Discussing Effective Lawmaking with Montana Representative Steve Fitzpatrick

Alan Wiseman (00:00:09.000)

Hello, my name is Alan Wiseman, and I’m the Associate Provost of Strategic Projects and Professor of Political Science at Vanderbilt University, and along with Craig Volden at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy at the University of Virginia, I’m also the co-director of the Center for Effective Lawmaking. In today’s version of our Conversations with Effective Lawmakers video series, we are delighted to welcome Mr. Steve Fitzpatrick, who has served in the Montana State Legislature since 2011, when he began his first of three terms in the Montana State House of Representatives, representing House District 20 from 2011 to 2017. He was then elected to the Montana State Senate, where he served four terms representing Senate District 10 from 2017 to 2025, and he was most recently elected back to the Montana State House of Representatives in 2024, where he currently represents House District 24, which includes the City of Great Falls. Representative Fitzpatrick has held numerous leadership roles in the legislature during his time in the House and the Senate, including serving as a Senate Majority Party Leader from 2023 to 2025, and he’s currently the House Majority Leader. Pardon me. Now, prior to being elected to the U.S. state legislature, Representative Fitzpatrick earned his bachelor’s degree in biological sciences with highest honors from Montana State University, as well as his law degree from Arizona State University. When he’s not serving in the Montana State Legislature, Representative Fitzpatrick is an attorney with a prominent law firm where he specializes in legal matters pertaining to commercial litigation, construction law, insurance coverage, and insurance defense. Now, one of the main reasons why Representative Fitzpatrick found his way to the attention of the Center for Effective Lawmaking is beginning with his earliest days in the legislature, in fact, upon being first elected to the Montana State House of Representatives for the 2011 to 2012 session, Representative Fitzpatrick was immediately successful in moving his proposed bills through the legislative process and into law. This pattern of legislative success from his freshman term continued on for subsequent terms in the House, as well as the subsequent terms in the Senate, so much so that across his eight terms in the Senate, he was consistently ranked as being above expectations in lawmaking effectiveness, according to our data at the Center for Effective Lawmaking. In fact, during 3 of his 4 terms in the Montana State Senate, he was one of the top two most effective lawmakers in the Senate, including in the 2019-2020 session, as well as the 20-22, pardon me, 2021-22 sessions, when he was the most effective lawmaker in the Montana State Senate. And in thinking about our analysis at the Center for Effective Lawmaking, it’s interesting to know that it comports with what other observers have stated about now-Representative Fitzpatrick’s prowess as a legislator in the Montana State House and Senate. In fact, the Montana Chamber of Commerce recognized him in 2021 and 2023 as being the most valuable policymaker of those legislative sessions. So, Representative Fitzpatrick, thank you so much for joining us for a Center for Effective Lawmaking interview. We really appreciate your time here.

Steve Fitzpatrick (00:03:17.000)

Good, well, thank you, it’s great to be here.

Alan Wiseman (00:03:19.000)

Great. So as I alluded to a little bit earlier, what we’re going to be doing is asking you a series of fairly general questions, that’ll highlight certain aspects of your career or your approach to the legislative process or lawmaking more generally. And we’d really appreciate, you know, what your reactions are, as well as providing us with any examples that might come to mind that could help to really illustrate your perspectives on these topics.

Steve Fitzpatrick (00:03:40.000)

Great, sounds good.

Alan Wiseman (00:03:42.000)

Good. Okay, so let’s rewind the clock a little bit. We’d really like to take a step back to get a sense about how your background, and my… your background, I mean, from before you actually entered legislative office, has really shaped your approach to lawmaking. So, more specifically, how did growing up in Helena, clerking for a judge in a district court in Montana, practicing law for several years thereafter, how did that influence your decision to ultimately run for a seat in the Montana State House? And really, how did it also affect what you were hoping to accomplish upon being elected?

Steve Fitzpatrick (00:04:13.000)

Yeah, that’s a great question, and I probably have a little bit different background than most people. So, I grew up in Helena, which was the state capital, and my dad worked as a lobbyist, so he was up at the Capitol, quite frequently, there’d be times where he would take me up, you know, in elementary school, middle school, and he’d go work, and I’d get to sit in the Senate chamber and watch the floor debate. So, I always loved it. I think the part I liked the most, though, was when he would come home at night, he would, tell the war stories of, you know, what happened during the day, and the strategic moves, and all the things he had to do to, you know, move bills or kill bills. So, I grew up around it. And I think the year that really kind of cemented my desire to run for office was the ’05 session. I was-I had graduated from law school at that time, and I was working as a law clerk, and my wife had decided to go back to college, to get another degree, so she was down in Bozeman, and I would go over, and eat dinner with my parents, and that year, he was, had a fairly contentious bill. He was working for a utility, and they were trying to move, the governor, Governor Schweitzer, was trying to move a renewable portfolio standards of the bill, and he was lobbying hard, so, got to hear the war stories, and I thought, you know, this is… this… this is fascinating. I mean, the work that goes on at this place is amazing. As I, you know, got out of-as I left the clerkship and moved up to Great Falls, I think one of the neat things about lawyer-about being a lawyer is you get to see you know, the different things that, happen in people’s lives. You kind of get to see, you know, the jobs, the disputes that arise, and I think that really kind of formed a basis for my desire. And obviously, when I ran, it was in the 2010 session, and, you know, we were in a recession that time, and I thought I would like to, at this point, step up and contribute. So, it kind of is my background and how I decided I wanted to run for the legislature.

