SB 500 Montana Senate · 2025 Regular Session

Establish the Montana family legacy home act

This bill, titled "Montana Family Legacy Home Act" (SB 500), clarifies administrative rules for selling Montana state-owned cabin and home site properties, directly affecting current lessees of these properties. It reduces the required deposit (bid bond) for prospective buyers from 20% to 5% of the sale price and allows current lessees to cancel a sale with 10 days' notice (unless another bid is placed), while requiring lessees to pay upfront for sale preparation costs (like appraisals or surveys). If the lessee doesn’t buy the property, they get their costs refunded; if someone else buys it, the new owner pays the actual costs at closing. The bill also exempts cabin/home site sales from standard environmental review requirements and makes the state cover survey costs upfront.
Bill status died 3 of 5 stages cleared
Introduction
Feb 2025
Committee Review
Mar 2025
Senate Passage
Mar 2025
House Passage
Governor
Introduced Feb 25, 2025 Last action May 23, 2025
Maddy AI version diff · 1 comparison

What changed between versions

LC1063.pdf SB0500_1.pdf · 4 edits
MODERATE
The bill has been renumbered from LC 1063 to SB 500.1, indicating a shift from a committee report or legislative code citation to a formal Senate Bill. The text includes minor formatting adjustments to section headers and page footers, while the core legal content regarding land sale cancellation requirements remains substantively unchanged.
TECHNICAL

The bill title and citation were updated from 'LC 1063' to 'SB 500.1' to reflect its official Senate Bill status.

The sponsor line was added to identify 'L. Smith, D. Fern' as the introducers of the bill.

Page footers were updated to change the bill identifier from 'LC 1063' to 'Authorized Print Version - SB 500'.

Minor formatting adjustments were made to section 7, reorganizing the text regarding bid bond retention for successful and unsuccessful bidders.

Floor votes · Senate Mar 7, 2025

How they voted

3712
Passed · 1 other
Total votes 50
Mar 7, 2025
D Democratic18
17 Yea 1
94% Yea
R Republican32
20 Yea 12 Nay
62% Yea
Vote distribution
All Yea All Nay Mixed No data
Full legislative history

Actions timeline

Total actions
25
Key actions
3
Committee
4
Amendments
1
Mar 26, 2025
Amended
(H) Tabled in Committee - (H) Natural Resources
lower
Mar 17, 2025
Committee
(H) Referred to Committee - (H) Natural Resources
lower
Mar 7, 2025
Senate · Passed
Senate Vote: pass (37-12-1)
senate
Mar 4, 2025
Upper · Passed
(S) Committee Report - (S) Natural Resources
upper
Mar 4, 2025
Upper · Passed
(S) Committee Executive Action - (S) Natural Resources
upper
Feb 26, 2025
Committee
(S) Referred to Committee - (S) Natural Resources
upper
Feb 25, 2025
Introduced
(S) Introduced
upper
1 primary · 0 co-sponsors

Sponsors

Role
Legislator
Party
State
District
P
Photo of Laura Smith
Laura Smith
DDemocratic
MT
40