Gun, sheriff bills challenge authority of federal government

Rep. Krayton Kerns (R-Laurel), left, with supporters of his bill to prohibit state enforcement of any new federal gun ban

Conservative Montana lawmakers are bringing forth a series of bills this session focused on the reach and authority granted by the 2nd Amendment.

Last week, The House Judiciary Committee looked into a bill allowing guns in locked vehicles on public K-12 school grounds. This week, the issue moves to college campuses. HB 240, sponsored by Representative Cary Smith (R-Billings) would remove laws restricting firearms on public college campuses. The Montana University System now typically only allows weapons on campus in authorized storage areas (see the University of Montana and Montana State University firearms policies.)

A number of students from both UM and MSU spoke in favor of Smith’s bill. Christine Gobrogge is pursuing her PhD in physical chemistry at MSU. Between her school work and teaching undergraduate courses, she spends the majority of her time on campus.  She says she has learned how to use a firearm in the class she took for her concealed carry permit.

“Because of the laws right now, I can’t protect myself or my students to the best of my ability,” she said. She walks to and from school in the dark most days and worries about fending off assaults.

Associate Commissioner of Higher Education Kevin McRae spoke against the bill, he says   campuses employ full-fledged police departments to respond to threats on campus. He says this bill would create a double standard between college campuses and other state government property.

“If this bill passes,” McRae said. “It will remain illegal to carry guns into this capitol building or any other state government building, but apparently welcome and encouraged to carry guns into college sports stadiums, tailgate events, college classrooms (or) dining halls.”

A legal review note from the Legislative Services Department also suggests the State Legislature may not have the authority to pass such a law, saying that authority falls to the Montana Board of Regents.

Federal Authority

The House Judiciary Committee also heard two bills from Representative Krayton Kerns (R-Laurel) asserting states rights over those of the federal government. With his HB 302, Kerns is seeking to prohibit the enforcement of potential new firearms laws being discussed in Washington D.C. in the wake of the Newtown, Connecticut school shooting. Proposals from the Obama Administration favor a ban on some semiautomatic weapons and large magazines and would require universal background checks before new guns may be purchased. A handful of Montana Sheriffs have already said they won’t enforce new gun laws.

“This is the response of a sovereign state to the unconstitutional usurpation of power by the federal government,” Kerns said. The Representative and bill supporters brought up 2nd Amendment rights as those which guarantee the ability to protect oneself and say the government may not infringe upon them.

“Folks inside the beltway of Washington D.C. don’t think like we do and they don’t live like we do,” said supporter Lloyd Phillips. “This is Montanans standing together for our rights and against ideas that really are foreign to us, that aren’t our ideas and they don’t fit with our lifestyle.”

Former Navy SEAL John Bowenhollow opposes the bill, saying rights guaranteed under the Second Amendment are not unlimited and at times citizens of a state need to look at what’s good for the nation as a whole. “Do we do the citizens of Chicago any good

 if we say we’re not going to enforce a law and that becomes a pipeline down I-90 to them.”

Opponents to the bill also say deciding not to enforce certain laws passed by the federal government would be in direct conflict with the US Constitution’s supremacy clause (Article VI, Clause II).

Sheriff Supremacy

Rep. Kerns is also sponsoring a bill (HB 303)requiring federal law enforcement officers to obtain permission of the local county sheriff before being able to make arrests, conduct searches or seize property. Kerns says this recognizes a sheriff as “the supreme law enforcement officer in the county.”

Supporter, Montana Shooting Sports Association President Gary Marbut says sheriffs being elected to office by local constituents provides a level of accountability not available with federal officials.

The Montana Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association opposes the bill. Spokesman Jim Smith says it’s an impractical and unworkable bill.

 

How a New York newspaper may affect Montana’s concealed carry laws

Jan Anderson of the Boulder Monitor speaks before the Senate Judiciary Committee Wednesday

When a suburban New York newspaper, The Journal News published the names and addresses of concealed carry gun permit holders in two NY counties in December, gun rights advocates were enraged. NRA President David Keene called it “an incredibly irresponsible… attempt by the elite to demonize people who own firearms legitimately,” according to POLITICO.