Craig Volden (00:06:17.000)

Thanks for all that, background and insight, and thanks for joining us. Let me add my thanks to Alan’s, along those lines. So then, you arrive, you have some experience and a lot of background and some war stories to draw upon, but, in Montana, do they have kind of a new member orientation or new member session to get everybody up to speed, or, let me put that in a different way, like, what do you know now that you wish you had known when you first arrived?

Steve Fitzpatrick (00:06:47.000)

Yeah, that’s a good question. So, we-we start off, we have kind of a new-legislator orientation. It happens about a week after election, and that’s where we also have our caucus, so that’s where you elect the leadership, and then, legislative staff puts on orientation, and it’s kind of changed over time. I mean, some of it is just the mechanics. You know, signing up for salary, payroll, insurance. But then they go into the different-the different aspects of being a legislator. So there’s usually a mock floor session, there’s discussion about committee work, kind of a basic discussion of the motions you make, we have, traditionally at the beginning of the session, so we’ll have the kind of that new orientation, then there’s usually another orientation for committee chairs. And then the first week is, again, more orientation things. We have, like, a kind of a basic law school for legislators. So, there is some stuff, but, I mean, honestly, I think the best way to learn the legislative process is really by doing. I think when I tell people that come into the legislature, I tell them kind of three things. The first thing is you want to jump in and you want to participate, and what I mean by that is carry bills, you know, people will come up to you with an idea for a bill, get a bill and carry it, because it-it-that’s how you learn. You learn to get up in front of the committee, present the bill, you learn how to debate it, how to answer questions, how to think on your feet. And it’s more than that, it’s more than just carrying bills. When bills come over from the opposite chamber, I always tell people, be the floor carrier, carry as many as you can. That’s how I think I got good, was I sat on the tax committee initially, and there were all kinds of bills rolling through, and nobody wanted to carry them on the floor, Senate bills, and I got up and I carried them, and I think that made me good. I think the other thing you need to do is you need to-make sure that you’re a good member of a committee. You need to-when you’re in the committee, because that’s where the bulk of your time is, you’re reading the bills, you’re listening to the testimony, you’re asking thoughtful questions, you’re contributing to the discussion. I think that’s-that’s very important. And I think the last thing, too, and I think this gets forgotten, is that this is ultimately a relationship business, so you need to meet people. You need to go to the events outside the building. You know, if there’s a reception, go to the reception. If there’s lunch down in the Rotunda, go down and eat in the Rotunda and talk to people. Talk to more people than just your buddies, because ultimately this is about relationships, and in order to be successful, you have to have relationships, not only across your party, but with the other party as well.

Alan Wiseman (00:09:27.000)

That’s really helpful to think in those terms, and actually that overlaps in a lot of interesting ways with some of the research that we produced at the Center for Effective Lawmaking regarding tactics or strategies that could help to enhance lawmaking effectiveness. I want to pick up with a couple of these, or a couple of the points you raised, and thinking specifically about your first term in the Montana State House, and what your committee assignments were. So, according to our records, you served on Taxation, as you noted. You also served on Agriculture, Committee on Human Services and Rules. And, you know, I’m just curious, from your personal perspective, or more generally think about Montana, you know, can you describe to us the process by which you ultimately acquired these early committee assignments? You know, were you able to get on the committees you wanted to get on, or was there more of a match system? And how has your-how have your committee positions, or your preferences for committee positions evolved over your career in the House and the Senate, and now back in the House?

Steve Fitzpatrick (00:10:23.000)

Yeah, good, good question. So, when you come in, we have people fill out a preference form, and you kind of list what you want, 1, 2, 3, and then I think for the most part we try and assign people to where they want to go. In the House, the Speaker makes the committee assignments. In the Senate, they have what’s called a Committee on Committees, so 6 people get together, and they iron out where people are gonna go. For the most part, I can tell-particularly in the Senate, you know, there’s a lot of talk, are you, you know, do you want to go here, do you want to go there? What I ultimately found out in the House was the first batch of committees I got, and I didn’t particularly like them, I thought tax was-I felt like every bill in tax either was, unanimous or party-line. It didn’t feel like there was a lot of bipartisanship in there. Human Services was-Human Services was awful. It was mostly marijuana bills that year. And then Ag, you’d think it’s about farming. No, it was all about animals. I learned more about buffalo and bears than I wanted to. So, I wanted off of those, and luckily, I campaigned, I think, well enough to get over to Business and Labor, which was wonderful. Local Government, which isn’t very popular, so I could get in there pretty easily. And then I was on Natural Resources, and those were much more interesting, and for the most part, I’ve stayed in those since then. Obviously, when committee assignments are made, you can’t keep everybody happy. There’s some that are very popular, like our Judiciary Committee. For some reason, everybody wants to be in there. It’s hard to get in there. Some are not popular, like Local Government, not that big of a deal. But I’ve kind of stayed with those. Obviously, over time, as I’ve moved up into leadership, you know, people just assign me to committees, you know, where they need bodies sometimes, and that’s fine, but I think I’ve managed to take the tour of committees. I think I’ve been on almost every committee now, except for maybe a handful.

Craig Volden (00:12:23.000)

Yeah, that’s interesting, and kind of figuring out the nature of what each is dealing with is a fascinating problem as well. You know, I’m drawn to this question of, you know, I could imagine a nice alignment between what is somebody, you know, what’s their background, what’s their previous job, and what’s their district really interested in, and what committee they’re on, such that they really become specialists as lawmakers focused in one or two main areas. And then again, I know many lawmakers who feel like they’re torn in so many different directions responding to constituent needs and covering so many topics. They feel like generalists. Would you describe yourself as more of a specialist or a generalist, and how does that play out in lawmaking?

