HELENA — Reserve deputy sheriff’s officers volunteer their time to keep our communities safe, and a proposed bill in the Montana legislature would allow them to be compensated for that time.

“They’re putting their life at risk. They’re putting all of the liability risks and issues, all the danger they’re in, and then you’re asking them to do it with no pay. I think that’s also a challenge and we need to overcome those challenges,” said Jesse Slaughter, the sheriff of Cascade County.

He brought the idea of paying reserve deputies to Montana House majority leader Steve Fitzpatrick, who proposed House Bill 323.

The bill would add an amendment to a current Montana law that would allow, quote, “a county to provide a salary to reserve deputy sheriff’s officers.”

Slaughter said, “We have budget and mechanisms that we could pay for them, but the law currently doesn’t allow us to. I think the change in our culture and the change in the need for security risks in our communities. We need to change the laws to fit those.”

Montana requires all reserve deputies to have 88 hours of training, with additional in-service field training.

There are five reserve deputies and 46 full-time sheriff’s deputies in Cascade County.

Lewis and Clark County has 56 full-time sheriff’s deputies and ten reserve deputies.

“We use them every day. I could use more reserve deputies, I really could,” said Leo Dutton, sheriff of Lewis and Clark County.

Slaughter said, “Volunteerism, unfortunately, and it’s really sad, just isn’t what it used to be.”

Slaughter says one of the primary purposes for paying reserve deputies is to increase the amount they have, hopefully putting them in schools for security.

Reserve deputies can operate on their own while being supervised via a radio.

“We have processed through every different way to try to do school safety. Whether it’s full-time deputies who are doing it, that becomes very cost-prohibitive. When we start arming staff and different things in schools, we run into liability issues,” said Slaughter.

If HB 323 passes, county commissions will be able to decide whether or not reserve deputies can be paid and how much.