HELENA - The Senate Finance Committee killed a bill Tuesday that would have retained voter-approved funding levels for statewide tobacco prevention programs.

House Bill 756, by Rep. Christine Kaufmann, D-Helena, would have implemented the tobacco settlement money spending plan, as outlined by Initiative 146, as 65 percent of voters approved it in November.

If Kaufmann's bill had passed, it would have ensured that 32 percent, or about $9 million, of the annual $30 million payment that tobacco companies send to Montana would fund statewide tobacco prevention programs.

I-146 also ensured that 40 percent of the annual payment goes into a health care trust fund, 17 percent for insurance for the uninsured and 11 percent was returned to the state's general fund.

Now, tobacco prevention programs are going to get $3.2 million a year from the settlement money. The state has decided to take the remaining $6 million a year to fund human services programs.

''Do we know better than the voters?'' Kaufmann asked the Senate committee when she presented her bill for its consideration Tuesday.

Anti-tobacco lobbyists, who some lawmakers have dubbed the ''tobacco mafia,'' argued passionately against the Legislature taking money from the voter-approved prevention programs.

Laura Wier, public health nurse in Teton County, said that the state's ''dismantling'' of its prevention program has already forced her county to shut down its program just when she said she had ''teenagers informing teenagers and adults wanting to quit.''

In 2001, the Legislature reduced funding for its tobacco prevention programs from $3.5 million a year to $500,000 a year.

With the failure of Kaufmann's bill to secure $9 million a year for prevention programs, the anti-tobacco programs in Montana next year will get $3.2 million from the state's tobacco money and another $875,000 a year from the national Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

''We fully expected this,'' said former Attorney General Joe Mazurek, representing the anti-tobacco group ProtectMontanaKids.org. ''They've given us what the they think they can afford to give us. ''