Steve Fitzpatrick (00:13:09.000)

I would probably describe myself as kind of a-of a hybrid. There are some areas where I would consider myself a specialist, but I also have carried bills in areas that are kind of outside my knowledge base. I mean, I think you can be effective as a legislator both ways. I mean, traditionally, I’ve carried a lot of bills that deal with, like, insurance, with business organizations, I do a lot of bills that involve, kind of, court processes, you know, probate code, you know, a lot of them do-you know, a lot of them come up because I’m an attorney, and I-I come across some of these things. I mean, what’s actually kind of neat about being an attorney is, you know, people come to me with problems, and-and I’ll look in the code, and I’ll be like, well, you know, that doesn’t really work, and I think, well, you know, maybe we could change the law. So in my desk here at my office, I just have a list where I-you know, write down bills that I think would change things or fix things, make life better for people. I think the key to any good legislating is that you want to, obviously, if you’re going to present a bill, you want to know the bill thoroughly, and if you have knowledge and expertise in an area, that’s very helpful. What’s neat about a citizen legislator like Montana is-is that you bring in 150 different people, and 150 different people have different backgrounds. And so, you’re going to always kind of have somebody that knows a little about something more than the typical person. You know, we’ll have, for example, a county attorney. He can get up and talk about criminal law procedure very well. You could have a person that was-worked for state government, and they can talk about that. You know, teachers, firefighters. We have everybody in the Montana legislature, so-I think there’s kind of that combined knowledge of the group that makes it very interesting, but I think that the key to-the key to-if you want to be one of those people that really moves a lot of bills, it’s about more than, I think, just being a generalist or a… or a… or a specialist. When I look for people that-that move bills through the legislature, you know, because we’re in our leadership, we-there are priority bills for us, and we need to move them. The thing I actually look for is I look for a guy who’s gonna-or woman, who’s gonna be able to speak coherently, answer the questions well, so they gotta be smart. But I’m also looking for ideological balance. You know, as a Republican, I need somebody that can get up and who’s conservative enough for the conservatives, but moderate enough for the moderates. Because we have-we have quite a variety of political views in our party, and I can’t-I can’t bleed off of one side or the other, if I’m gonna try and run this through on a party-line vote. The other thing, too, is they can’t also be that offensive of a person that they-they-they stir up the minority, so, that’s what I look for in a bill carrier, and we have-the truth is, there’s only a handful of people that fit those criteria, and they’re very precious commodities in the legislature, so to speak.

Craig Volden (00:16:08.000)

Yeah, that’s-that’s really helpful, and we’re going to return to many of those topics, but I’d love to get into the details, on something specific. You know, can you give me one of the many examples where, here was an idea, came to me in my office, here’s what I had to do to formulate the bill, here were the legislative struggles, and this is where we emerged on the far end. Is there something that pops to mind?

Steve Fitzpatrick (00:16:30.000)

Yeah, good question. I, I had, last year, you know, we’ve had a lot of people move to Montana, with the COVID, and they had little limited liability companies out in different states, so out in Washington, out in, I had another guy out of, like, Nebraska, and they called me up, and they’re like, hey, I want to turn my limited liability company into a Montana company, and I did the research, and basically what I concluded was, under Montana law, you basically had to dissolve the company, and then reform the company under Montana law, and transfer all the assets and as I looked through, other states had conversion processes, and I thought, well, why don’t we just do this? So what I did was I, found some law out of Arizona and Idaho, very identical, drafted it up. The other thing, and then after I got it drafted, I took it to the State Bar. We have a section, in the State Bar that focuses on businesses and trusts and estates work, and they took a look at it, offered me some amendments, and then it went through very easily. I think it passed unanimously out of both chambers. So, I think that’s an example of things I’ve seen and done. That’s just one, but there’s other ones.

Craig Volden (00:17:44.000)

Yeah, that’s great. Thanks so much.

Alan Wiseman (00:17:45.000)

Yeah, I was struck by the way in which you were really able to highlight the fact that your professional expertise as an attorney who specializes in a lot of matters pertaining to corporate law really puts you in a great position for precisely the types of things you just illustrated right now. I’m curious, I’d like to get your perspective on the politics of running for office, especially in a citizen legislature like Montana, because, you know, just thinking about your own career, after a couple of relatively close elections, or one particularly close election in the House early in your career, you know, you’ve won your elections by quite sizable majorities, including, you know, your last two general elections. As you know, you ran unopposed. So I’d be curious, especially given that now you’ve been in the House, the Senate, and back to the House, you know, how do you see the jobs of being a campaigner and a lawmaker, especially in a citizen legislature like Montana? Do you feel that they’re quite different from each other, or can they be complementary? Has your effectiveness as a lawmaker helped smooth your path to re-election, do you believe?

