The bill received support from 130 of Montana's 150 state legislators, making a veto override a real possibility

Look West: Public lands and energy news from the Center for Western Priorities


** Montana lawmakers will get chance to override veto of conservation funding
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Monday, January 22, 2024
Montana's Upper Missouri River Breaks, Bureau of Land Management ([link removed])

A district court judge has ruled that Montana state legislators must have an opportunity to override the governor's veto of a bill that would direct funding to conservation and other programs. At the end of Montana's state legislative session in May 2023, Governor Greg Gianforte vetoed Senate Bill 442 ([link removed]) , a broadly-supported bipartisan bill which would have directed recreational marijuana tax revenue to a variety of conservation programs, among other purposes. This allocation of revenue reflects the will of Montana voters who passed Initiative 190 ([link removed]) , which legalized recreational marijuana and directed that revenues go to those conservation programs and other purposes, in 2020 with 57 percent of the vote ([link removed]) .

In response, Wild Montana, the Montana Wildlife Federation, and the Montana Association of Counties filed a lawsuit challenging the timing and procedure of the veto and arguing that legislators should have the opportunity to vote on whether to override it. Lewis and Clark County district court judge Mike Meahan agreed ([link removed]) , ruling last week that the framers of Montana's state constitution clearly intended for the governor to have the power to veto a bill and for the legislature to have the opportunity to override that veto, regardless of technicalities of timing.

“The governor has to play by the rules, just like everyone else,” said Noah Marion ([link removed]) , political and state policy director at Wild Montana. “He can’t hijack the legislature’s authority, and the court’s decision makes it clear he has to respect the constitution. Now the legislature can do what it voted for months ago: pass SB 442 and invest $30 million in habitat conservation and public access.”

​Unless Gianforte chooses to appeal the ruling, legislators will soon vote by mail on whether to override the veto of SB442. A successful veto override would require two thirds of both chambers of the legislature. The bill received the support of 130 of Montana's 150 state legislators ([link removed]) during the 2023 session, making a veto override—and the restoration of millions of dollars of conservation funding contained in the bill—a real possibility.


** Quick hits
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Judge: Constitution says lawmakers should get chance to override governor's late veto

Montana Free Press ([link removed]) | Daily Montanan ([link removed]) | Missoula Current ([link removed]) | NBC Montana ([link removed])

BLM management plan in southwest Wyoming pits conservation against extraction

Inside Climate News ([link removed])

Can public lands fix the West's affordable housing crisis?

Salt Lake Tribune ([link removed])

Editorial: Furor over Natural Asset Companies doesn't make sense

Grand Junction Daily Sentinel ([link removed])

New Mexico battles to clamp down on Big Oil

Capital & Main ([link removed])

Study: Prescribed burning can reduce wildfire smoke exposure, health impacts

Boise State Public Radio ([link removed])

Outdoor recreation in Utah continues to soar. Now there's a plan to keep it sustainable

KSL ([link removed])

Signature-gathering begins for new tech billionaire city in California farmland

Los Angeles Times ([link removed]) | New York Times ([link removed])


** Quote of the day
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” The oil and gas industry has basically been in charge of the leasing process for the last hundred years. Almost any parcel of land in the West that has produced oil or will ever produce oil is already under lease.”

—Aaron Weiss, Center for Western Priorities deputy director, Inside Climate News ([link removed])


** Picture This
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@usinterior ([link removed])
The Bisti/De-Na-Zin Wilderness is a rolling landscape of badlands that offers some of the most unusual scenery in New Mexico. Time and natural elements have etched a fantasy world of strange rock formations made of sandstone, shale, mudstone, coal and silt.

Translated from the Navajo language, Bisti (Bis-tie) means “a large area of shale hills.” De-Na-Zin (Deh-nah-zin) takes its name from the Navajo words for “cranes.”

Photo by Jessica Fridrich

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