Permitting Reform Will Enable Montana To Build The Future

"Thanks to reforms like HB 466 and recent federal action, our leaders are cutting permitting red tape so we can build the projects our future depends on, helping to ensure that Montana and America’s golden age is ahead of us, not behind."

It’s over 100 days into 2025, and already there’s serious momentum to reform our permitting process so America, and Montana, can finally build again.

At the federal level, President Trump’s administration is leading the charge. Through a series of executive orders, federal agencies are moving quickly to cut red tape, streamline permitting for critical minerals and energy projects, and restore predictability to a process that has long favored obstruction over progress.

Here in Montana, lawmakers are echoing the sentiment. One significant reform this legislative session is House Bill 466, carried by Rep. John Fitzpatrick of Anaconda. HB 466 brings long-overdue clarity to Montana’s permitting and environmental review process, and it was just signed by Governor Gianforte.

To understand why HB 466 matters, you need to understand the system it improves.

In the 1970s, the federal government passed the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and Montana followed with the Montana Environmental Policy Act (MEPA). These laws were designed to ensure that major government actions consider environmental impacts beforehand. Agencies must produce detailed environmental review documents when a proposed action has an adverse effect on the human environment.

But what began as a reasonable safeguard has morphed into a bureaucratic mess. Ambiguous definitions have invited constant litigation, forcing agencies to spend hundreds of pages and months or even years on analysis, even for projects with little to no environmental risk. These delays affect everything from essential energy and infrastructure to forest restoration and fire mitigation projects.

HB 466 changes that by codifying and strengthening the use of “categorical exclusions.”

Categorical exclusions are a tool that allows agencies to quickly approve actions that are known to have no significant environmental impact, without having to conduct a full environmental review. While MEPA rules have technically allowed categorical exclusions for years, they were only loosely defined in administrative rules and inconsistently applied. Federal agencies, by contrast, have used them with confidence under NEPA.

HB 466 puts into statute a process that empowers state agencies and the legislature to adopt categorical exclusions, and also authorizes the use of existing federal exclusions here in Montana. That means Montana doesn’t have to start from scratch. Agencies can now apply hundreds of exclusions already developed at the federal level. Here are just a few examples of the kinds of projects that could now move forward with a streamlined review process:

• Restoration of wetlands, streams, and riparian areas

• Exploration for oil, gas, geothermal, or other mineral or energy resources

• Plugging abandoned or orphaned wells

• Forest restoration, fire mitigation, and post-fire restoration

• Upgrading or rebuilding existing powerlines

• Installing water, sewer, electrical, fiber optic, or other utilities within existing rights-of-way

In the past, each of these projects could have been held up by lengthy and unnecessary paperwork and analysis. Now, they can proceed faster, all while upholding Montanans’ constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment.

This reform is not about cutting corners—it’s about cutting red tape where it clearly isn’t needed. HB 466 ensures that agencies spend their time and resources on projects that actually warrant deeper review, not on unnecessary and bureaucratic paperwork for projects that don’t have an adverse impact on the environment.

By aligning Montana law more closely with federal practice and finally putting categorical exclusions into statute, HB 466 marks a major leap forward in making Montana’s permitting process faster, clearer, and more dynamic.

Thanks to reforms like HB 466 and recent federal action, our leaders are cutting permitting red tape so we can build the projects our future depends on, helping to ensure that Montana and America’s golden age is ahead of us, not behind.

This column originally appeared in Lee Newspapers.