Montana Food, Resource, and Commodity Assurance Act

         SIXTY-NINTH LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF MONTANA
                          2025 Regular Session

---

                          HOUSE/SENATE BILL ____

BY __________ (Introduced by request)

CONCERNING THE ESTABLISHMENT OF STATE PROGRAMS FOR FOOD AND COMMODITY ASSURANCE, PUBLIC HEALTH AND WELFARE, AND EDUCATION MODERNIZATION TO ENSURE THE MATERIAL SECURITY, PHYSIOLOGICAL WELL-BEING, AND DEVELOPMENTAL MATURITY OF ALL MONTANA RESIDENTS, AND, IN CONNECTION THEREWITH, AMENDING TITLES 20, 50, 53, AND 80 OF THE MONTANA CODE ANNOTATED, MAKING APPROPRIATIONS, AND PROVIDING EFFECTIVE DATES.

                             A BILL FOR AN ACT

LONG TITLE

AN ACT CONCERNING THE CREATION OF THE MONTANA FOOD, RESOURCE, AND COMMODITY ASSURANCE ACT, AND, IN CONNECTION THEREWITH, ESTABLISHING THE MONTANA FOOD ASSURANCE PROGRAM BY ADDING A NEW PART TO TITLE 80, CHAPTER 1, OF THE MONTANA CODE ANNOTATED; CREATING THE MONTANA ESSENTIAL GOODS PROGRAM BY ADDING A NEW PART TO TITLE 90, CHAPTER 1, OF THE MONTANA CODE ANNOTATED; ESTABLISHING THE MONTANA PUBLIC HEALTH AND WELFARE FINDINGS BY AMENDING TITLE 50, CHAPTER 1, OF THE MONTANA CODE ANNOTATED; ENACTING THE MONTANA EDUCATION MODERNIZATION ACT BY AMENDING TITLE 20, CHAPTER 7, AND ADDING A NEW CHAPTER TO TITLE 20 OF THE MONTANA CODE ANNOTATED; ESTABLISHING THE MONTANA PUBLIC SERVICE AND RESOURCE LIBRARY PROGRAM BY ADDING A NEW PART TO TITLE 2, CHAPTER 15, OF THE MONTANA CODE ANNOTATED; REQUIRING PARTNERSHIP WITH MONTANA'S FEDERALLY RECOGNIZED TRIBAL NATIONS IN ALL PROGRAM DIVISIONS PURSUANT TO ARTICLE X, SECTION 1(2) OF THE MONTANA CONSTITUTION; MAKING APPROPRIATIONS; AND PROVIDING FOR EFFECTIVE DATES AND IMPLEMENTATION SCHEDULES.

LEGISLATIVE ROUTING NOTE

Montana has a citizen ballot initiative process. Under Article III, Section 4 of the Montana Constitution, the people may enact laws by initiative on all matters except appropriations of money and local or special laws. Because this act includes appropriations, it must be introduced through the Legislature. However, the substantive programs established herein may also be proposed as a separate non-appropriation initiative statute.

The signature requirement for a statutory initiative is five percent (5%) of the total votes cast for governor in the most recent gubernatorial election. Based on the 2024 gubernatorial election, the approximate threshold for a statutory initiative is 30,180 valid signatures, collected from at least thirty-four (34) of Montana's one hundred (100) House districts (one-third plus one). For a constitutional initiative, the threshold is ten percent (10%), or approximately 60,359 signatures from at least forty (40) House districts.

FILING: An initiated statute is filed with the Montana Secretary of State pursuant to MCA 13-27-201 through 13-27-312. The Attorney General prepares the ballot statement. The Legislative Services Division conducts a legal sufficiency review.

Alternatively, this bill may be introduced through the Legislature by any member of the Senate or House of Representatives.

COMMITTEE ASSIGNMENT: Upon introduction, this bill would likely be assigned to: - Senate Agriculture, Livestock, and Irrigation Committee or House

    Agriculture Committee (Division I)

- Senate Public Health, Welfare, and Safety Committee or House

    Human Services Committee (Division II)

- Senate Education and Cultural Resources Committee or House

    Education Committee (Division III)

Because the bill spans multiple committees' jurisdictions, it may be assigned to an Appropriations Committee or referred jointly.

FISCAL NOTE: The Legislative Fiscal Division prepares fiscal notes for all bills with budgetary impact per Montana Joint Rule 30-60.

FLOOR VOTE: Simple majority in each chamber (26 of 50 Senators; 51 of 100 Representatives). Governor's signature or veto override (two-thirds of each chamber).

SESSION: The 69th Legislature (2025). Montana legislative sessions convene on the first Monday in January of odd-numbered years and last no more than ninety (90) legislative days unless extended by two-thirds vote.

HISTORY: A version of this proposal was first developed in 2016 through the Sassafras and Maple Research Foundation (SMRF), the first non-partisan political trade school in the United States, registered with the Colorado Department of Higher Education, Division of Private Occupational Schools (DPOS). The original proposal was drafted for Colorado and sidelined during the 2016-2017 legislative cycle. The present version has been adapted for the State of Montana, incorporating updated research from the Historical Apoplexy series (Cooper, 2025-2026), a ten-paper academic work providing the evidentiary foundation for this legislation.

LEGISLATIVE DECLARATION

Be it enacted by the Legislature of the State of Montana:

SECTION 1. Legislative findings and declaration.