Steve Fitzpatrick (00:18:48.000)

That’s-that’s an interesting question. I think that-I think they can be complementary. They’re obviously different. You do different things when you’re running a campaign than you do as a legislator. I think-I think the important part, and I tell this to candidates, is that you want to go and you want to knock every door. And I can say that because our districts are small, so a House seat is about 10,000 voters, and a Senate seat’s about 20,000. You can pretty much, if you work at it, get to every house. Now, that doesn’t mean you’re gonna talk to everybody, but at least you made the effort to get there. And you should be able to get enough of a sample of the-of the district to have an idea of what’s on people’s minds and what they’re thinking about. And-and it’s-that’s very important because when you’re down at the legislature, there is just tremendous pressure from various forces, and that could be forces in the party, that could be lobbyists, it could just be the people that are calling in and sending emails, and I think if you don’t knock the doors, and you don’t talk to those people, and have a sense of where your district is, you’ll get pulled in the wrong way when you’re at the Capitol, because it’s a system of peer pressure. And what happens is I feel like you start to get members that start to vote unrepresentative of their districts. So I think it’s very important to campaign so you know how to vote. And then that way, the other part, too, is that the threats-there’s just a lot of threats. You know, you’re gonna get prima-you’re gonna lose your race if you vote one way or the other. If you’ve knocked your doors, you don’t need to worry about that. Yeah, I know where my voters are, I’m just fine. You know, so-and one of the things I think is-you’re starting to see in both the Republican and Democratic Party is the you see a lot of activists that are way out there compared to where the regular Republican is, or compared to where the regular Democrat is. And if you have a sense for where your voters are, you don’t need to worry about that, and then you’re not susceptible to that peer pressure. On the other hand, I think the door knocking to the… So, the opposite is the legislating. If you’ve been in the process, you kind of have an idea of some of the things that are of concern, and you can think of ideas of how to solve them. So when people say, oh, you know, we got a problem with, you know, water here, you know, if you’ve been participating, you can kind of have a little bit better discussion with them, and maybe that can trigger some ideas for you. But I think it helps you it… I think it gives you a better base to talk about issues with people if you’ve served in the legislature and you’ve seen the bills, too, because you have a little bit more knowledge of the topic than just the regular person who just is like, well, I, you know, I don’t like how taxes work. Well, you know, if you’ve sat on tax committee and you’ve understood how property tax works, then you can have a little bit more nuanced discussion with the voter and say, well, you know, this is what we tried, and this is how it works, and I think it helps. I mean, I think it’s good one way or the other.

Craig Volden (00:21:43.000)

Yeah, all of that is really helpful from our perspective. Can you, just kind of, you know, back of the envelope, guess what, what percent of, lawmakers there have done the knocking on all the doors approach, and has that changed over the past couple decades?

Steve Fitzpatrick (00:22:01.000)

I think it’s always traditionally been a Montana thing. I think there’s some people that are-obviously do more than others. I think at some point, every legislator does it. I think this scope is a-it’s hard to measure. But I think it’s ultimately the key to winning. I mean, if you’re in a-if you’re in a tight seat, the door knocking makes a difference. You can see it in the vote returns, and it’s a big deal in primaries, too, just because it’s so hard to-you know, if you’ve got multiple Republicans on the ballot, I think it’s hard for people to kind of break through and separate out the difference, but-I think it’s been the key to success, and there’s some legislators around here, around Great Falls, that are traditionally, I think in the Republican Party politics, would be considered very moderate, but they have no problem in their primaries, just because they do the doors and they have a good sense of where the electorate’s at.

Craig Volden (00:22:58.000)

Awesome. I want to pivot to the majority leader positions that you’ve held in the Senate and the House, and just tell me a little bit about why you wanted to step up into those leadership positions.

Steve Fitzpatrick (00:23:11.000)

They are, interesting positions. In the Senate, this kind of sounds crazy, but it’s kind of a position nobody really wanted. So I-and I wanted to kind of move up into leadership and have a bigger role, so it-it, it seemed like it worked for me. In the House, it’s a little bit more competitive on who wants that job, but I think the majority of their job-

Alan Wiseman (00:23:34.000)

To interject-to interject for just a second there, Representative Fitzpatrick, when you say no one wanted it, do you mean the time that you were in contention for leadership, or do you mean in general, no one wanted.

Steve Fitzpatrick (00:23:43.000)

In general. Year after year, there’s usually only one person who usually steps up and runs for it.

Alan Wiseman (00:23:50.000)

Congratulations to you, sir, very good.

Steve Fitzpatrick (00:23:52.000)

When I think back, first session I was in there, I think everybody has basically run unopposed for Majority Leader. And the reason is, is because the Majority Leader is the, kind of the floor manager, right? You have to get up, you have to, know your rules, you have to know your procedure, and you really are the administrator of the Senate floor. In the House, it’s a little bit different, there’s more powers in the Speaker’s hand, but in the Senate, the Majority Leader sets the floor agenda, and then is responsible for, more or less scheduling it, too. So, you know, if we go, late some days, you know, that’s my decision whether to come back and make people grind it out at 5 o’clock. So-but I think the Majority Leader job, it’s like any of these leadership jobs, are what you make of it. I like it because it’s-there’s a focus on rules, the procedure, I always kind of enjoyed the administrative part, but I think the Majority Leader, too, is really, really has a policy emphasis. At least in our chamber, the Speaker and the President tend to have more of the, I would call the human resources function. You’re in there, talking to, members all day long about their concerns, and then you spend a lot of time dealing with, minority party leadership, and the way it’s traditionally broken out, I’ve been kind of the guy who comes up with the policy package. This is what we’re going to do for bills and these topics. In the House, I have kind of an additional supervisory responsibility. I have to watch the Appropriations Committee, so I have to read all the fiscal notes, and then I-I almost have to defend the Appropriations Committee, because people tend to want to spend more than they probably should, so I have to get up and-stop all the motions to take bills out of the Appropriations Committee, but I think the other thing, too, is that the majority leader tends to be the voice of the party, so you need to be able to person that can command a majority or vote. That’s also a big deal, and so it-there’s a lot that goes into it. I think it’s a very interesting position. I like it a lot.

