and 0 no. The committee recommendation was adopted and House Bill 83 passed second reading.
The bill references the task force’s prior work and mirrors statutory language used in House Bill 18 (2023) to permit receipt and use of funds from lawful sources, and to make the account subject to audit. The floor record does not specify additional implementing administrative rules or which agency will hold fiscal oversight beyond the statutory audit requirement noted in the bill text.
The House debate combined policy arguments about targeting resources to an identified problem with broader political claims from both supporters and opponents. The bill will proceed to later House stages and, if passed by both chambers and signed, would create the account and allow the task force to accept and spend funds as prescribed in the law.