    (1) The Legislature hereby finds, determines, and declares that:

    FINDINGS RELATING TO MONTANA'S CONSTITUTIONAL MANDATE:

    (a) The Montana Constitution of 1972, drafted by one hundred (100)
    delegates in Helena from January 17 through March 11, 1972, in
    response to the Anaconda Copper Mining Company's decades of
    political domination of the state, established among the most
    progressive individual rights provisions of any state constitution
    in the United States;

    (b) Article II, Section 3 of the Montana Constitution guarantees
    the right to a "clean and healthful environment," one of the
    strongest environmental rights provisions in any state
    constitution. Article II, Section 10 guarantees the right to
    privacy. Article X, Section 1(2) commits the state to the
    preservation of the cultural integrity of Montana's American
    Indian populations. This act operationalizes these constitutional
    commitments;

    (c) The 1972 Constitutional Convention was driven by populist
    opposition to corporate extraction — specifically the Anaconda
    Company's control of Montana's press, legislature, and judiciary.
    The delegates wrote a constitution to prevent extraction interests
    from controlling the state's governance. This act extends that
    anti-extraction principle from governance to the material economy:
    the 75.7 percent markup between food production cost and retail
    price is the same extraction mechanism that the 1972 delegates
    sought to prevent, applied to commerce rather than politics;

    FINDINGS RELATING TO THE STRUCTURAL IMPERATIVE FOR STATE
    ACTION:

    (a0) Twenty-two federal government shutdowns since 1976,
    including a forty-three-day shutdown in 2025. The House frozen
    at 435 since 1929; 762,000 constituents per representative —
    worst in the OECD. Federal H.R. 1 (2025) shifted SNAP
    administrative costs from fifty percent to seventy-five percent
    state share. The federal machine is structurally overloaded
    (Cooper, Paper VII, 2026). This state has the authority to act
    under its own legislative power rather than await federal
    action that structural overload prevents;

    (a1) DENIAL IS NO LONGER NEUTRAL. Inaction by a legislature
    possessing the authority, capacity, and documented need to act
    constitutes active harm. The burden rests on denial;

    FINDINGS RELATING TO FOOD AND COMMODITY INSECURITY:

    (d) According to the Food Research & Action Center and the United
    States Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service,
    approximately eleven percent (11%) of Montana households
    experience food insecurity. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance
    Program (SNAP) serves approximately 80,271 Montanans, bringing
    $169,446,871 to the state in fiscal year 2024 (FRAC, SNAP State
    Fact Sheet — Montana, February 2025);

    (e) Montana's agricultural sector generates approximately $4.6
    billion in annual cash receipts from farm marketings (USDA
    National Agricultural Statistics Service; University of Arkansas
    Division of Agriculture, Economic Impact of Agriculture —
    Montana, 2022). The state has approximately 58.1 million acres
    of land in farms and ranches, ranking second in the nation behind
    Texas. Montana's top agricultural products include cattle and
    calves, wheat, hay, barley, and lentils;

    (f) Montana has approximately 2.12 million cattle and 1.14 million
    people — nearly two cattle for every Montanan (USDA, 2024;
    Montana Free Press, July 2025). The state produces more food per
    capita than nearly any other state in the union, yet eleven
    percent of its households cannot consistently feed themselves.
    Food insecurity in Montana is a distribution problem, not a
    production problem;

    (g) The United States Department of Agriculture Economic Research
    Service Food Dollar Series establishes that the farm share of the
    United States food dollar is 24.3 cents, with the remaining 75.7
    cents allocated to processing, transportation, wholesale, retail,
    and food service markup. Total United States food-at-home spending
    is approximately $1.09 trillion; production cost is approximately
    $213 to $327 billion. The difference of approximately $496 billion
    represents markup above production cost;

    (h) The cost to close the food insecurity gap for all 47.9 million
    food-insecure Americans is approximately $32 billion, which
    represents 6.5 percent of the $496 billion markup between
    production cost and retail price (Cooper, "The Mathematics of
    Abundance," 2025);

    (i) The United States military commissary system, established by
    the Military Commissary Act of 1867 and now codified at 10 U.S.C.
    Section 2484, has operated at-cost food distribution continuously
    for one hundred fifty-seven (157) years through the Defense
    Commissary Agency (DeCA), operating 236 stores worldwide and
    delivering savings of 17 to 25 percent below civilian retail
    prices to approximately 2.8 million authorized users. Malmstrom
    Air Force Base in Great Falls, Montana, operates a commissary
    serving military families, funded by all federal taxpayers
    including Montana ranchers and farmers whose products feed the
    nation but who themselves may lack consistent access to affordable
    food;

    (j) Montana's vast geography — 147,040 square miles, the fourth
    largest state by area — combined with its sparse population of
    approximately 1.14 million people at a density of 7.4 persons
    per square mile creates distribution challenges unlike any other
    state in this nation. Reservation communities may be fifty to one
    hundred miles from the nearest full-service grocery store. The
    state that maintains one hundred fifty (150) Minuteman III
    intercontinental ballistic missiles across 13,800 square miles
    of its prairies through the 341st Missile Wing at Malmstrom Air
    Force Base can deliver a nuclear warhead to any point on earth
    within thirty minutes — but cannot consistently deliver groceries
    to the Blackfeet Reservation;