Alan Wiseman (00:26:01.000)

No, no, I mean, it sounds really interesting, and I’m drawn to the distinction that you highlight between the Senate and the House in terms of floor manager and agenda setter versus focused largely on policy agenda and trying to advance or implement the policy agenda in the House. I am curious, though, I mean, as, you know, you’ve intimated a little bit earlier, legislative leaders or party leaders obviously need to prioritize the major issues that the legislature’s gonna try to engage with. You know, and you’ve already spoken a bit about the heterogeneity in the Republican Party, in both the House and the Senate, and I guess I’m just curious, you know, in any given term, and I guess this is particularly relevant where you sit in the House at the moment, that as you noted, your leadership role is more policy-focused. You know, how would you decide on what issues are supposed to be highest in the queue, so to speak? How do you dictate priorities? What sorts of issues do you set aside, either due to time limits or time constraints, or just, you know, potential tensions within the party and the like? I’d really be curious to hear your perspective on that.

Steve Fitzpatrick (00:27:03.000)

Yeah, so, good question, and maybe I’ll preface this question by stepping back. Our legislature is different than, I think, probably almost every other legislator-legislature. We, in party leadership, do not have as much power as you would in other states, and what I mean by that is, if you draft a bill and you introduce a bill, it gets a hearing and it gets a vote. There is no pocket veto process where leadership in a chamber can prevent a bill from moving. So. We have a very kind of free-flowing system, so to speak, but what we do is we sit down and we kind of identify the major areas we want to work on, and a lot of them kind of percolate up naturally. I mean. Like in the last session, we-I think we kind of had, kind of, I would say, kind of two big topics. Property tax. With all the people moving into Montana, property taxes have exploded. So, that was something we needed to address. The other one was, the Montana Supreme Court ruled that, we needed to start doing greenhouse gas emission analysis under our Constitution. So, that-that percolates up to the top. And then we’ve also had surplus, we’ve had a lot of-we have generated more tax revenue than we need, so we’ve had a lot of-a lot of work on, you know, how do we use the surplus? So those things kind of-they kind of percolate up to the top, and-and what we do is-is that, you know, the governor’s obviously interested in those topics, we’re interested in those topics. And we kind of try and work together to get a-get a package of bills, moving through. So, and then, obviously, members can introduce their own bills. So I would say, you know, kind of the-we get kind of the main areas where we really focus on leadership. Then we have, I would say, kind of secondary areas, and those may be social issues, they may be more specific to, various topics, you know, maybe we have some members that want to do something on housing, and so we’ll see what we can do on housing. And then we kind of incorporate those. From my point of view is, is when I developed the agenda, I want to have an agenda that I can get 51 Republicans. That’s my goal. I gotta get 51 to pass the bill through the House. I want them to be something that-that-90% of our caucus can support. I don’t expect our members to vote with us in lockstep 100% of the time. There may be district reasons they can’t-they can’t, or maybe there’s an ideological reason they don’t. That’s fine, as long as I can get 51, that’s what matters to me. And then, obviously, there’s issues that-that are divisive in the caucus. I leave those aside. If a member wants to bring a bill on that topic, they’re free to do it, and they can do it, and it gets an up or down vote, but that’s kind of how I prioritize. And obviously, the members-the members can introduce whatever bills they want, and-you know, sometimes we’ll look at them and say, hey, that’s a great idea, and we’ll stick that into our agenda. Other times, we just-we just let them flow. We don’t necessarily take a position on them in leadership. You know, if it’s a divisive issue, we try not to take a position on leadership, especially if it splits the caucus. That does nobody any good, because, you know, you kind of break that trust with your members, and you can’t get them when you need them, so-I like to think of it as political capital. When you’re in leadership, you have so much political capital, and when it’s gone, it’s gone, and you lose control of the chamber, and I’ve seen it happen multiple times. You don’t want to be in that spot, so it’s really important that you have some thought about what is appealing to your members.

Craig Volden (00:30:40.000)

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And you’ve mentioned a few things that are different about Montana than in other states, and so when I think about that kind of big picture level, you know. Some states have more days in session, or different structures for their committees, or a variety of supermajority rules, more legislative staff, or fewer, and a bunch of those other considerations. From your vantage point, do you feel like the Montana legislature is well-structured to address the state’s public policy challenges, or would you put forward some reforms if you could get them through?

Steve Fitzpatrick (00:31:13.000)

I like how our legislature works, there’s good and bad to it. One of the things I’ll hear is, after the legislature’s over, people will say, well, you guys spent a lot of time on stupid bills. And what I tell people is, our system has its good and bad, right? There are bills that are going to move through our process that wouldn’t normally move through a process in another state because power is decentralized. I mean, really, the chamber is the power source. The other hand, though, is you do get some wild bills, and you get them on all kinds of topics. Sometimes they’re fun to listen to, other times you wonder why you’re there, but it’s the good and the bad of it. I’ve come to appreciate the way our system works is that it keeps people busy, because I think the more people sit around, the more-the more problems you’ll eventually get. Our system is structured in a unique way as it is. We have 90 days, and so the way it works is the appropriations and the policy is split. So what happens is that the House and Senate, we have subcommittees for the appropriations. They start working on the budget, and they’re working on that thing for about 40 days. In fact, it might be close to 45. Then they vote it out, and-they have their little subcommittees, and then they vote the subcommittees, then it goes to full appropriations, so that by the time the budget actually hits the House floor, it’s about day 60. And then it moves through the process like that. Then the policy committees are working, and-and kind of the-the lag is at the beginning, and then it gets very busy, kind of in the middle, and then towards the end. So it-you know, people get tired at the end. If it was up to me, I think it’s not necessarily structural changes that we need, I think we just need to do a better job working on some of our members to stop introducing so many bills. And then, I think the other thing, too, is when you’re moving legislation, you have to sit down and be honest about whether you think it’s gonna pass. I think we’ve, in the last few sessions, we’ve had a lot of people introduce bills that have no chance of passing. It gets a little frustrating from my point of view. I guess the other thing, too, I-I want to emphasize is that we have some people that-they don’t want to take the hard vote, and they move the bill out of committee, and it just adds more work to people later on, because they think, oh, you know, I-I don’t want to vote to kill this tax bill because they’ll get into appropriations. Well, that’s-not really helping us, because that’s adding another hearing and adding a floor debate to it. So, I think, at least next session, I think we’re going to try and put more emphasis on telling people to kill things earlier.