Journal News Publisher Janet Hasson said, “In the wake of the Sandy Hook shootings, (we) thought the community should know where gun permit holders in their community were, in part to give parents an opportunity to make careful decisions about their children’s safety.” The newspaper has since removed the listing due to a new law passed in New York which provides increased privacy protections to gun permit owners.

Montana lawmakers are now working on similar legislation. On Wednesday, Senator Eric Moore (R-Miles City) spoke on his SB 145 before the Senate Judiciary Committee. He cited reports of permit holders being harassed after their information was published in The Journal News. “Let’s be proactive,” Moore told the committee, “and avoid this situation in Montana by protecting the privacy and safety of our law abiding citizens who choose to obtain a concealed carry permit.”

The Montana Department of Justice says over 30-thousand concealed carry permit holders live in the state, as of mid-December.

The bill would make the information one has to fill in for a concealed carry permit confidential information for use only by the local sheriff, who decides on the distribution of the permits. This information, including “name, address, physical description, signature, driver’s license number…and a picture of the permittee,” is currently public record.

Bill supporter Montana Shooting Sports Association Lobbyist Doug Nulle, said this information being public can subject a concealed carry applicant to “a wide variety of crimes,” and said that can be a particular concern for “retired law enforcement officers, private investigators…stalking victims and victims of domestic violence.”

Boulder Monitor Publisher and Editor Jan Anderson argued against the bill. “There are legitimate reasons the public is entitled to certain information and indeed there are valid reasons in this situation,” she said, suggesting someone feeling threatened should be able to check if the person threatening them has a concealed weapons permit.

The Montana Newspaper Association also opposed it, arguing instead for emphasis on another bill, SB 37, which makes much of the same information confidential, but keeps the concealed carry applicant’s name and address on public record.

No action was taken on the bill Wednesday.

BOTH SIDES: I-166, establishing a state policy that corporations are not people

This week we’ve been looking at the ballot measures up for voter approval this November. We now move to Initiative 166, a law establishing a statewide policy saying corporations are not people. The initiative attempts to respond to a string of court decisions gutting Montana’s campaign spending laws.

The 9^th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has reinstated a campaign contribution law struck down by District Judge Charles Lovell last week. The court granted the emergency stay requested by the state Attorney General’s office, saying Judge Lovell did not provide enough information to justify throwing out state donation limits. Lovell has responded with a 38-page document supporting his originally terse decision. The 9^th circuit has yet to answer that.

Earlier this year, Lovell struck laws requiring attack ads to disclose voting records as well as a ban on knowingly false statements in those ads. A federal appeals court overturned the state’s ban on partisan endorsements of judicial candidates. And this summer the U.S. Supreme Court threw out Montana’s century old Corrupt Practices act, which banned corporate spending in elections.

The catalyst behind all these decisions has been the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision, one of the court’s most controversial of the last decade. That ruling allows corporations or unions to spend unlimited amounts of money on advertisements directly in favor of or against political candidates. Before the ruling, individuals within that corporation would have to spend their own money—and the amount was limited.

“We’ve had a fair system of elections. We’ve benefited from that. Now the Supreme Court is saying ‘no, you have to have corruption,” said CB Pearson, the campaign treasurer for  the committee supporting I-166, Stand With Montanans.

Here’s how the ballot starts:

“Initiative 166 establishes a state policy that corporations are not entitled to constitutional rights because they are not human beings, and charges Montana elected and appointed officials, state and federal, to implement that policy.”

At first, it sounds pretty broad, the full ballot language focuses more directly on corporate campaign contributions.

(SEE FULL I-166 LANGUAGE HERE)

Basically, it’s calling on state leaders to do whatever they can to reverse or work around Citizens United.

Pearson says large multi-national businesses should not be able to spend at will from their corporate treasuries to influence elections.

“That means just as they buy cars or nails…they just want to buy politics for an end result and that end result is profit and it may not have the people of Montana’s best interests at heart,” Pearson said.

However, the decision has no legally binding way to prevent corporate political spending, because of Citizens United. It would more or less be a statement from the people. Proponents still think it’s an important statement to make, like 94 year old former Republican Secretary of State, Verner Bertelsen.

“This becomes a tremendously big national issue not only in Montana but all the states of the union,” Bertelsen said.

