Tempel prepares to start work in Helena

He wasn’t on the ballot in November, but Russ Tempel will be among the freshman state senators who will be sworn in Monday in Helena, when the upcoming legislative session begins.

Representatives for the Cascade, Chouteau, Hill and Liberty County Commissions chose Tempel Friday to fill the vacancy created after Sen. Kris Hansen, R-Havre, resigned earlier this month to accept the position of chief legal counsel in the state Auditor’s Office.

The district stretches from Havre westward into Liberty County and down into Northern Cascade County.

Tempel, a three-term Liberty County Commissioner and Republican who was set to retire in January, said his selection came so quickly that he  has not had time to decide what issues he hopes to focus on in his new job.

“I haven’t had the opportunity to get into things,” he said.

Tempel said he plans to run for a full term in 2018, when Hansen’s term would have ended.

Tempel lives north of Chester and Joplin in a house built by his grandfather on land his grandfather homesteaded. Tempel graduated from the now defunct Joplin High School in 1966, before spending two years in the U.S. Army stationed in Germany.

He earned an associate degree in business from Northern Montana College — now Montana State University-Northern — in 1979. Tempel then went on to work as a farmer and custom cutter for 31 years before getting elected to the commission in 1998.

Despite spending the bulk of his life in Liberty County, Tempel said he is acquainted with the needs and issues of the Senate district’s other counties. He said the counties often share resources such as mental health services, and points to his service as a member of the Montana Association of Counties Community Economic Development and Labor Committee headed by Cascade County Commissioner Joe Briggs as an example of working with other counties.

Much like the state, counties have had to deal with reductions in the amount of money in their budgets due to the drop in revenue from energy production taxes, Tempel said. That money is collected by the state and then redistributed to counties.

“For me to go down there personally to save the world is not going to happen, but I’m definitely more conservative then I am anything else, so anything that the state can’t afford I am definitely probably going to vote against,” Tempel said.

The 2015 legislative session ended with the defeat of a $150 million bipartisan push for an infrastructure bill that was to be financed with a mix of cash on hand and state bonding. Though it passed the Senate, it fell one vote shy of the 67 needed in the House to approve state bonding.

Earlier this month in his budget, Gov. Steve Bullock, proposed a $292 million infrastructure package that would be paid for with a mix of borrowing, cash on hand and money from the coal severance tax fund.

Tempel said he has not heard the details of any infrastructure proposals and does not know what kind of proposal he would support.

Last legislative session, The Montana Healthy Economic Livelihood Partnership Act was passed with bipartisan support in the Legislature. The bill included an expansion of the state’s Medicaid program.

As of July, 47,399 Montanans gained health insurance under the program, according to the Montana Budget and Policy Center.

Tempel said that while he does not fault lawmakers for supporting the bill based on information they had at the time, he thinks the Medicaid expansion is too expensive. and therefore he would have voted against in it's current form.