We’ve become accustomed to strange goings on in the 2007 Montana Legislature, but what’s with this contingent voidness thing?

The contingency language being added by House Republicans to numerous bills is an attempt to tie the bills’ fate to the GOP budget measures that have been sent to the Senate. In other words, if you alter the budget preferences of the House Republicans, apparently those other bills become void.

Republican leaders said the language is necessary to prevent the Democratic-controlled Senate from messing with their budget bills. Democrats just call it potentially unconstitutional.

Well, let’s take a look.

Not that we want to practice law here, but the Montana Constitution’s provisions in Article V, Section 11 regarding bills in the Legislature are rather straightforward. One provision says that lawmakers cannot pass a law that has been amended so as to “change its original purpose.” Is it not the case that adding a poison pill to protect an entirely separate package of legislation is a change of purpose?

Another provision states that bills, other than general appropriation measures, must contain only one subject. Once again, doesn’t adding an amendment designed to influence the Senate’s treatment of entirely separate bills amount to adding another, different subject?

We suppose that it could be argued that contingency language isn’t what the writers of the constitution had in mind, and so it somehow isn’t a violation of the letter of Article V, Section 11. Maybe.

But boy, it sure would be hard to argue that such amendments aren’t violating its spirit.