Bertelsen thinks a movement to reverse Citizens United could start in a rural state, spreading across the country—eventually to the halls of congress.

“The end point is a constitutional amendment,” he said.

Republican State Senator Dave Lewis opposes the Initiative.

“If the people of Montana vote for this, nothing is going to happen,” he said, because to pass a constitutional amendment, “it takes two thirds of the members of congress and three quarters of the states to approve it and I do not see that as even possible…It seems like such a waste of time and effort to put it on the ballot and ask people to vote for it.”

And then there are those who oppose I-166 because they want Citizens United in place, like Montana Shooting sports association president Gary Marbut. His association is a nonprofit corporation that pursues and promotes pro-gun policies. And Marbut says Citizens United gives his organization the opportunity to be a political player in a way it never has been.

“We’re not Exxon, we’re not Citibank, we’re a nonprofit corporation of like-minded individuals joined together in a common purpose,” Marbut said.

He says his nonprofit should be able to spend money to try to affect policy. He says that’s why it exists, why the members pay dues.

The conservative group American Tradition Partnership has been behind several of the lawsuits against Montana’s campaign laws. The group has been arguing spending money on ads, even false ones, falls under freedom of speech guaranteed in the first amendment. Meanwhile, the State Attorney General’s office is seeking sanctions against American tradition, calling it a shadowy front group illegally trying to conceal its political spending.

District Judge Charles Lovell says much has been made of whether striking Montana’s contribution limit is good policy and good for Montana. But he says the case is not about good policy, he says it’s about following the law set out by the U.S. Supreme Court in Citizens United.

With I-166, Montana voters will say whether or not they feel the nation’s highest court was wise in setting that law.

This story uses excerpts from my Montana PBS special on the ballot measures, “From the People: Montana’s 2012 Ballot Measures”

–The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Proposed initiative would direct state lawmakers to ban corporate political spending

Former MT Sec. of State Verner Bertelsen

A Montana group is looking to put an initiative on the November ballot that would set state policy banning corporate money from elections. The petition filed Tuesday with the Secretary of State’s office attempts to respond to the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision which prohibits corporate spending bans.

This initiative would be a non-binding statement from the people more than anything else.

93 year old former republican Secretary of State Verner Bertelsen says he tries to limit his political and community involvement these days. But he spoke to reporters about this new petition effort called ‘Stand with Montanans’ on Tuesday. He said he was making the exception to help address what he says is an important problem for both parties. And he’s looking all the way to the top.

“Without an amendment to the U.S. Constitution declaring that corporations are not people that money is not speech, policies aimed at cleaning up speech and reducing the volume and influence of money in politics will remain under serious threat,” Bertelsen said.

In a small way, that’s what this petition seeks to eventually accomplish. The group Common Cause Montana filed the petition. After it’s approved, Common Cause will try to gather the signatures needed to put it on the ballot as an initiative.

It would provide Montanans a chance to respond to Citizens United as well as the Supreme Court’s blocking of Montana’s statewide corporate spending ban. Helena Attorney Jonathan Motl wrote the petition.

“This policy says to Montana’s elected and appointed office holders ‘work to change the law of the land so that the political system belongs to human beings (individuals) not corporations,” Motl said.

Motl says it would direct state lawmakers to do what they could to limit corporate spending, trying to find what could work within Citizens United. It also would call on Montana’s Congressional Delegation to work to pass an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to nullify Citizens United. But all of this would be essentially a statement from the voters. It’s non-binding, lawmakers wouldn’t have to do anything.

The Montana Shooting Sports Association is part of the lawsuit against the state’s corporate spending ban.

“Well this sounds to me like some kind of PR campaign than an actual initiative. There are a lot of steps between getting signatures on some petition forms and amending the US constitution,” said Association President Gary Marbut. He argues groups like his should be allowed to use member dues to help influence elections.

Petition author Jonathan Motl says even though this initiative would not be binding, it is far from useless fluff. He says statements like this are how society changes direction.

“It is an essential part of democracy that we revisit the way that we select our leaders and talk about how we elect our leaders and when we quit doing it, we’re gonna be in trouble,” he said.

Motl hopes it could be part of a groundswell that could one day charge federal policies. But the first step is seeing if his petition can gather enough signatures to even make the ballot.