    (k) The geographer Albrecht Penck calculated in 1925 that Earth's
    carrying capacity was eight billion people using 1920s agricultural
    technology. The current world population is approximately eight
    billion. Since agricultural technology has advanced substantially
    beyond 1920s capacity, scarcity of food is not a physical
    constraint but a distribution and policy constraint (Penck, 1925;
    Cohen, "How Many People Can the Earth Support?," 1995);

    (l) The United States has approximately 293,000 manufacturing
    facilities. Studies indicate that 10,000 to 15,000 facilities
    would suffice for universal material abundance, representing 19.5
    to 29.3 times overcapacity, with United States manufacturing
    currently operating at approximately 77 percent capacity
    utilization (Federal Reserve; Cooper, "The Mathematics of
    Abundance," 2025);

    (m) In 2024 alone, 7,325 retail grocery store locations closed
    in the United States (Cooper, "Stolen Futures," 2025), while
    54 million Americans live in food deserts. The commercial retail
    grocery model is collapsing as a distribution system;

    (n) The economist John Kenneth Galbraith described in "The
    Affluent Society" (1958) the condition of "private opulence and
    public squalor" — the coexistence of enormous private productive
    capacity with inadequate public provision of basic needs. This
    condition is acute in Montana, where the state produces nearly
    twice as much livestock as it has people yet cannot feed all of
    its residents;

    (o) The economist Thorstein Veblen documented in "The Engineers
    and the Price System" (1921) the deliberate restriction of
    production capacity by business interests to maintain prices above
    production cost, a practice he termed the "conscious withdrawal
    of efficiency." The gap between Montana's productive capacity
    and its residents' material security reflects this structural
    dynamic;

    (o.5) The industrial designer and futurist Jacque Fresco proposed
    in "Designing the Future" (2007) a resource library model in
    which goods are distributed according to need and tiered by
    permanence: constant-need goods (food, consumables) replenished
    continuously, semi-permanent goods (clothing, household supplies)
    maintained and circulated, and permanent goods (durable equipment,
    housing, transportation) allocated once and maintained
    indefinitely. This three-tier framework, adapted from Fresco's
    resource-based economy concept, provides the operational
    architecture for the resource library established in Division IV
    of this act;

    FINDINGS RELATING TO MONTANA'S EXTRACTION HISTORY:

    (p) Butte, Montana — once called "The Richest Hill on Earth" —
    produced the copper that wired America's electrical grid. The
    Anaconda Copper Mining Company extracted billions of dollars in
    wealth from Butte and its surrounding communities. What remained
    is the Berkeley Pit — a former open-pit copper mine measuring
    approximately one mile by one-half mile with a maximum depth of
    approximately 1,780 feet, now a federal Superfund site and one of
    the largest toxic waste complexes in the United States. In
    November 1995, 342 migrating snow geese landed on the pit's toxic
    water and died (High Country News, December 1995; Audubon, 2016);

    (q) Butte's population collapsed from over 100,000 at peak mining
    to approximately 35,000 today. The town of Anaconda is a
    Superfund site. The wealth extracted from Montana built corporate
    empires elsewhere. The poison remained. This is the extraction
    economy in its most literal form: resource extracted, profit
    removed, community abandoned with the cost. The 75.7 percent
    markup between food production cost and retail price is the same
    mechanism in a different industry — value extracted from
    production, profit taken elsewhere, communities left bearing the
    cost. Division I of this act reverses the extraction model by
    keeping value in the communities where it is produced;

    FINDINGS RELATING TO HISTORICAL AND BIOLOGICAL PRECEDENT:

    (q1) Anaconda extracted copper from Butte and left a toxic pit.
    Augustus extracted taxes from Rome and fed 200,000 people with
    the annona civica — grain distribution as infrastructure, same
    category as roads. Suetonius records him ordering a knight stabbed
    at a public assembly for taking notes. The man who did that still
    fed his city. The annona ran over 400 years. Nerva added child
    nutrition funded by government loans to farmers, recorded on
    bronze at Veleia (CIL XI 1147) that you can still visit. At
    Mabu Co in Tibet, sedentary abundance was achieved 4,400 years
    ago at 14,587 feet with fishing hooks (Nature Ecology & Evolution,
    2024). The Azolla Event proved one fern species could edit Earth's
    atmosphere over 800,000 years (Brinkhuis et al., Nature 441,
    2006). The commissary has run 157 years. The annona ran 400.
    Biology works across geologic time. Montana's ranches produce
    more cattle than people. The question is not production. It is
    who eats;

    (q2) Division I does not nationalize Montana ranching. Cattle
    operations stay private. Wheat farms stay private. The state
    purchases at production cost plus five percent surcharge — the
    same model the commissary at Malmstrom AFB has used since 1867
    without acquiring a single ranch. Currency survives for
    everything above the base list. The bill is a floor;

    (q3) The retail collapse and autonomous freight are already
    eliminating distribution jobs. Aurora runs driverless freight
    between Dallas and Houston today. Over 15,000 store closures
    projected for 2025. Rural Montana grocery access was already
    fragile. The bill does not cause this. The bill catches displaced
    workers: Division I feeds them, Division II covers their health,
    Division III provides a pipeline. The commissary has truckers.
    At-cost removes the markup, not the labor;

    FINDINGS RELATING TO PUBLIC HEALTH AND HIERARCHY:

