Two fire bills signed by Governor, two others see vetoes

Gov. Greg Gianforte made decisions on four firefighting laws this week, signing two bills and vetoing two others.

The two bills Gianforte signed — House Bills 84 and 421 — dealt with wildland firefighting. The two he vetoed, House Bill 511 and House Bill 547, would have added $5 million in funding for local fire departments and changed a law preventing coordinated fire response in consolidated governments.

HB 84, called the Prescribed Fire Manager Certification and Liability Act, creates a certification program and outlines who is liable if a prescribed fire gets out of control. In 2022, a prescribed fire in New Mexico did, becoming the state’s largest in history.

The program will including training for fire managers and requires that their certification standards must match other states and organizations. A certified prescribed fire manager can only held liable for a wildfire getting out of control if their actions “constituted negligence or a higher degree of fault.”

Fire scientists and proponents of HB 84 — brought by Rep. Steve Gist, R-Cascade — have pointed to prescribed fires as an important forestry management tool.

“I know it seems counterintuitive to fight fire with more fire, but the science is clear,” said Mike Schaedel, representing The Nature Conservancy and member of the state’s prescribed fire council. “It’s the best tool we have. We know what wildfires can do without prescribed fire. They damage our forests and all those values we hold dear. This bill protects our forests. It enables private landowners to manage their lands in a safe and effective way that keeps people working in the woods.”

Land management practices in the United States have led to some forests being overgrown and at risk for more intense wildfires, said proponents of the bill.

“To address the current forest health and wildland fire crisis, we need to get on this,” Gist said during a Senate hearing on his bill. “We need to do prescribed fire. We need to do fuel mitigation followed up with prescribed fire. Prescribed fire is one tool of doing fuels reduction. It’s essential.” 

HB 421, also sponsored by Gist, increased fire protection fees for land classified as forest from $50 to $58.70 for each landowner in a wildland fire protection district. For landowners with more than 20 acres of land, there’s an additional fee per acre which increased from $0.30 to $0.49.

Two vetoes

The two vetoed bills were brought by Anaconda Democrat Rep. Scott DeMarois, who is a career firefighter.

HB 511 would have taken $5 million from the general fund and directed it to a special revenue account for dispersion to local governments via grants. The money would have gone to training facilities.

“Training with the right equipment gives us critical knowledge of fire behavior and response techniques, along with that 3 a.m. muscle memory that saves lives,” DeMarois said in a press release. “With this veto, Governor Gianforte has shown us that he doesn’t really stand with first responders, and doesn’t really care about protecting firefighters or the communities that we put their lives on the line to defend.”

Gianforte’s veto letter pointed to the state needing a balanced budget and said instead of grants, the state should look at creating a low-interest loan program.

“The budget and other bills with hefty price tags that the Legislature passed, however, are not fiscally responsible,” the veto letter reads. “Therefore, I will keenly review the budget and spending bills the Legislature passed, making some difficult decisions to protect taxpayers and their hard-earned resources.”

The Butte-Silver Bow Fire Department also saw a setback from the eveto on HB 547. Due to a decision made in the 1970s to create a consolidated city-county government — only used by Butte and Anaconda — the Butte-Silver Bow Fire Department hasn’t been able to coordinate as well with its outlying volunteer fire departments.

The bill would have struck a clause and replaced it with language that said, “The fire department of the municipality must have a director of fire service or a fire chief, who shall manage and control the department in the manner prescribed by the ordinances of the municipality.”

Proponents said that would fix the problem. Butte-Silver Bow officials and firefighters lined up in support of the bill.

“We have great volunteers that work in Butte-Silver Bow, and this is not to take anything away from them,” J.P. Gallagher, Butte-Silver Bow chief executive said during a Senate hearing on the bill. “The director of Fire Services works directly for me and within the powers that are directed to the director of fire services, he has the ability to coordinate those services, but the unintended consequences of 1979 kind of stripped him of that ability to coordinate services.”

Members of rural fire associations across the state spoke against the bill during House and Senate hearings. Opponents included Jerry Brothers, who is the vice president of both the Montana State Volunteer Fire Association and of the National Volunteer Firefighters Association.

“We did not have a voice in the system at all,” Brothers said during the bill’s Senate hearing.

DeMarois said during his Senate testimony the change would only impact the state’s two consolidated city-county governments, but Gianforte, a Republican, disagreed in his veto letter.

“House Bill 547 raises more questions than it answers, and it introduces instability into the operations of rural fire districts, the backbone of Montana’s emergency network,” the veto letter reads. “Ultimately, House Bill 547 erodes the reliability and strength of rural fire protection throughout our state, while appearing to provide a one-sided resolution to a dispute within one consolidated government.”