Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Statutory Cleanup topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Committee supports technical cleanup in SB34 to align K–12 budget calculations
Summary
Senate Bill 34 was presented as a code‑cleanup to remove obsolete tuition and calculation language and to align budget limit calculations with current statute. OPI described the change as correcting artifacts from older funding formulas (references to 20‑9‑308).
Senator Daniel Emmerich opened consideration of Senate Bill 34, describing it as an act to revise education code by removing obsolete language about tuition calculations and clarifying budget limit calculations for K–12 districts. The sponsor framed SB34 as technical cleanup, not policy change.
Doug Reisig of the Coalition of Advocates for Montana’s Public Schools supported the bill, telling the committee SB34 "promotes transparency, efficiency, and fairness" by clarifying budget calculations and separating elementary and high‑school funding calculations where appropriate.
Paul Taylor of the Office of Public Instruction (OPI) appeared as an informational witness and explained the practical rationale: while reviewing statutes staff identified anomalies from older foundation payment era formulas and determined code cleanup was needed to align current statute—citing calculations described at 20‑9‑308. OPI characterized the bill as corrective rather than substantive.
Committee members had no substantive opposition on the record and the sponsor closed by urging passage as a useful technical fix. The hearing concluded with no committee vote recorded in the transcript.
