Montana Freedom Caucus Chairman Jerry Schillinger tried to direct $600,000 of state money to a private company even after it lost the bid for a state contract.

The contract, to provide training for post-traumatic stress disorder therapy, came from House Bill 832 in the 2025 session of the Montana Legislature.

A public records request by The Daily Montanan uncovered the effort to steer the money to Quresta.

Quresta is based in New York and describes itself as offering a “life-changing” PTSD treatment without medication.

HB 832 called for a competitive bidding process, and records show Quresta was rated last among the three companies that submitted proposals.

Rep. Jerry Schillinger, R-Circle, said he advocated for state money to go to a company that didn’t get a state contract partly because he believes it’s what legislators wanted. (Provided by the Montana Legislature)

In an email to the Montana Department of Labor obtained in the public records request, Schillinger argued the state should ignore the results of the competitive process and give the contract to Quresta anyway — or to no company at all.

Schillinger, a bill sponsor, defended the email last month in an interview with the Daily Montanan. The Republican from Circle said legislators intended the money to go to Quresta.

Bill drafting documents show Rep. Ron Marshall, who originally requested the bill, and Larry Anderson, a former county commissioner who worked on the legislation, wanted to fund the treatment by Quresta. But even in draft form, the bill called for a competitive selection.

“I think it’s just a shame that as promising as that treatment method sounded, it’s not going to get an opportunity to be tried here in Montana,” Schillinger said.

Correspondence obtained in the public records request by the Daily Montanan indicates the request from a legislator about a preferred vendor isn’t unusual.

In an email about Schillinger’s request, Department of Administration Director Misty Ann Giles told the Department of Labor commissioner and officials from the governor’s office “it is worth noting, I get these calls often.” Giles said if Schillinger had wanted a specific company to do the training, that information should have been included in the bill, but it wasn’t.

“While we want to have good working relationships with the legislature, it is not our job just to keep everyone happy when doing so violates the law,” Giles said in the email.

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Please don't let this become another Ellsworth situation. Just wow.

Alani Bankhead is running for the U.S. Senate as a Democrat to represent the Montanans with “five dollars in their pocket and a whole lot of heart,” not billionaires or corporate interests. 

That’s why she’s committed to staying in the race to replace outgoing Republican Sen. Steve Daines, Bankhead said during a press conference in Helena on Monday. 

Monday is the deadline for candidates to take themselves off the November ballot in Montana, and voters are set to have four candidates on the ballot. 

Bankhead won the state’s Democratic primary by 12,000 votes, but has faced stiffer competition from an independent candidate, Seth Bodnar, whose campaign has consolidated left-of-center support in the state. 

Having multiple candidates has split Democrats within Montana and nationally, many of whom see Bodnar as having a likelier path to victory. A similar trend has played out in other reliably Republican states, with the Democratic candidates in Nebraska, South Dakota and Idaho dropping out in races with independents. 

In polling, a four-way race — with Libertarian Kyle Austin — is easily won by the Republican candidate, Kurt Alme. The race becomes more competitive in a two-way race, but only Bodnar ever tops Alme, according to polls affiliated with his campaign. 

About 75 people gathered at a vigil at Hill Park in Helena on Monday night for two men killed by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents earlier this month in Texas and Maine.

Attendees delivered a eulogy for Lorenzo Salgado Araujo and Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, while also expressing frustration with federal immigration policies.

The event was hosted by Indivisible Helena and sought to remember people who have been killed by federal agents since President Donald Trump retook power and made deportation and arrests a top agency priority at ICE. The group made 26 signs, one for each of the people who have died in ICE Detention in 2026.

At the Helena event on Monday, which lasted for about an hour in the smoke and heat, religious leaders and advocates spoke about the frustration they felt with the country’s immigration policies and how those in ICE custody are being treated.

Basically: good luck if you're wanting to go to the Fair.

I live on McHugh. Guess I'm going the back way home for a couple of days. 😞

The Montana Lottery miscalculated its finances by $18.5 million over the last several years, according to a recent report from the state’s Legislative Audit Division. That doesn’t mean $18.5 million is missing, but that the agency overstated and understated its accounts by that amount, the report found. The routine audit identified accounting errors and failures of internal controls, but did not allege fraud. 

“The Montana State Lottery needs to consider and implement solutions to address a variety of internal control weaknesses related to complete and accurate financial reporting,” auditors wrote.

Montana Legislative Audit Division report on Montana Lottery (June, 2026)Read the report

The Montana Lottery Commission declined to answer questions from Montana Free Press about how the agency mismanaged its finances and how it plans to improve its procedures.  

But public commission meetings, along with the Legislative Audit Division’s report, paint a picture. 

The audit division’s 2025 audit, which looked at 2023 finances, revealed delayed financial transfers. The lottery makes money by keeping the amount of ticket sales and wager revenue that isn’t spent on prizes, vendors or other expenses. By state statute, the lottery is supposed to transfer that revenue to a scholarship fund and the General Fund, an all-purpose pool of state money, four times each year. The lottery made only three transfers in fiscal year 2023.

“Lottery personnel explained that the third quarter transfer was delayed because the Financial Services director was unavailable to calculate the net revenues and provide the quarterly financial statements to the commission for approval,” auditors wrote.

Then, in March last year, the lottery’s director of financial services, Armond Sergeant, died unexpectedly. Sergeant had been in the role since 2017.

