Senate Bill 506 drew committee scrutiny over security, archiving and operational costs before the panel voted to table the measure.

Sponsor Senator Morgeau said the bill would let legislators designate a separate, non‑legislative email address for official business while making clear that records received at that address remain subject to Montana’s public‑records requirements. “It’s an option to afford people who want to consolidate and use one,” Morgeau said, describing his campaign/business email as an account he uses for legislative correspondence and saying he had no objection to that account being treated as public record.

Technical staff raised concerns about the bill’s immediate effective date and the cost of changing enterprise systems. Sky Foster, acting chief information officer for the legislative branch, said the branch builds IT systems on the presumption that legislators use official mt.gov email accounts and that reworking those systems would be “quite costly” and time consuming. Foster also noted security policy disallows automatic forwarding of legislative email because forwarding can create spoofing and blacklist risks.

Angie Carter, financial services manager, appeared as an informational witness; staff explained that legislator accounts are created automatically on election day but are not strictly required to be used. Committee members repeatedly cited the archival value of staff‑maintained mt.gov accounts — one senator said an available archive had been “incredibly valuable” for responding to records requests.

During executive action a senator moved SB 506 do pass, and another senator offered a substitute motion to table. The committee approved the substitute motion to table by voice vote; the transcript records at least one proxy vote (Senator Zolokov recorded as “aye” by proxy). No floor referral was ordered; the bill remains tabled in committee.

Why it matters: proponents argued the bill would let some legislators consolidate outreach and make recordkeeping easier for them; staff warned the change could undermine security, archiving and established workflows for public records requests.

Next steps: SB 506 was tabled in executive action; staff recommended additional technical work and a review of security, archiving and enterprise messaging dependencies before the committee take further action.