    (r) Sir Michael Marmot's Whitehall Studies, commencing in 1967
    and continuing to the present with 10,308 subjects, established
    that among British civil servants with universal healthcare, full
    employment, and no absolute poverty, the lowest employment grade
    experienced three times the mortality rate of the highest grade.
    Standard risk factors — smoking, cholesterol, blood pressure —
    explained less than forty percent of the mortality gradient. The
    hierarchy itself, independent of absolute material deprivation,
    produces lethal health outcomes;

    (s) Dr. Robert Sapolsky's thirty-year study of wild baboon
    populations in the Serengeti demonstrated that subordinate social
    position produces chronically elevated cortisol, atherosclerosis,
    immune suppression, and cognitive impairment. When a tuberculosis
    outbreak eliminated the most aggressive males from a troop,
    hierarchy collapsed, and subordinates' cortisol levels normalized,
    demonstrating that the health damage was caused by the hierarchy,
    not by inherent individual biology (Sapolsky, "Why Zebras Don't
    Get Ulcers," 1994; "Behave," 2017);

    (t) Dr. Carol Shively's thirty-year study of female macaques at
    Wake Forest University demonstrated that subordinate social status
    directly causes visceral fat accumulation, atherosclerosis, and
    coronary artery disease, with cingulate cortex serotonin
    identified as the neurological nexus linking depression to
    cardiovascular disease (Shively, 2009; 2014);

    (u) Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn, recipient of the 2009 Nobel Prize in
    Physiology or Medicine, demonstrated that chronic psychological
    stress shortens telomeres — the protective caps on chromosomal
    DNA — accelerating cellular aging. Caregivers of chronically ill
    children had measurably shorter telomeres proportional to years of
    stress. Poverty and subordination age human beings at the
    molecular level (Blackburn & Epel, "The Telomere Effect," 2017);

    (v) These findings collectively establish that poverty and social
    hierarchy are not merely economic conditions but medical conditions
    with documented physiological pathways that produce measurable
    morbidity and mortality. Food and commodity assurance programs
    therefore constitute public health interventions with quantifiable
    healthcare cost reduction potential;

    FINDINGS RELATING TO MONTANA'S HEALTH CRISIS:

    (w) Montana has ranked in the top five states for suicide rate in
    the nation for thirty consecutive years. In 2022, Montana had the
    highest suicide rate in the United States at 28.9 per 100,000
    population (326 suicides), according to the National Vital
    Statistics Report (Montana Department of Public Health and Human
    Services, September 2023). Rural isolation, economic precarity,
    cultural stigma around mental health, limited access to
    behavioral health services, and Montana's vast geography — where
    the nearest mental health provider may be hours away — produce a
    hierarchy of abandonment. Marmot's gradient does not require a
    visible oppressor; geographic and economic isolation produce the
    same cortisol-driven health outcomes;

    (x) Montana's tribal reservations experience some of the worst
    health outcomes in the United States. Poverty rates on Montana's
    reservations range from twenty percent (20%) on the Flathead
    Reservation to thirty-eight percent (38%) on the Northern Cheyenne
    Reservation (Montana Department of Labor and Industry, 2024).
    Diabetes, cardiovascular disease, substance abuse, and suicide
    rates on Montana's reservations are catastrophically elevated.
    This is Marmot's gradient at its steepest: the colonization of
    indigenous peoples imposed the most extreme status hierarchy in
    American history, and the health consequences are measurable
    centuries later;

    (y) Montana's rural geography creates healthcare deserts measured
    in hundreds of miles. Critical access hospitals serve as lifelines
    across the state, but the nearest specialist may be in another
    state entirely. When the nearest emergency room is one hundred
    miles away, every Marmot-predicted health outcome is amplified by
    geographic isolation;

    (z) Article II, Section 3 of the Montana Constitution guarantees
    the right to a "clean and healthful environment." Division II of
    this act operationalizes that guarantee beyond environmental
    contamination to include the health effects of hierarchy itself —
    because the hierarchy IS the unhealthful environment for most
    Montanans;

    FINDINGS RELATING TO EDUCATION AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT:

    (aa) Neuroscientific research establishes that the human prefrontal
    cortex — responsible for judgment, impulse control, long-term
    planning, and executive function — does not fully mature until
    approximately age twenty-five (25). The current compulsory
    education system in Montana, which requires attendance through age
    sixteen (16) under MCA 20-5-102, terminates structured
    developmental support during eight (8) to nine (9) years of
    critical neurological maturation;

    (bb) Erik Erikson's model of psychosocial development (1959)
    identifies eight stages of human development, each requiring the
    resolution of a core developmental crisis. The stages from birth
    through age twenty-five encompass Trust vs. Mistrust (ages 0-1),
    Autonomy vs. Shame (ages 1-3), Initiative vs. Guilt (ages 3-6),
    Industry vs. Inferiority (ages 6-12), Identity vs. Role Confusion
    (ages 12-18), and Intimacy vs. Isolation (ages 18-25). Failure to
    provide structured developmental support through these stages
    results in incomplete psychosocial maturation;

    (cc) Lev Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development (1934) establishes
    that learning occurs in the gap between what an individual can
    accomplish independently and what the individual can accomplish
    with structured guidance. This theoretical framework requires
    calibrated challenge — neither too easy nor too difficult — as the
    mechanism of cognitive growth, and provides the scientific basis
    for structured learning trials as an assessment methodology;

    (dd) Robert Bjork's research on "desirable difficulties" (1994)
    demonstrates that learning conditions that feel harder produce
    superior retention and transfer of knowledge. Struggle is not a
    side effect of learning but its mechanism, establishing the
    scientific basis for structured challenge as a core pedagogical
    method rather than passive attendance;