Alan Wiseman (00:33:53.780)

Oh, that’s really interesting. I’m curious, especially given, you know, you’ve noted how there’s just been a bit of a demographic change in the state with such a huge increase in people moving into the state in the COVID and post-COVID era. I also want to hit on something that we’ve noticed. You know, thinking back to your first election in 2010, when you were first elected to the chamber, back then, the party composition in the Montana House had just switched from essentially being 50-50 for a couple of terms between Republicans, Democrats, to Republicans controlling a sizable majority. And then if you fast-forward across, really, every term that you’ve previously sat in the House or the Senate, it’s now back in the House, we see a situation in which, you know, the size of the Republican majority is now essentially a two-thirds supermajority. And given this trend over time, I’d be curious to hear your perspective, especially now that you’re in leadership and have been previously in leadership. How would you characterize the relationship between Republicans and Democrats in the Montana state legislature over time? And I guess more specifically, do you think the nature of bipartisanship or bipartisan collaboration has changed in an appreciable way over the last 14 plus years that you’ve been engaged with the legislature?

Steve Fitzpatrick (00:35:07.000)

Yeah, it’s changed. So, when I was first elected, and I want to say for about 10 years, you know, even though the, even though the Republicans were in charge, I think the Democrats still had a-a substantial voice in the process, and a lot of that was driven by the fact that the governor was a Democrat. We had Governor Schweitzer, we had Governor Bullock, and, you know, ultimately, if you’re gonna pass a bill, you need to get a signature. So, I think that, to a certain degree, kind of tempered, a lot of the legislation that was moving, I think, in those-I can’t say in the first 10 years I was in there. What-what has-what-what kind of happened, was-is that the Democrats tended to be very unified, so whether they had 33 or-or up into the 40s, they got up into the 40s a few times, they tend to vote it as a block, and-and there’s always-and it changes over time. You know, there’s always people that are sometimes willing to go over and vote with the Democrats and move bills through. There have been splits in the Republican Party. Sometimes it gets-more obvious, other times it’s not. But, you know, things that have moved through the Montana legislature, like Medicaid expansion, on kind of those split votes, where it’s a unified Democratic bloc with a, with a group of Republicans voting to send that through. What I have noticed in the last few years is that even though the Republican caucus, even though there’s more Republicans, I feel like the people that are, you know, that like to say they’re really conservative, they’re not as conservative as the people when I was first elected. It’s more of a-populist, and, to a certain degree, I feel like we’ve-we’ve-I feel like some days I feel like I’m the most conservative person in the room, which is weird, because when I was first elected, I don’t think anybody would have said that. But-I feel like we-I feel like the Republican Party, to a certain degree, has moderated, whereas the Democratic Party has gotten more ideological, and it’s shown up in their leadership, and I actually think it’s made the Democrats less effective, because their leadership seems to be more interested in social issues, whereas, you know, 10 years ago, the Democrats were more interested, I think, in the fiscal matters, so-I would say for the last-I would say that, like, the ’23 session, if you were a Democrat, I think that was an utter disaster. I think Democratic leadership was-did very poorly. Didn’t work very well with Republicans, to advance any goals. I think they did a little bit better this time, but I think-I think the Democrats have actually gotten less effective, while the moderate-while the Republicans-and I’m talking Republicans overall, I mean, from the most conservative to the most moderate. I think, overall, it feels like it’s gotten more moderate. I mean, the amount of spending that has gone through in the last two cycles is beyond anything I would have ever imagined as a Representative in 2010, so-

Craig Volden (00:38:08.000)

Yeah, that’s interesting. You know, I’m hearing what you’re saying in terms of populist versus conservative there, at least on the spending front, but can you give us some other examples of, kind of, what are the types of populist Republican proposals that are going out there now that you wouldn’t have imagined seeing a few years back?

Steve Fitzpatrick (00:38:27.000)

I would say mostly they’re in the fiscal department. I mean, one that really just kind of blew my mind is, it was a-it was a bill, it was a-this was in the ’23 session, it was a Senate Bill 442, and they wanted to take marijuana money and use it for county roads. And the Governor’s office was just kind of epileptic about it, because, you know. That’s a county service, and we-they don’t want to go down the path of using state general fund money to pay for county services. And he had this kind of odd coalition of very conservative, some moderates, and Democrats that just loved it. And then there were-I would say, more of the kind of the traditional Republicans, like myself, that were just kind of disgusted by the bill. And so it was-it was a-I thought it was a very interesting coalition that had come together, but what happened in that-in the ’23 session is-is there was kind of this rebellion where, again, a mix of-across the ideological spectrum and in-in the-in the-in the Republican Party did not like how the surplus was being allocated, and they started teaming up with the Democrats down in our Finance and Claims Committee to start spending a lot on local projects, other types of projects. So-you know, that’s where it really comes out. The other area where I found, kind of-I mean, I just kind of-blows my mind, is we really struggle we really struggle on tax policy anymore. You would think that cutting income taxes would be a priority of Republicans. It’s not. It is really hard to move these income tax bills anymore. They’re a priority of the governor, but-and I think they’re a good policy, because we-we have, in my view, we have way too much surplus dollars flowing through. It just is creating headache, because it’s just a-it becomes a spend fest, and-and-and-we couldn’t-we couldn’t get the Senate on board on some of this stuff. Finally, we had to run our own bill, and then finally they kind of went with it, but I think on the spending and tax policy, that’s where I’ve seen the biggest thing. On environmental policy, it’s the same. On social policy, it’s the same, but I think the populism is definitely popping out on the tax policy and on the appropriation side.

