Gianforte analyzing bills affecting wildfire policy and home insurance in Montana

Gov. Greg Gianforte signed several bills last week that make tweaks to Montana’s wildland fire policies and seek to create more insurance transparency as the primary months of the 2025 wildfire season approach.

One bill is focused on home insurance policies and ensuring Montana homeowners know the source of wildfire risk scores that some insurance companies use to assess risks and liabilities when deciding whether to insure a property and for how much.

Sponsored by Rep. Curtis Schomer, R-Billings, House Bill 533 would ensure a current or prospective homeowner would know within 30 days of the request the current wildfire risk score for the property, possible ranges for the score in the future, who created the score and when, and how the score was reached.

He described the bill as a consumer protection effort so third-party vendors that some insurance companies use can’t provide a score without transparency for the homeowner.

Private contract firefighters with Wildfire Defense Systems

Private contract firefighters with Wildfire Defense Systems work structure protection on homes near the Horse Gulch fire on July 11.

As the bill progressed through the Legislature this year, lawmakers and proponents of the proposal told stories of either themselves, their constituents, or others they knew having their home insurance policies canceled abruptly or being unable to get insurance altogether — especially if they lived in the wildland urban interface, the areas of the state where housing development starts to mix with undeveloped land and vegetation.

An October 2024 Legislative Fiscal Division report found only 1.5% of land in Montana is in the WUI, but so are 63% of all homes. Higher-value homes are more often in the wildland urban interface, and the cost of homeowner insurance policies in Montana jumped about 46% from 2018 to 2023, according to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners.

Sens. Sue Vinton and Daniel Zolnikov, both Billings Republicans, said they’d had their home insurance policies canceled recently because of wildfire risk. Vinton said she’d had her policy for 30 years and lamented that legal action could be one of the only ways to try to restore the policy or remove the wildfire risk score assigned to the property.

“This is getting really serious,” said Sen. Willis Curdy, a Missoula Democrat and former smokejumper, when discussing the bill on the Senate floor in April. “So again, here’s a way the consumer can say, ‘Why did you do this?’ And they have to give good reasons.”

Gianforte also last week signed House Bill 130, sponsored by Rep. Llew Jones, R-Conrad, which changes the state’s wildland fire policy. The changes say the Department of Natural Resources and Conservation has “a duty” to engage a wildfire regardless of who owns the land if it's within a certain distance of state or municipal land.

Under the bill, if the department determines that a federal agency — the U.S. Forest Service or Bureau of Land Management, for instance — is not performing fire suppression activity under the department’s requirements to protect state and private land within 5 miles of the fire, the state would be able to step in and fight, then bill that agency for fire suppression needs from the state.

Carrying the bill in the Senate, Ethridge Republican Sen. Butch Gillespie called it the “put out the fire very quickly bill.”

“Win, win. Fire out in a hurry and we let the federal government chip in on the costs,” he said. “So, it’s kind of a good deal all the way around.”

The Gianforte administration has a policy of trying to suppress every fire before it reaches 10 acres in size, and the governor has been critical of the Forest Service in particular for what he says has been efforts not to immediately fully suppress fires at the federal level and fights over cost-sharing.

Last year, six researchers in Montana published a study in the scientific journal Nature Communications showing longstanding policies to quickly suppress every wildfire may be causing larger and hotter fires in the long run.

Horse Gulch fire

Gov. Greg Gianforte, left, is briefed on the Horse Gulch fire by Operations Section Chief Brandon Cichowski at the Shannon Boat Launch on July 16.

With those differences in mind, the Legislature also passed two study bills and a resolution to both analyze wildfire suppression techniques in the year and a half before the next legislative session and to try to get federal agencies to change their suppression tactics.

Through House Bill 70, lawmakers approved $50,000 for the Environmental Quality Council to study suppression techniques on state and federal land; both human and land and air resources to fight fires; and how private management and grazing techniques can affect wildfires in the future. The report will have to be submitted by mid-September 2026 so legislators can craft bills for the 2027 session. It has already been signed by the governor.

House Joint Resolution 62 will require a report be produced by the same date from an interim committee that analyzes how worsening fire conditions are affecting Montana and how the state and local governments can better prepare communities for wildfires and mitigate their impacts on the front and back ends.

Black Canyon fire

Firefighters work the Black Canyon fire outside White Sulphur Springs in August 2024.

All four of those bills passed both chambers with broad support from both parties. But one that passed on party lines only, with no support from Democrats, was House Joint Resolution 35, sponsored by Rep. Jedediah Hinkle, a Belgrade Republican.

It, too, says state agencies should step into firefighting efforts on federal land to protect public health and safety, that federal agencies ensure there is always an aggressive initial attack on all wildfires, and that the feds try to keep all federal roads open even during fire suppression activities. It also says the Forest Service has been broadly utilizing a “let it burn” policy for decades, a claim disputed by the Forest Service and opponents of the bill who have worked for or with those same federal agencies.

The final wildfire bill awaiting the governor’s consideration is House Bill 421, which would slightly raise the fee assessed to landowners for protection of their forested lands — a request that came from landowners who want extra protection of those timber stands and other lands, said Sen. Mike Cuffe, R-Eureka, who carried the bill in the Senate.

The Legislature in 2023 put $60 million over the biennium toward expanding state wildfire preparedness and forest management and added fire crews and air resources to its fleet. Gianforte in January lauded the DNRC for tamping down 95% of wildfires on state land before they reached 10 acres in size.

“Each fire season, our dedicated wildland firefighters at DNRC respond to every fire with one goal — put out the fire as safely and as quickly as possible,” he said at the time.

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