    (ee) Suniya Luthar's research on the culture of affluence (2003,
    National Institutes of Health PMC1950124) demonstrates that
    affluent children exhibit elevated rates of substance abuse,
    anxiety, and depression compared to inner-city peers. The
    mechanism is achievement pressure without genuine challenge,
    isolation from consequence, and absence of meaningful struggle.
    Material abundance without developmental infrastructure produces
    pathology. Education reform is therefore a prerequisite — not a
    supplement — to the food and commodity assurance programs
    established in this act;

    (ff) The Legislature finds that material provision without social,
    educational, and developmental infrastructure does not constitute
    abundance for a social species. John B. Calhoun's "behavioral
    sink" experiments (1962-1973) are frequently misinterpreted as
    evidence that material abundance causes social collapse. This
    interpretation is incorrect. Calhoun placed mice in an enclosure
    with unlimited food and water but no social infrastructure —
    no education, no healthcare, no social roles, no conflict
    resolution, no intergenerational knowledge transfer, no
    governance. What collapsed was not abundance but inventory. The
    mice never had abundance. They had food in a box.

    Abundance for homo technologicus includes the full institutional
    architecture that complex social species require: education,
    healthcare, social roles, developmental structure, conflict
    resolution mechanisms, and intergenerational knowledge transfer.
    Humans have not been comparable to a simple organism in a box for
    tens of thousands of years. A human infant with unlimited food
    but no social contact does not thrive — it dies or develops
    permanent cognitive damage, as documented in isolation studies,
    cases of feral children, and extreme neglect cases.

    Even a prehistoric human possessed fire, tools, clothing,
    language, and tribal social structure. Humans co-evolved with
    their technology. Strip it away and the organism is not "natural"
    — it is broken. The question of how many engineers and how many
    years would be required to build a single automobile from raw
    materials with no prior automobiles existing illustrates how deep
    the dependency runs. Human systems are not luxuries bolted onto
    biology. They ARE the biology at this point.

    The United States military commissary has operated for one hundred
    fifty-seven years with no "behavioral sink" — because it exists
    inside a system that provides all of the above: education
    (military academies, training pipelines), healthcare (military
    hospitals, TRICARE), social roles (rank, unit cohesion, chain of
    command), conflict resolution (UCMJ, command authority),
    intergenerational knowledge transfer (doctrine, mentorship), and
    governance (the entire Department of Defense structure).

    Calhoun himself identified in his later work that the collapse
    was caused by the breakdown of social ROLES, not by material
    provision. He called the phenomenon the "behavioral sink." The
    social structure failed because it was never designed.

    Luthar (2003, 2005) provides the human confirmation: children
    given material wealth without developmental structure show HIGHER
    rates of substance abuse, anxiety, and disconnection than children
    of poverty. Division III of this act is the developmental
    structure. Without it, material provision is inventory — and
    inventory without architecture produces pathology;

    (gg) Arnold van Gennep (1909) and Victor Turner (1969) documented
    that virtually every human society creates structured ordeals for
    adolescents — physical trials, endurance tests, isolation periods,
    community service — as developmental infrastructure. Societies
    that abandoned these structures did not produce freer human
    beings; they produced developmentally incomplete ones;

    (hh) Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis demonstrated in "Schooling in
    Capitalist America" (1976) that the education system reproduces
    class structure. However, the appropriate diagnostic framework,
    described in the Historical Apoplexy literature as the "targeting
    error" (Cooper, Paper V, 2025), recognizes that teachers are not
    responsible for society-wide stratification. The ocean is
    stratified; the cup is not. Education reform must address the
    structural conditions of the system, not blame individual
    educators;

    (ii) Philip Jackson's "Life in Classrooms" (1968) identified the
    "hidden curriculum" — crowds, evaluation, and power asymmetry —
    as inherent features of institutional education at scale. E.D.
    Hirsch's "Cultural Literacy" (1987) established that core
    knowledge must reside in the individual's own mind, not merely
    be accessible through external references, as the prerequisite
    for democratic participation;

    (jj) PIAAC 2023 (OECD, December 2024): 28% of US adults at
    the lowest literacy level (up from 19% in 2017). 34% lowest
    numeracy. 32% lowest problem-solving. Declining in 19 of 26
    OECD countries. Compound-competency: ~1 in 6,700 American
    adults meet a basic standard (2 sports, 2 languages, 12th-grade
    subjects, 2 instruments) the German Gymnasium certifies as
    ordinary;

    ADAM SMITH AND WHOLE-HUMAN EDUCATION. Smith
    wrote in Wealth of Nations Book V Ch I Pt III Art II:

        "The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few
        simple operations... generally becomes as stupid and
        ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to
        become."