Craig Volden (00:40:40.000)

Yeah, that’s interesting. And you’ve mentioned the role of the House versus Senate, and the Governor, and all of that in this. To what extent, as you’re kind of formulating your own proposals, or thinking on behalf of the party as a whole. So you have to take into consideration, well, what’s the Governor’s position, what’s the Senate’s position, and I imagine a lot, but then I imagine some new members might not even know what those other positions are, and building the networks, and so on. So, can you tell us a little bit about House-Senate relations and the role of the Governor in lawmaking?

Steve Fitzpatrick (00:41:14.000)

Well, it’s very important. I tell people this, and it’s 51-26-1. You gotta get 51 in the House, 26 in the Senate, and the Governor’s signature, and-

Craig Volden (00:41:25.000)

Yeah.

Steve Fitzpatrick (00:41:27.000)

If you’re not-if you can’t do that, then there’s no reason to bring a bill, but-I think it’s very important. Now, you can’t go down there and talk to the Governor’s office on every bill that’s moving through. I mean, heck, we had-we had, like, 800 bills in the House. I think, actually, we would have been closer to 900. You can’t even keep track of the numbers. People will walk into my office and say, hey, how about House Bill 48, and I have no idea what it is. I have to describe them to me. You know, obviously we’re watching the big bills, but there’s so many bills moving through the process that you can’t keep track of them. And the Governor’s office is on the same wavelength. You know, we spend a lot of time, I think, talking about, you know, the big ones, right? The property tax, the income tax, how we’re allocating the surplus, what we’re doing on environmental policy, and to be honest, you need to have that buy-in from the executive branch, because they have knowledge of some of these things that the legislative branch does not do. I mean, if you’re talking about arcane policies on air quality and water quality, you have to have somebody from the Department of Environmental Quality over helping you out. Licensing, our Business and Labor Committee has really revamped the licensing processes for all kinds of things, and a lot of that has been, with a significant influence from the Department of Labor and Industry. So, you have to have a good relationship. I think-I think one of the kind of the sad things, I think, is that there has been kind of a disconnect between the two chambers. I’ve always felt like the chamber I’ve been in, we’ve had good relationships with the Governor’s office, but the opposite chamber has not been there, and I think it’s kind of-it’s kind of-blunted our effectiveness, but it is what it is. You have to move through it, but it’s important to work with the Governor’s office. I have never understood the strategy, and I hear it every once in a while that they’re gonna-we’re gonna roll the Governor, that we’re gonna pass a bill, and he’s gonna-he’s-he’s gonna veto it, and we’re gonna override him. It’s almost impossible. I mean, I’m, like, one of five people that’s done it in the last 20 years. It’s foolish to think you’re gonna pass anything over a Governor’s veto. The odds are not in your favor, and if that’s your strategy, you might as well not even bother.

Craig Volden (00:43:35.000)

Yeah. I’m drawn to the back and forth that you were describing with, you know, executive agencies and the expertise that they have. To what extent are you feeling like policy ideas are coming from them, from-from, kind of, stuff they’ve experienced when they’ve been implementing earlier laws, so now those need to be refined in some ways, or are they more responsive to proposals that are coming from you all and your members?

Steve Fitzpatrick (00:44:03.000)

It’s a little of both, so, the executive branch agencies, do draft and prepare a lot of bills, it varies by year, but I would say a good portion of the bills that move through the process are-do originate out of the executive branch, and they can be little bills from tweaks to the licensing process to more substantial bills that, you know, tax policy. I mean, the Governor’s office will work on those things.

Craig Volden (00:44:35.000)

And who do they have carry those bills? Are they, again, looking for that handful of people who are able to talk across party lines and all that?

Steve Fitzpatrick (00:44:45.000)

Yeah, so it-what they do is-is-and it would be the same thing I do. Like, if you’ve got a licensing bill, you tend to go look for members that sit on the committees that will handle it. So, that’s kind of the first place people look. I think for the, you know, the big heavy bills, that really requires a lot of thought on who you’re looking for as a carrier, but they definitely look around. I think the first thing that I think most people look for, whether this is a lobbyist leadership or, or the executive branch is members on committee. That’s usually the best way to do it. And, you know, you don’t-there’s no perfect legislator for any bill, right? I mean, there’s plenty of people that are capable of carrying things, and they do. The executive branch, obviously, because they’re working on these statutes all the time, they’re finding tweaks here and there. And it’s not, you know, we get drafts out of the Secretary of State’s office, we get them out of the State Auditor’s office, the Attorney General has his package of bills, so all the executive branch agencies have bills that they bring in. And then, of course, members bring in their own bills, and then, obviously, lobbyists, draft legislation, too, and they get members to carry it. So, you have multiple sources of legislation.

