Connect With Your Community!
Connect With Your Community!
Sorted by date Results 26 - 31 of 31
In late January, when Mary Windecker got up to testify in front of the budget committee considering how to fund Montana’s addiction and mental health treatment programs, her words cut through a typically bureaucratic proceeding to present an uncomfortable bottom line. “You’re all familiar now with some of the statistics across the state,” she said. “Montana scores at the highest of every indicator we don’t want to be in.” Windecker, director of the nonprofit Behavioral Health Alliance of Montana, was talking about the state’s suicide rates....
HELENA - Members of the House and Senate kicked off the 2021 Legislature in person at the state Capitol on Monday, formally convening and electing leadership for what may be a turbulent 90-day session during the COVID-19 pandemic. Lawmakers took their oaths of office on the House and Senate floors, observed by crowded galleries of family members, friends and members of the public. Republicans in the Senate and House partially complied with mask guidelines that have been stressed by public... Full story
HELENA - At St. Peter's Health in Helena, many doctors and medical staff spent the beginning of this week eagerly preparing for a pivotal moment. On Wednesday and Thursday of last week, the hospital said, frontline employees began receiving the first of two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech, marking what many health experts consider a seismic step in the fight against the coronavirus afflicting Montana and the country. The past several months of vaccine development...
When 9,750 doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine arrive in Montana as early as this week, the delivery will mark the beginning of a complex distribution plan organized by public health officials, hospital administrations and commercial pharmacies. The goal of the initial round of distribution, state officials say, is to get the vaccine to as many frontline health care workers as possible. As of Tuesday, Montana reported 17,293 active cases, with approximately 70% of the state's ICU beds full,...
HELENA - Lawmakers who sit on the House and Senate rules committees convened virtually and at the state Capitol this week to debate how the upcoming legislative session should operate as COVID-19 continues to spread across the state. After presiding over spirited and often heated discussions about several measures, including mask requirements and allowing lawmakers to participate virtually, newly appointed leadership said the Joint Rules Committee will reconvene on Wednesday, Dec. 16, to take...
HELENA — Republican lawmakers from the Joint Senate and House Rules Committee met last Thursday in an unusual effort to propose changes to legislative rules before the 2021 session. Democratic lawmakers boycotted the meeting, insisting that it was illegitimate and that discussing rule changes can wait until November, when the rules committee normally convenes. Republican lawmakers said the committee was within its right to meet, and the urgency warranted, given the circumstances created by the COVID-19 pandemic. Typically, the rules c...
