HELENA — On the first day of the state legislative session, Republicans in the Montana Senate split over the rules the session should operate under. That division still remained, as of Wednesday morning.

The Senate Rules Committee passed an amended rules proposal on Wednesday, but it won’t be clear whether the change has the support to go into effect until the full Senate votes on it.

The Rules Committee adopted their original plan for Senate rules at a meeting last month. The biggest change they made was creating a new committee: the Executive Branch Review Committee.

Senate President Sen. Matt Regier, R-Kalispell, told MTN prior to the session that the Executive Branch Review Committee was intended to help deal with the huge volume of bills the Legislature has considered in recent sessions. He said they would handle a lot of proposals from the governor’s office and state agencies, including the bills from Gov. Greg Gianforte’s “Red Tape Relief” initiative.

“It's fairly wide open – and for a reason: It's got to take a lot of the burden of a lot of the other committees,” he said. “We're going to spread it out.”

However, on Monday, after senators were sworn in and started considering whether to adopt the proposed rules on a temporary basis, Senate Minority Leader Sen. Pat Flowers, D-Belgrade, proposed a change. It called for limiting the Executive Review Committee to only considering whether to confirm state agency directors, and it reassigned those senators serving on it to different committees.

Flowers said the new committee wasn’t the best use of legislators’ expertise.

“For many decades, we have not had an Executive Branch Review Committee; we haven't needed one,” he said. “I don't believe we need one now.”

Leaders from the Republican majority urged their members to keep the rules as originally proposed.

“Let's go forward, let’s support our Majority Leader, our president-elect,” said Sen. Greg Hertz, R-Polson. “I'd ask all Republicans to hold together and oppose this motion.”

However, nine Republicans ended up splitting with the rest of their caucus and joining Democrats to approve the change to the temporary rules. One of them was Sen. Jason Ellsworth, R-Hamilton, who was Senate president last session but was replaced by Regier this time. Ellsworth is chairing the Executive Review Committee.

During a GOP Senate caucus on Sunday evening, Ellsworth said his understanding had been that the Executive Review Committee would be responsible for hearing executive officer confirmations, but Regier said it would be up to the president’s discretion where to direct those confirmations.

During Monday’s debate on the Senate floor, Ellsworth again talked about his expectation that the committee would handle confirmations, and he said the number of Red Tape Relief bills was likely to be substantially smaller than last session.

“We have members on this committee that are experienced legislators,” he said. “I have three bills assigned to this committee – I’ve got to be honest with you, it's a 15-minute meeting to deal with those three bills. The experience that we would be lacking in the other committees would harm us as a body as a whole.”

The rules approved on Monday are temporary, until the Senate approves a permanent rules resolution. When the Senate Rules Committee met Wednesday to consider that resolution, they voted 10-8 to amend it and eliminate the Executive Review Committee all together. Republicans who backed the initial rules proposal supported the amendment, while Democrats and two Republicans – Ellsworth and Sen. Wendy McKamey, R-Great Falls – voted against it.

On Wednesday afternoon, the Senate Committee on Committees – which recommends committee assignments – met briefly to update its proposed assignments. That update removes all the legislators from the Executive Review Committee and reassigns them, in a plan similar to, but not exactly the same as what was proposed in the temporary rules.

The Senate is expected to take a vote on the permanent rules during their floor session Thursday. They could also vote on whether to accept the Committee on Committees recommendations.