State Rep. Bill Mercer (R-Billings) has expressed his disappointment after Gov. Steve Bullock vetoed his Sunshine and Transparency Act for the State's Settlement of Claims.
According to the Great Falls Tribune, the state has paid over "$3 million in confidential employee settlements since 2013, Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock's first year in office."
The revelation led legislative leaders to convene a committee to assess the issue.
State Rep. Bill Mercer (R-Billings)
“Assuming I get re-elected, I have every intention of re-introducing this bill or something that is very close in resemblance,” Mercer said.
Mercer’s HB 532 passed both chambers but was vetoed by Bullock.
“I was extremely frustrated that this became a party-line issue. I got very little support from democrat legislators in either house and to my way of thinking this has nothing to do with partisan affiliation,” Mercer said.
The Independent Record noted in an editorial that the bill was widely rebuffed by Democrats and that the Bullock administration saw the bill as an attack on the governor.
"Although the committee unanimously supported Democratic Rep. Brad Hamlett's bill to require settlement agreements to be kept for 20 years, which is great, every Democrat on the committee voted against Mercer's bill to make those public records easily available to the public online," the Independent Record's editorial read.
Mercer said he doesn’t want to speculate why Bullock vetoed the bill. The governor’s office did not return messages but said publicly he agreed with the ideas behind the bill. He issued an executive order, alongside the veto, that state employee settlements are public information and that state agencies must publish the date and dollar amounts of settlements online. While those provisions were included in Mercer’s bill, the governor said he worried the law might have required the disclosure of confidential information.
Mercer rejected that concern. Having served as a U.S. Attorney for 8 years, and assistant U.S. attorney before that, he said he wants to see Montana held to the same standards as the federal government.
“We could not settle legislation and make it subject to a non-disclosure agreement,” pointing out that all such agreements were public. “Are we going to allow government to operate in darkness and not have any real sense of what is being pursued in the way of litigation?”
He noted that the court proceedings from lawsuits would be open to the public anyway.
Mercer stands for re-election in 2020. He said he is hoping his bill will be passed and signed into law in the next session.
"[T]he Montana Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that the public has a right to know about the settlements being paid by its government," the Independent Record's editorial read. "However, there are currently no penalties for state officials who fail to comply. So oftentimes they don't."
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