The most recent audit found even more accounting errors in 2024, including inaccuracies in the lottery’s ledger entries that had been compounding for years. The auditors also noted that Sergeant’s absence generally hamstrung the agency’s accounting processes. 

“After the loss of the financial services director, [the] lottery struggled to complete its financial statements, explain accounting balances, support certain records, and make required transfers of lottery revenue on time,” auditors wrote.  

The lottery asked Chet McLean, an accountant in the governor’s budget office, to take a look at the agency’s finances in March, months before state auditors released their report in June. Speaking to the Lottery Commission in March, McLean described what he found as “one of the more complicated accounting questions I’ve dealt with in my career.” 

“I really had to dig, because I would get into one layer and then realize that there was another layer below it,” McLean said. 

State auditors noted that the lottery had poor internal controls to detect errors.

“The lottery relied on control procedures developed several years ago and on the institutional knowledge of its long-serving financial services director,” auditors wrote.

For instance, three of five lottery agency accounting staff could both log and approve accounting entries. That degree of staff access was excessive, according to the audit. 

“Such access does not provide the proper segregation of duties, as required by state policy,” auditors wrote. “It also increases the risk that material misstatements could occur and go undetected, since users can post directly to the accounting records without oversight.”

The auditors also noted “significant delays” in receiving the financial statements from lottery officials, material that was necessary to complete the audit. In addition, auditors issued a “disclaimer of opinion,” which means they were not confident their audit offered a comprehensive picture of the lottery’s financial situation because lottery management “could not provide representations over the completeness and accuracy of the financial reporting package.”

The Legislative Audit Committee, which reviews reports from the audit division, will meet next week to discuss the findings. Committee member Sen. Emma Kerr-Carpenter, D-Billings, said the audit doesn’t shock her. 

“Every year there’s a financial audit where there are big things that need to be addressed,” Kerr-Carpenter told MTFP.

She also said that the legislative committee has limited options.

“Formally, we can tell them we want them to come back and report their progress with remedying the issues,” Kerr-Carpenter said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s something we decide to do as a committee.”

The audit recommended that the agency address the issues revealed in the audit, and the lottery concurred with the recommendation. 

The Montana Lottery Commission is an executive agency, which means the governor has the authority to appoint or remove its members. Charlie Roth, a spokesperson for the governor’s office, told MTFP that “the governor’s office is reviewing the report and supports the department’s corrective actions.”

Legislative Audit Committee Chair Rep. Jerry Schillinger, R-Circle, told MTFP that he expects “some robust discussion” at the committee’s meeting next week.

Speaker of the House Brandon Ler wanted to relocate the Held v. Montana II lawsuit, which challenges three environmental laws, to a court in his legislative district

A district court judge ruled against an attempt by the state and Montana Speaker of the House Brandon Ler to move a climate-based lawsuit to a different venue hours away, citing a recently passed law.

The controversial youth-led climate lawsuit, Held v. Montana II, was filed in Broadwater County, which along with Lewis and Clark County, comprises the First Judicial District, where the initial Held v. Montana trial took place. The new suit challenges three laws passed last year — House Bills 285 and 291, as well as Senate Bill 221.  

But Ler sought to move the case to the Seventh Judicial District in Sidney — more than seven hours away by interstate travel — using a law passed in 2025 allowing a bill sponsor to intervene in any lawsuit brought against their bills and have the case moved to a court within their legislative district. 

Ler’s argument, which the state of Montana joined in, cited the new statutory right to transfer venue — from Senate Bill 97 — recognizing location as “a personal privilege belonging to the defendant,” according to his motion. 

District Court Judge Mike Menehan, however, denied the motion, saying that because the lawsuit challenges multiple laws, as well as the state of Montana, Gov. Greg Gianforte, and the Montana Department of Environmental Quality, the current court is the proper venue. 

“Our case belongs in the place where these laws were written and near where my fellow plaintiffs and I actually live,” plaintiff Grace Gibson-Snyder said in a statement. “This ruling is a win for me, my fellow plaintiffs, and all Montanans.”

Senate Bill 221 was sponsored by Sen. Wylie Galt, whose district includes part of Broadwater County, which is why the plaintiffs filed the suit there.

Menahan wrote that court precedent holds when multiple counties could be considered the proper for a legal proceeding and it is filed in one of them, “‘‘no motion may be granted to change the place of trial upon the ground that the action is not brought in a proper county.’”

In a statement to the Daily Montanan, Ler said that he is disappointed in Menahan’s order. 

“For too long, politically charged lawsuits have been funneled into the same courts before the same judges,” Ler said. “SB 97 was designed to restore balance by ensuring that cases with statewide consequences can be heard outside Helena and Missoula. Montana is a big state, and justice should not be concentrated in a few zip codes. We remain confident in the merits of these laws and will continue fighting to ensure every Montanan has an equal stake in our judicial system.”

In two additional orders Menahan handed down in the last week, the court denied multiple motions from groups seeking to participate as amici curiae — friends of the court — to file their own arguments.

Thirty-eight Republican legislators sought to intervene to argue why SB 97 should allow for the venue change.

On the other side, six traditionally left-leaning organizations including the ACLU of Montana and Montana Public Interest Research Group asked to intervene to challenge Ler’s request to move.

The court’s decision to keep the current venue made both requests moot and Menahn denied their participation.