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Committee reopens, amends Brownfields bill to add transfer; amendment passes, fuller fiscal review requested
Summary
The House Natural Resources Committee took House Bill 808 off the table, adopted Amendment 1.1 to transfer general-fund dollars into the brownfields fund and asked for an additional fiscal note before further action. DEQ said federal Brownfields funding has averaged roughly $700,000 a year.
The House Natural Resources Committee reopened House Bill 808 and approved an amendment intended to seed a Montana brownfields cleanup fund while requesting further fiscal information before advancing the bill.
Vice Chair moved that the committee reconsider the earlier tabling of House Bill 808, and the motion passed by voice vote, bringing the Montana Brownfields Revitalization Act back before the committee. Staff summarized the bill as creating or expanding a brownfields program to enable cleanup of petroleum and other hazardous sites and noted the bill includes a statutory appropriation and an existing fund.
Jason, staff to the committee, described Amendment 1.1, which would transfer specified amounts from the general fund into the brownfields fund. Representative Henkel and others pressed for a fiscal note; Henkel asked why the amendment would add $1,000,000 to the biennium if the fiscal note for the original bill showed no impact. Jason said the original fiscal note reflected the bill before the transfer was added.
Amy Steinmetz, Waste Management and Remediation Division Administrator at the Montana Department of Environmental Quality, told the committee that "we receive about $700,000 every year from the federal government for our brownfields program." She said the program ran at a loss of $233,000 in fiscal year 2024 and that the amendment is intended to provide money so the statutory appropriation can be used to implement the program.
Committee members debated whether to reduce the transfer amount, and the chair suggested a conceptual amendment could amend the dollar figure if members wanted a lower number. After discussion and announcements of proxies, the committee recorded 11 ayes and 3 nays on Amendment 1.1; the amendment passed. A subsequent substitute motion to table was rescinded.
Because the amendment added a transfer to the bill, members requested another fiscal note reflecting the amendment’s changes. The chair asked staff to return the bill packet with that fiscal note; the bill was placed back in the committee packet pending further review and additional senator attendance.
Next steps: the committee requested an updated fiscal analysis; no final committee action on the bill’s ultimate passage was recorded at the hearing.