Alan Wiseman (00:45:57.000)

I want to pick up that theme, thinking explicitly about the illustration you raised a little bit earlier about the legislation regarding the LLC conversion, and the way in which you were able to look for specific guidance in other states, in that case, Arizona and Idaho as to how they’d handled that problem. But more generally, I have to think that the issues that Montana’s confronting, there’s many other states, either in the region or even nationally, that either are confronting or have confronted similar issues. And I’d just be curious to know, either, you know, thinking about you personally as a legislator, or you personally as a legislative leader, or more generally speaking, other members of the chamber, you know, to what degree are you able to learn from other states’ experiences, or how do you go about learning from other states’ experiences? And likewise, to what degree do you actually share your knowledge about Montana’s experiences with legislative counterparts in other states?

Steve Fitzpatrick (00:46:51.000)

So, there are, national organizations, CSG, NCSL, ALEC, and they have-there are resources where you can go and find bills that have been drafted and used in other states. So. The way our system works is we have a legislative staff, and it’s nonpartisan, and if you walk down and say, you know, I’d like to do a bill on this topic, you don’t necessarily have to walk in and hand them a draft bill. They will draft it for you, and a lot of times they go and look at other jurisdictions to find legislation. Another thing is, there are organizations like the Uniform Law Commission. And they have model statutes that they provide, and a lot of those get picked up and used. I mean, a lot of our Montana code are model statutes from other states. The other thing, too, is a lot of these national organizations, you can-they’ll have conferences, and we go to them. They’ll have some specific for leadership. Others are for any member, like NCSL has a large conference. I have to be honest, though, I go to a lot of them, and I kind of feel like we are kind of on our own wavelength compared to other states. I mean, our law in some areas is so different than other states, we-we are, we are-we are- we are totally different. I mean, we have rules, for example, in the insurance world that I don’t think exist in any other place. Our unemployment law is different, I think, than almost every other jurisdiction in this country, so-I think you can learn some, and obviously there’s those model bills, and they’re helpful, but in some ways, we are-we are totally different.

Craig Volden (00:48:30.000)

So when a model bill comes to you in an area, you look at it, you say, maybe 70% right, but here’s where we need to tweak it, or do we ever see them kind of flying all the way through without adjustment to Montana?

Steve Fitzpatrick (00:48:43.000)

It depends. Now, I think the ones that come out of, like, the Uniform Law Commission, you know, like, you’ll have the Model LLC Act, or the Model Business Corporations Act, those usually go through unopposed, or, like, the Uniform Probate Code changes. Those tend to go through unopposed. We will make some changes specific to Montana law, but the tweaks are very minor. If you’re pulling a bill off of, say, ALEC or another jurisdiction, you’re gonna wanna-you’re gonna wanna bore in, because a lot of them are not gonna be-you know, you might-you might need to change up to 50% of the bill. When I did, our COVID liability bill, I had our staff give me, I think, copies of bills in about 20 different states, and I spliced and picked out what I wanted, but then I had to adjust it for Montana law, because the Montana Supreme Court’s got some pretty stringent rules on how you can eliminate liability, so I had to-I couldn’t necessarily eliminate liability, I just had to change the standards, whereas in other jurisdictions, they just flat-out eliminated it. And so that-that’s an example. You have to have some some tie-in to Montana law, or else you’re gonna pass an unconstitutional bill.

Craig Volden (00:49:53.000)

Yeah, thanks. That’s really helpful for that context. I see that our time is running a little bit short, and then so, I do want to, kind of Wrap up by saying, thanks, but also, because the Center for Effective Lawmaking is located at Vanderbilt University and the University of Virginia, we wonder if there’s any, general advice or guidance that you might give college students today about, maybe careers in public service, or how they could think about legislative politics.

Steve Fitzpatrick (00:50:30.000)

Yeah, I think that’s a great question. I think the-I think-serving in the legislative body, and I think this is true, really, of any public service, whether you’re on a city commission or a county commission, it is such-it is so rewarding. Most people are very, you know, you see all the rancor at the national level, but, you know, when I come back to town and people stop me at the grocery store when I’m out campaigning, people thank you. You know, they’re happy that you’re willing to do it, they appreciate what you do. It’s very rewarding, and I think the other thing, too, is you’ll see that what you do actually does make a difference. You know, we can go pass bills that have real-life effects on people in Montana, and it’s just-you know, you and your neighbors that are doing this. I think the other thing, too, is if you’re interested in a career in politics, it’s really about relationship building. It’s getting to know people, and it’s not the cheesy networking that people do, it’s about, you know, meeting people, learning about them, having an interest in their lives. There are-I’ve served in the legislature now, and I have served with four people I went to high school with. So, you know, I kind of had that relationship before I walked in the door. There are people that are lobbyists out in the hallway that I went to high school with. Some of our staffers are people I went to high school with. And so, just knowing them and having that relationship that begins-that’s existed for 20 years, you’re already off to a head start. So, it’s just kind of a- you know, in Montana, it’s a small state, but, you know, you get to know people and build those relationships up. That’s really what makes you a successful legislator, and-and it also helps break down that party divide, too, because, you know, you may look at them as a Republican, they may look at you a Democrat, if you can-if you can see them as people, I think you’re gonna be much more successful. So, I think that’s really what it’s about, being able to understand people from different points of view, and have them-have-have a different, have a different, relationship with them, I think you’ll be much more successful in politics.

Alan Wiseman (00:52:36.000)

Great. Well, thanks so much, especially, that seems like a great note to wrap up on. Sadly, our time is up, but like I said, and Craig said, we greatly appreciate the opportunity to talk with you today, and really want to thank you very much for your public service, so thanks so much.

Steve Fitzpatrick (00:52:51.000)

Yeah, thank you.