The Montana Public Service Commission is sticking with a decision to get a legal opinion about money that member Brad Molnar took from NorthWestern Energy.

Molnar and fellow Republican Doug Mood were stymied Tuesday in an attempt to tone down a legal request being sent to Attorney General Mike McGrath.

Earlier this month, the three Democrats on the panel voted to specifically ask McGrath whether a $1,000 donation Molnar took from the company for a public service campaign was illegal.

The Republicans said Tuesday that they wanted to replace that letter with a more general letter that asked for clarification on rules surrounding the use of so-called ''constituency accounts'' held by many elected officials in the state.

''The issue becomes whether or not we are going to do it the sanitary way, or whether we are going to do it the dirty way,'' Mood said in an interview.

The decision two weeks ago to send the letter turned the normally staid commission into a jousting match. Mood walked out on the hearing in disgust.

Molnar said the Democratic majority was embarking on a ''political hatchet job,'' and at one point told Democrat Ken Toole to ''shut up.''

Molnar asked the commission to consider sending a different letter, a draft prepared by legal staff that does not dwell on Molnar's effort to organize a ''brownout'' in the Billings area last winter.

But PSC chairman Greg Jergeson told Molnar that only someone who voted to send the original letter could make a motion to prevent it from being sent.

''What I'd like to see is a motion to send that (other) draft, rather than the original we passed,'' Molnar said.

''You can not make that motion,'' Jergeson said.

Jergeson said he signed the original letter earlier Tuesday, and planned to send it to the attorney general later in the afternoon.