HELENA -- After fighting for more than a week over the state budget bills, House Republicans and Democrats have found another issue to quarrel over.

The latest controversy involves Republicans using a somewhat arcane parliamentary trick known as a "contingent voidness" clause. The tactic was popularized in the 1990s by then-House Speaker John Mercer, R-Polson, but hasn't been used much since then except for bills that are directly related.

In recent days, House Republicans have started slapping "contingent voidness" clauses to a number of bills to link their fate to that of other sometimes-related -- but often-unrelated -- bills. In essence what "contingent voidness" clauses say is that if one of the linked bills is killed, the other one automatically dies too.

This "poison bill" tactic is intended to prevent the Democrat-led Senate from killing Republican bills passed by the House and to force the Senate to the bargaining table with the House, said Rep. Bill Glaser, R-Huntley.

"Don't kill my bills without risking (me) killing your bills," Glaser explained.

Glaser said it wasn't his idea to put on the clauses. He described his role as that of a "foot soldier" asked to do so by House Majority Leader Michael Lange, R-Billings.

"Contingent voidness is a management tool to get people at the table and sit down and talk about the issues to both of us," Glaser said. "We want these bills tied up so people can't walk away from the process."

Here's how these clauses work:

For example, a "contingent voidness" clause was added recently to House Bill 395, by Rep. William Jones, R-Bigfork, that provides for a program to pay student tuition costs for students attending regional dental education program at Montana State University and then the University of Washington.

The "contingent voidness" clause says: "If House Bill No. 807 is not passed and approved, then (this act) is void." HB807 is the general budget bill for the Montana university system that is now before the Senate.

Rep. Carol Lambert, R-Broadus, is the sponsor of HB798 to revise energy development impact laws. A House committee recently applied a clause that ties the fate of her bill to all eight House budget bills before the Senate.

Asked on the House floor earlier this week why the "contingent voidness" clause was put on her bill, the plain-spoken Lambert said, "I have no flippin' idea."

Rep. Dave Gallik, D-Helena, has been the leading critic of "contingent voidness" clauses and has tried fruitlessly to remove each of them.

"We've never used it to hold other bills hostage," Gallik said in an interview. "It is a total partisan political move to have politics of the budget process seep into the non-budget business."

Gallik, a lawyer, believes these clauses to be unconstitutional because they add another subject to a bill, which can only have a single subject, and they are outside the bill's title.

"The budget bills are out of here," Gallik said. "At some point we've got to start behaving instead of acting like a bunch of middle school kids."

Glaser said "contingent voidness" clauses aren't always needed at the Legislature, but are important to have this year.

"This session, we have absolutely no cooperation going on between either side of the aisle in the House and no cooperation between opposite parties in the House and Senate," Glaser said. "We have tried to open relationships with the governor, and that has failed. It's too bad. It's not the way I like it."

Among the bills to which "contingent voidness" clauses were attached are those that deal with funding community colleges, public television programming, legislative television, renewable resource grants, water projects and cultural and aesthetic grants.