    His remedy: compulsory state-funded education. Smith was a
    polymath (Theory of Moral Sentiments, 1759, seventeen years
    before Wealth of Nations). To cite Smith for markets while
    opposing what Smith demanded is to invoke an authority one
    has not read;

    (jj.5) Benjamin Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives (1956)
    establishes a sequential hierarchy of cognitive skills —
    Knowledge, Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Synthesis, and
    Evaluation — that must be honored in sequence to produce genuine
    intellectual development. The K-20 pipeline established in
    Division III structures the curriculum so that each stage builds
    upon the cognitive foundation of the prior stage, preventing the
    pattern of Historical Apoplexy in which advanced credentialing
    occurs without foundational mastery;

    (kk) The Vitruvian Quotient framework (Cooper, 2025-2026) models
    human intelligence as eight measurable domains mapped to
    neurological substrates: Knowledge Quotient (KQ, temporal and
    parietal cortices), Reasoning Quotient (RQ, prefrontal and
    parietal cortices), Emotional Quotient (EQ, limbic system and
    amygdala), Language Quotient (LQ, Broca's and Wernicke's areas),
    Creative Quotient (CQ, default mode network), Social Quotient (SQ,
    mirror neuron system and temporoparietal junction), Motor Quotient
    (MQ, motor cortex and cerebellum), and Biological Quotient (BQ,
    autonomic and hormonal regulation). VQ = KQ + RQ + EQ + LQ + CQ +
    SQ + MQ + BQ. A twenty-five-year curriculum calibrated to develop
    all eight quotients to full human maturity, scored without ceiling
    via a compensatory framework where strength in one domain offsets
    deficit in another, provides the scientific foundation for the
    education modernization program established in this act;

    (kk1) The Meyerhoff Scholars Program at UMBC, founded by Freeman
    Hrabowski in 1988, has produced over 1,400 alumni with five times
    the STEM PhD pursuit rate of matched comparisons. Montana's seven
    tribal colleges already practice the cohort-based, community-
    rooted developmental model Meyerhoff validated at scale. Division
    III builds on both — the Meyerhoff mechanism and the tribal
    college tradition — statewide;

    FINDINGS RELATING TO MONTANA'S EDUCATIONAL INFRASTRUCTURE AND
    TRIBAL PARTNERSHIP:

    (ll) Montana's Indian Education for All Act (MCA 20-1-501),
    rooted in Article X, Section 1(2) of the 1972 Montana
    Constitution, mandates that all Montana schools teach about the
    history, culture, and contemporary issues of Montana's American
    Indian tribal nations. This is one of the most progressive
    indigenous education mandates in the United States and represents
    an existing commitment to the principle that education must
    encompass the full cultural and developmental context of the
    learner — precisely the principle that the Vitruvian Quotient
    framework formalizes as the Cultural Quotient (CQ);

    (mm) Montana has eight (8) federally recognized tribal nations
    occupying seven (7) reservations: the Blackfeet Nation (Blackfeet
    Reservation), the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes
    (Flathead Reservation), the Crow Tribe (Crow Reservation), the
    Fort Belknap Indian Community of the Assiniboine and Gros Ventre
    Tribes (Fort Belknap Reservation), the Fort Peck Assiniboine and
    Sioux Tribes (Fort Peck Reservation), the Northern Cheyenne Tribe
    (Northern Cheyenne Reservation), the Chippewa Cree Tribe of the
    Rocky Boy's Reservation, and the Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa
    Indians (federally recognized 2019, headquartered in Great Falls);

    (nn) Montana's seven tribal colleges — Blackfeet Community College,
    Chief Dull Knife College, Fort Belknap College (Aaniiih Nakoda
    College), Fort Peck Community College, Little Big Horn College,
    Salish Kootenai College, and Stone Child College — are accredited
    institutions that combine academic instruction with cultural
    transmission, community development, language preservation, and
    identity formation. They develop the full human within a cultural
    context: Knowledge Quotient (KQ) through academics, Cultural
    Quotient (CQ) through tribal history and language, Social
    Quotient (SQ) through community engagement, Emotional Quotient
    (EQ) through mentorship and cultural ceremonies. Montana's tribal
    colleges are the closest existing model to what VQ-integrated
    K-20 education looks like in practice. Division III does not
    replace tribal colleges — it learns from them and extends their
    principles to all Montanans;

    (oo) Montana's higher education infrastructure includes the
    Montana University System governed by the Board of Regents: the
    University of Montana (Missoula), Montana State University
    (Bozeman), and their affiliated campuses (UM Western, Montana
    Tech, UM Helena College, MSU Billings, MSU Northern, Great Falls
    College MSU), plus three community colleges (Flathead Valley
    Community College, Dawson Community College, Miles Community
    College). Montana State University's land-grant mission in
    agriculture and engineering aligns directly with Division III's
    practical development focus;

    (pp) Montana's vast geography makes education delivery the hardest
    logistics problem of any state in this series. Students one
    hundred miles from the nearest campus require access. Montana has
    been a leader in distance education out of necessity. Division III
    must include robust distance and hybrid delivery provisions. This
    makes Montana's implementation the model for all rural states. If
    the K-20 pipeline works across 147,040 square miles with 1.14
    million people and 7.4 people per square mile, the distribution
    problem is solved for the hardest case;

    (qq) Montana's total state budget for the 2025-2027 biennium is
    approximately $16 billion, with general fund spending of
    approximately $6.5 billion for the biennium ($3.5 billion FY2024,
    $3.0 billion FY2025, Urban Institute State Fiscal Brief —
    Montana). Montana currently spends approximately $169.4 million
    annually on SNAP benefits distributed through commercial
    retailers, where 75.7 cents of every food dollar pays for markup
    rather than food production;

    (rr) The Sassafras and Maple Research Foundation (SMRF), the first
    non-partisan political trade school in the United States,
    registered with the Colorado Department of Higher Education,
    Division of Private Occupational Schools (DPOS), developed the
    original version of this proposal for the State of Colorado in
    2016. SMRF was founded by Imran Cooper with the express purpose
    of training citizens in legislative drafting, policy analysis, and
    democratic participation. The present legislation represents the
    Montana adaptation, incorporating research from the Historical
    Apoplexy series (Cooper, 2025-2026).

