It could have been worse. That’s the best most Montanans can say of the November special legislative session.
In the big picture, the Legislature and Gov. Steve Bullock limited some of the fallout from the biennial budget they adopted at the end of the regular session six months ago.
“We walked out in a much better place than when we walked in,” Bullock told The Gazette Friday in a phone interview. Instead of cutting $227 million from an already-lean biennial budget, Bullock and the Legislature agreed to cut $76 million.
The biennial budget over-estimated how much revenue the state general fund would collect through the end of the fiscal year on June 30, and it over-estimated how much money would be collected in the first few months of the present fiscal year. Meanwhile, Montana had its most expensive wildfire season ever and burned through $70 million.