Montana AG Opinions, 2005

Section 69 of the Montana Public Defender Act (Senate Bill 146 of the 2005 Legislature) allows but does not require the Public Defender Commission and the Office of the Public Defender to hire all current city and county public defender employees. The bill allows the Commission and the Office the discretion to decide whom to retain for the new public defender system.

The insurance carrier of an individual involved in a traffic accident is entitled to receive copies of the accident report and supplemental information, including witness statements, whether or not the insurance carrier is referred to or named in the accident report.

A school district may not claim a refund pursuant to Mont. Code Ann. §15-70-356(2)(a) of taxes paid on special fuels by a company which contracts with the district to provide bus service for the district's students.

Before school district trustees may transfer any portion or all of the district's bus depreciation reserve fund to any other fund maintained by the district, the trustees must have sold all of the district's buses and submitted the proposed transfer to the electors of the district.

Under the Montana Nonprofit Corporation Act, an authority created pursuant to an interlocal agreement among self‑governing municipalities may incorporate a public benefit nonprofit corporation to operate an electric and natural gas utility. An authority created by interlocal agreement between self-governing municipalities may exercise only those powers that any of the municipalities might exercise. Operation of an electric and natural gas utility is a public purpose for which a self-governing municipality may grant funds. Debt incurred through corporate bonds issued by a public benefit nonprofit corporation incorporated by an authority created by interlocal agreement between self‑governing municipalities is not subject to laws regulating municipal debts or obligations if the municipalities are not legally obligated to appropriate money to pay the debt and the debt is without recourse to the spending power of the municipalities.

The enactment of Mont. Code Ann. § 17-8-106 by the 1981 legislature placed no enforceable limits on the spending power of a subsequent legislature.

More than $2 million has been appropriated in a line item from state sources other than the water adjudication account provided in HB 22, § 7, for the purposes of funding Montana's water adjudication program. Accordingly, HB 22 is not void pursuant to its contingent voidness provision.

A judicial decision invalidating the county distribution requirements for signatures to qualify an initiative petition for the ballot, as approved in Constitutional Amendments 37 and 38 and enacted in their implementing legislation, restores the language of the constitution and statutes as they existed before the approval of the invalid amendments.

A public officer or public employee may engage in political speech so long as his or her speech does not involve the use of public time, facilities, equipment, supplies, personnel, or funds.