    (2) The Legislature further finds that the programs established in
    this act — food and commodity assurance, public health
    intervention, and education modernization — are interdependent
    components of a single policy framework. Material abundance
    without developmental infrastructure produces the affluence
    pathology documented by Luthar. Education without material
    security cannot function because students cannot learn while
    food-insecure. And neither program can achieve its purpose
    without addressing the physiological damage that hierarchy and
    poverty inflict on the human body. These three divisions must be
    enacted together, and each is necessary for the others to succeed.

DIVISION I — MONTANA FOOD AND COMMODITY ASSURANCE ACT

SECTION 2. Title 80, chapter 1, Montana Code Annotated, is amended by adding a new part to read:

ARTICLE 1 Montana Food Assurance Program

80-1-201. Short title.

    This part shall be known and may be cited as the "Montana Food
    Assurance Act."

80-1-202. Definitions.

    As used in this part, unless the context otherwise requires:

    (1) "At-cost pricing" means the price of a food product calculated
    as the sum of the direct production cost paid to the producer or
    supplier plus a facility surcharge not to exceed five percent (5%)
    of the production cost, with no additional profit margin, markup,
    or marketing cost applied.

    (2) "Department" means the Montana Department of Agriculture.

    (3) "Food assurance center" means a state-operated facility
    established under this part for the purpose of distributing
    food products to Montana residents at at-cost pricing.

    (4) "Facility surcharge" means a charge not to exceed five percent
    (5%) of the production cost of a food product, applied to cover
    the operational costs of a food assurance center, including but
    not limited to facility maintenance, labor, utilities, and
    transportation.

    (5) "Production cost" means the cost of producing a food product
    as determined by the department based on wholesale acquisition
    price from producers, cooperatives, or the most proximate point
    in the supply chain to the point of original production.

    (6) "Resource library" means the distribution system established
    under Division IV of this act in which goods are distributed
    according to need and tiered by permanence.

    (7) "Tribal food sovereignty program" means a food production,
    processing, or distribution program operated by or in partnership
    with one of Montana's federally recognized tribal nations,
    including but not limited to buffalo restoration programs,
    traditional food systems, community gardens, and tribally
    operated food distribution centers.

80-1-203. Montana food assurance program — creation — purpose.

    (1) There is hereby created in the Department of Agriculture the
    Montana food assurance program.

    (2) The purpose of the program is to establish state-operated food
    distribution centers where all Montana residents may purchase the
    full range of grocery products at at-cost pricing, modeled on the
    United States military commissary system as authorized by 10
    U.S.C. Section 2484 and as operated by the Defense Commissary
    Agency (DeCA) continuously since 1867.

    (3) The program shall:

        (a) Establish and operate food assurance centers throughout
        the state of Montana;

        (b) Purchase food products directly from Montana producers,
        cooperatives, and wholesale suppliers at or near production
        cost;

        (c) Sell food products to Montana residents at at-cost
        pricing as defined in section 80-1-202;

        (d) Prioritize procurement from Montana farms, ranches, and
        tribal food sovereignty programs to the maximum extent
        practicable, with a target of sixty percent (60%)
        Montana-sourced products within three years and seventy-five
        percent (75%) within five years;

        (e) Accept all forms of payment including but not limited to
        cash, electronic benefit transfer (EBT), Supplemental
        Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, and Women,
        Infants, and Children (WIC) vouchers;

        (f) Operate without profit motive, with all revenue above
        operational costs reinvested in program expansion;

        (g) Establish partnerships with Montana's tribal nations for
        food sovereignty programs, including but not limited to
        buffalo restoration, traditional food systems, indigenous
        seed banks, and tribally operated distribution points on
        or near reservations.

80-1-204. Pilot food assurance centers — locations — timeline.

    (1) Within two (2) years of the effective date of this part, the
    department shall establish not fewer than five (5) pilot food
    assurance centers in the following regions:

        (a) One (1) center in the Billings metropolitan area;

        (b) One (1) center in the Missoula metropolitan area;

        (c) One (1) center in the Great Falls metropolitan area,
        with particular consideration for proximity to the Little
        Shell Tribe community and Malmstrom Air Force Base;

        (d) One (1) center serving the Blackfeet Reservation and
        surrounding communities, located in consultation with the
        Blackfeet Nation;

        (e) One (1) center serving the Crow or Northern Cheyenne
        Reservation and surrounding communities, located in
        consultation with the respective tribal governments.

    (2) Within five (5) years of the effective date of this part,
    the department shall expand the program to not fewer than twelve
    (12) food assurance centers statewide, including:

        (a) At least one center per congressional district;

        (b) At least one center within or adjacent to each of
        Montana's seven reservations, developed in partnership with
        the relevant tribal government;

        (c) At least two (2) centers serving rural communities as
        defined by the department, with priority given to communities
        more than fifty (50) miles from the nearest full-service
        grocery store.

    (3) The department shall prioritize locations with the highest
    rates of food insecurity, the greatest distances to existing
    grocery retail, and the largest populations residing in food
    deserts.

    (4) Mobile food assurance units — refrigerated distribution
    vehicles operating on regular routes — shall supplement fixed
    centers in areas where population density does not support a
    permanent facility, with not fewer than three (3) mobile units
    operational within two years.

