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As the dust settles after the 67th Montana Legislature, one thing is for certain: the debate over nonresident hunting licenses and the role of outfitting is far from over. Montanaâs system for allocating nonresident big game hunting licenses needed major changes, outfitters and advocates contended as the session got underway. An uptick in applications for the lottery system created a great deal of uncertainty for their businesses when it came to how many clients will draw licenses in a given year, they said. Suggested changes drew the ire of a number of hunter advocacy groups. Proposals like guaranteed licenses for outfitted hunters would disadvantage do-it-yourself nonresident hunters, but more importantly privatize a public resource for those that could afford to pay, they argued. ....
/ A larger slice of tax revenue from Montana s forthcoming recreational marijuana industry will fund outdoors conservation, under a regulatory proposal endorsed by a bipartisan group of Senate lawmakers Friday. The Senate veered from standard procedure to advance the bill to the House to get it over the finish line in the legislative session’s final days. The 162-page bill lays out how the state will regulate adult-use cannabis, including how shops get licensed, what products they can sell and where the sales tax revenue will go. “This is a great start to having a controlled and responsible industry from the get go here in Montana. And the key word I want to really stress this the key word is responsibility,” said Republican Sen. Jason Small of Busby. ....
/ After more than a week of debate, a single framework to regulate Montana’s forthcoming recreational marijuana program is headed to the full Senate for consideration. It passed another hurdle Wednesday evening after being reshaped by a special legislative committee. The Senate panel whittled three ideas passed by the House into one package to regulate recreational marijuana for adults 21 and older. “Looking at the different bills that they had, trying to combine everything together into one workable product, I think for Montanans we’ve done an incredible job,” said Hamilton Republican Sen. Jason Ellsworth, the committee chair. The policy moving to Senate debate includes a 20% tax on sales of recreational marijuana with the option for counties to vote for their own additional tax. The bill also includes a provision that will allow for recreational marijuana sales only in counties that voted to approve legalized adult-use of cannabis last November. Counties ....
After nearly two weeks of work, a legislative committee focused on recreational marijuana implementation forwarded a single bill Wednesday to the Senate, up against the looming end of the session. Three distinct bills went into the committee April 9. By Wednesday, only House Bill 701, by far the largest and most comprehensive, remained. Much of the committee s work revolved around amending the bill, following public comment that included a presentation by Colorado law enforcement and extensive assistance from legislative staff. It s carried by Rep. Mike Hopkins, R-Missoula. Lawmakers were hustling to get the bill out of the Senate by Friday so the Senate and House can tussle over the final version in a conference committee before the end of next week, when legislators hope to terminate the 2021 session. ....