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Right-to-work legislation fails. "Culture war" bills are still alive. And the big budget fights loom as the Legislature marks its midpoint.
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Capitol Talk with Sally Mauk, Holly Michels and Rob Saldin.
Sally Mauk Holly, one of the bills that did not make the deadline be transmitted to the other chamber was a so-called right to work bill, strongly and effectively opposed by Democrats and unions and a lot of Republicans who voted no.
Holly Michels Yeah, this was a pretty interesting debate we heard in the House on Tuesday. It was carried by a representative, Caleb Hinkle, who's a Republican from Belgrade. And the bill would have prohibited the requirement of belonging to a union as a condition of employment, and also stopped private-sector unions from requiring nonmembers who are covered by the bargaining agreements they negotiate to pay union dues. This bill, it was interesting watching in committee and only cleared it because enough Republicans there — and it wasn't all Republicans on the committee even — said, well, they maybe didn't agree with the proposal or they weren't quite sure they wanted the debate on the full House floor, so we did end up there and there was a lot of opposition to the bill in committee. And then even more when the full House heard the bill.