HELENA -- The House turned down an attempt Tuesday to put Gov. Brian Schweitzer's stream-access amendatory veto on the floor for debate later this week.

The motion by Rep. Kendall Van Dyk, D-Billings, failed 49-50.

He tried to place the governor's amendatory veto to House Bill 426 on the House floor for debate today.

Earlier this month, after another stream-access bill failed, Schweitzer slapped some stream-access provisions on an otherwise obscure bridge bill sponsored by a House Republican. To become law, the amended bill has to pass both the House and Senate.

The original bill, by Rep. Jack Ross, R-Absarokee, removed the current $500,000 limit on a county's road and bridge capital improvement fund.

As amended by Schweitzer, the bill stipulates that before county commissions can spend money from these capital improvement funds, they must certify that the roads and bridges they are repairing offer public access to streams.

His amendment basically puts into law a 2000 opinion by then-Attorney General Joe Mazurek that the public may gain access to streams and rivers by using a county road and its right-of-way and that a bridge and its abutments are part of the public highway and subject to the same public easement as the highway to which the bridge is attached.

During the brief debate Tuesday, Van Dyk said a number of constituents have expressed concern that the Legislature isn't passing a stream-access bill this year.

"I feel strongly that the amendments to this bill make this bill a compromise," Van Dyk said. "What the governor said was that with public dollars comes public access."

House Fish, Wildlife and Parks Chairman Mike Milburn, R-Cascade, opposed the motion, calling it "political posturing." Milburn said the title of HB426 is too narrow to allow Schweitzer's amendment to be included.

"This is a private property bill so we must proceed with great care. We need all parties involved," he said.

Milburn's own House Joint Resolution 58, which called for a between-sessions study of the issue, is dead, as is SB78, by Sen. Lane Larson, D-Billings, which sought to clarify the right of stream access from bridges.

"We have a system that's working very well right now," Milburn said, citing the attorney general's ruling. "It's working and why would you want to upset that delicate landowner-sportsman balance."