A Montana environmental group is suing the state’s largest utility company and its public regulators. It says they violated a law aimed at developing small renewable energy projects. The Montana Environmental Information Center claims Montana’s Public Service Commission illegally gave NorthWestern Energy a pass on buying enough energy from what are known as Community Renewable Energy Projects, or CREPs.

Pregnant women in Montana should have a lot easier time getting help for addiction and mental health problems if $5 million in grant funding announced Monday works as intended. Most of the money is coming from the federal government, but at least $1.2 million has been pledged by the Montana Healthcare Foundation.

Montana’s Gross State Product, wages and personal income are expected to grow between 3 and 4 percent each of the next few years, according to reports given to lawmakers Monday. That growth rate is slightly below the state’s long-term trend since 2001. Those reports from the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Division drove a projection for how much tax revenue Montana is expected to bring in as lawmakers start building the state’s next two-year budget.

Governor Steve Bullock has appointed a former liaison in the Obama White House to a state cabinet position leading the Montana Department of Environmental Quality.

Both the Montana Governor’s Office and a group of independent legislative researchers have come up with estimates of how much money will be available for state budgeting over the next two years. The different projections for how much lawmakers can assume the state will earn from taxes and other revenues is separated by about two tenths of a percent. That amounts to about $10 million. That’s a relatively small amount in the context of the more than $5 billion in revenues that both estimates say

Governor Steve Bullock released his draft state budget and priorities for the upcoming legislative session Thursday. At the top of the list: Re-authorizing Medicaid expansion . “There’s too much at stake to not keep Medicaid expansion going in Montana,” Bullock says. Montana’s Medicaid expansion provides health coverage to just over 96,000 people, and it’s set to expire next June.

Montana’s legislative session doesn’t start for another seven weeks, but state lawmakers met at the capitol Wednesday to elect political leaders in the state House and Senate. On tap for 2019: Another political face-off between the Republican majority in the House and Senate and Democratic Governor Steve Bullock - particularly over the future of Medicaid expansion in Montana.

Tester picks up votes in Trump country, and Montanans continue a long tradition of ticket-splitting. Governor Bullock has his hands full with another Republican-led Legislature, and this election stands out in many ways from previous Montana mid-terms. Sally Mauk, Chuck Johnson and Rob Saldin break it all down in this season's final installment of "Campaign Beat."

The Montana health department is proposing a $1-per-hour wage increase for direct-care workers for disability services. It’s part of Governor Steve Bullock’s plan to restore budget cuts enacted over the last two years. But not all the money that was cut is getting put back.

In Jon Tester’s narrow re-election to the U.S. Senate, he won the support of seven Montana counties that had voted for President Donald Trump in 2016. Several of the counties that backed Tester this year were not just casual Trump supporters in 2016. The president won a couple by more than the 20 point margin he received statewide, including Lake County.