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Committee hears bill to streamline child-protection statutes and add 90-day limit to emergency protective services
Summary
House Bill 77, sponsored by Representative S.J. Howell, would remove a duplicative 'temporary investigative authority' petition, add a 90‑day limit to Emergency Protective Services (EPS), and consolidate code to improve consistency across jurisdictions. CPS stakeholders and legal offices supported the cleanup and said removal practices would not materially change.
Representative S. J. Howell opened the HB 77 hearing by framing the bill as a statutory cleanup designed to promote consistency and transparency in the child-protective-services system. Howell said the measure removes duplicative temporary language and adds a 90-day timeframe to the Emergency Protective Services (EPS) statute, which stakeholders agreed would help make timelines consistent across jurisdictions.
Several members of the interim working group and state officials testified in favor. Senator Dennis Lenz, who chaired the working group, said the provision being removed is rarely used and that prior changes (moving the initial removal/probable-cause hearing to five days) changed how the temporary provisions functioned in practice. Nikki Grossberg, division administrator for Child and Family Services, handed out data on recent improvements and told the committee the department's investigative authority derives from Title 41, Chapter 3 (comments and code references were provided to members with the bill packet).
Legal and court practitioners answered committee questions about whether the repeal would reduce judges' authority to order short-term removals. Kelly Driscoll, chief of the family defense bureau at the Office of Public Defender, and Heather Webster, deputy chief county attorney in Yellowstone County, said judges retain removal and EPS authority; Webster said her office does not often file for temporary investigative authority and that the change would not meaningfully change county practice.
Jennifer Carlson, a member of the interim CPS work group, explained the statutory change in procedural context: because the initial EPS probable-cause hearing now happens at five days, leaving temporary investigative authority tied to the 20-day show-cause hearing was inconsistent; the bill moves the law toward the expedited timetable used in practice.
Committee members asked specific questions about language struck on page 20 and about Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) burden-of-proof protections; sponsor Howell said relevant ICWA burdens remain elsewhere in statute and are not removed by this bill. The hearing closed with sponsor and supporters urging the committee to pass a cleaner, more consistent statutory framework for families and practitioners.
Ending: The committee closed the HB 77 hearing with no vote; executive action was scheduled for a later meeting.
