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Study commission to ask Secretary of State whether proposed fire ballot structure is allowable

Butte-Silver Bow Study Commission · May 12, 2026
AI-Generated Content: All content on this page was generated by AI to highlight key points from the meeting. For complete details and context, we recommend watching the full video. so we can fix them.

Summary

The Butte-Silver Bow Study Commission voted unanimously May 11 to submit proposed ballot language on fire services to the Montana Secretary of State for legal review after county counsel said state law constrains how volunteer departments can be removed from a charter.

The Butte-Silver Bow Study Commission voted unanimously May 11 to send its draft ballot language on fire services to the Montana Secretary of State for review, after the county attorney warned that state law limits how volunteer fire departments can be removed from a charter.

County attorney Matt Enruth told commissioners that a statute governing form-of-government ballot questions requires a primary adoption-or-retain question and that, under the firefighters section, "we cannot have option 1 and option 2. We have to have a for adoption option or for retaining the existing form option," a point he said Dan Clark of the MSU Law Center confirmed during a call earlier that day.

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