The guide will update to reflect changes posted to the official legislative website, bills.legmt.gov, every 15 minutes for the rest of the #mtleg session. #mtpol

Full digital guide is here:
projects.montanafreepress.org/capitol-trac...

We also have tools to look up bills by title/number, and lawmakers by name. Plus a search function that will let you find your personal legislative districts/lawmakers by entering your address.

projects.montanafreepress.org/capitol-trac...

There are also pages for each of the Legislature's 150 reps and senators — including public contact info, committee assignments, the bills they're sponsoring, our analysis of their voting records and a listing of the MTFP news stories they've been named in.

There are pages in here for every bill introduced at the 2025 Legislature — with sponsor info, progression data and links to full text plus legal/fiscal analyses for bills that have them.

A running listing of all 2025 bills is here: projects.montanafreepress.org/capitol-trac...

Of course, changing the system would mean raising tax bills on some taxpayers, who will almost certainly complain to their representatives. Current and former lawmakers we talked to aren't sure there's political appetite to overcome that resistance.

There are a few ideas in circulation about how Montana legislators could more cleanly distinguish luxury real estate from bona fide farms and ranches. (Among them: raising the $1,500 threshold, which was last updated in 1986.)

Here’s how the tax math breaks down for fairly typical properties.

That’s pretty wonky, but it’s a big distinction. A typical residential lot pays roughly $1,600 an acre in annual land taxes. We found many, many million-dollar homes on larger ag properties that are paying a fraction of that — often less than $10/acre.

Basically, residential land is taxed based on its market value — how much it would sell for. Ag land is taxed based on its *production* value, how much money you can theoretically make growing crops or grazing livestock on it. (Market value is used for structures on both types of property.)

Montana's ag tax rules offer discounted land taxes to agricultural properties in an effort to encourage farming and ranching, especially in places where development pressure is pushing up land values.

A few months back, @nickbowlin.bsky.social over at @highcountrynews.bsky.social and I decided to dig in. We thought we could use state property data to illustrate the issue and had heard a work group was looking at reform bills. Both of those things panned out.

I’ve been hearing about this anecdotally for years. People in the state Capitol complain occasionally about small-scale cherry orchards on Flathead Lake abusing ag tax rules. The tax bill for Gov. Greg Gianforte’s Bozeman home, which has an ag designation, was also campaign fodder last year.

There’s of course plenty more detail to be understood here — but you can read our full story for that:

One other note: One note there: that wonky GTB multiplier buried in the math is super important because it’s one of the key dials the Legislature can turn up or down to balance how much state help districts get filling their budget bowls. Bigger multiplier = more GTB aid for more districts.