The Legislative Finance Committee has called a special meeting to be held at 9 a.m. on Nov. 8.

The committee will discuss uses of revenue replacement funds proposed by the Governor’s Office of Budget and Program Planning:

• Allocation of $2,315,000 state fiscal recovery funds for use by the Office of the Public Defender and the Department of Justice to address the backlog of cases in the court system and assist the City of Billings and Yellowstone County with the significant rise in drug and violent crime in Yellowstone County.
• Allocation of $4,350,000 to launch a recruitment effort to attract out-of-state health care workers to move to Montana and help with the significant shortage of health care workers in the state. This funding will come from the reallocation of excess funds remaining from the Return-to-Work Bonus program operated by the Department of Labor and Industry.
• Allocation of any additional excess funds remaining from the Department of Labor and Industry Return-to-Work Bonus program to the Business Innovation program. Funds for the Business Innovation program were previously recommended for revenue replacement funding at the September Legislative Finance Committee. This proposal will be presented at the November meeting of the EWAC.

This will be a remote-only meeting. The agenda, other materials and the Zoom attendance request form can be found on the committee webpage.