80-1-205. Montana food assurance fund — creation.

    (1) There is hereby created in the state treasury the Montana
    food assurance fund.

    (2) The fund shall consist of:

        (a) Appropriations made by the Legislature;

        (b) Revenue generated by the facility surcharge;

        (c) Federal grants and matching funds;

        (d) Private donations and gifts;

        (e) Any other money directed to the fund by law.

    (3) Money in the fund is continuously appropriated to the
    department for the purposes of this part.

80-1-206. Montana-first procurement.

    (1) The department shall prioritize procurement from Montana-based
    producers, ranches, farms, and tribal food sovereignty programs.

    (2) Not less than sixty percent (60%) of all food products
    distributed through food assurance centers shall be sourced from
    Montana producers within three (3) years of the program's
    effective date.

    (3) Not less than seventy-five percent (75%) of all food products
    distributed through food assurance centers shall be sourced from
    Montana producers within five (5) years of the program's
    effective date.

    (4) The department shall establish contracts with Montana's tribal
    nations for the procurement of buffalo meat, traditional foods,
    and tribally produced agricultural products, with terms negotiated
    directly with tribal governments.

80-1-207. Tribal food sovereignty partnership.

    (1) The department shall establish a Tribal Food Sovereignty
    Advisory Council consisting of one (1) representative designated
    by each of Montana's eight federally recognized tribal nations and
    one (1) representative of each of Montana's seven tribal colleges.

    (2) The Advisory Council shall advise the department on:

        (a) Location and design of food assurance centers on or
        adjacent to reservations;

        (b) Integration of traditional foods and culturally
        appropriate products into food assurance center inventories;

        (c) Buffalo restoration programs as food sovereignty
        infrastructure;

        (d) Indigenous seed preservation and traditional agricultural
        practices;

        (e) Tribally operated mobile distribution routes.

    (3) No food assurance center shall be established on tribal land
    without the express consent and partnership of the relevant
    tribal government.

SECTION 3. Title 90, chapter 1, Montana Code Annotated, is amended by adding a new part to read:

ARTICLE 2 Montana Essential Goods Program

90-1-201. Montana essential goods program — creation.

    (1) There is hereby created in the Department of Commerce the
    Montana essential goods program.

    (2) The program shall produce and distribute clothing, household
    supplies, hygiene products, tools, educational materials, and
    other essential goods at below-retail pricing through
    manufacturing partnerships and direct procurement.

    (3) The program shall prioritize partnerships with Montana-based
    manufacturers and artisans, including tribal enterprises.

DIVISION II — MONTANA PUBLIC HEALTH AND WELFARE ACT

SECTION 4. Title 50, chapter 1, Montana Code Annotated, is amended by adding a new section to read:

50-1-131. Public health findings — hierarchy as medical condition.

    (1) The Legislature finds and declares that food insecurity,
    poverty, and social hierarchy are medical conditions with
    documented physiological pathways, as established by:

        (a) The Whitehall Studies (Marmot, 1967-present): 10,308
        subjects demonstrating that the lowest employment grade
        experienced three times the mortality of the highest grade,
        independent of standard risk factors;

        (b) Primate research (Sapolsky, 30 years): subordination
        produces chronic elevated cortisol, atherosclerosis, and
        immune suppression in wild baboon populations. When hierarchy
        was disrupted, subordinates' cortisol normalized;

        (c) Macaque research (Shively, 30 years): subordinate status
        directly causes visceral fat accumulation, atherosclerosis,
        and coronary artery disease through a cingulate cortex
        serotonin pathway;

        (d) Telomere research (Blackburn, 2009 Nobel Prize): chronic
        psychological stress shortens telomeres, the protective caps
        on chromosomal DNA, accelerating cellular aging.

    (2) The food and commodity assurance programs established in
    Division I of this act are hereby designated as public health
    interventions.

    (3) The Department of Public Health and Human Services shall:

        (a) Conduct a baseline healthcare cost assessment within two
        (2) years of the effective date of this section, establishing
        the healthcare expenditures attributable to food insecurity,
        poverty-related chronic stress, and hierarchy-related disease
        in Montana;

        (b) Submit annual reports to the Legislature documenting
        healthcare cost reductions attributable to the programs
        established in this act;

        (c) Coordinate with Montana's tribal health agencies and
        Indian Health Service facilities to measure reservation-
        specific health outcomes, including diabetes rates, life
        expectancy, cardiovascular disease, and suicide rates, with
        reporting protocols developed in partnership with tribal
        governments.

50-1-132. Reservation health equity.

    (1) The Legislature finds that Montana's tribal reservations
    experience some of the worst health outcomes in the United States,
    with poverty rates ranging from twenty percent (20%) on the
    Flathead Reservation to thirty-eight percent (38%) on the Northern
    Cheyenne Reservation.

    (2) The Department of Public Health and Human Services shall
    establish reservation health equity benchmarks, developed in
    partnership with tribal health agencies, and report annually on
    progress toward closing the health disparity gap between
    reservation and non-reservation communities.

    (3) Division II programs shall integrate with existing Indian
    Health Service infrastructure and tribal health systems rather
    than creating parallel structures.

50-1-133. Suicide prevention integration.

    (1) The Legislature finds that Montana has had the highest or
    among the five highest suicide rates in the nation for thirty
    consecutive years, with a 2022 rate of 28.9 per 100,000
    population.

    (2) The programs established in Divisions I and III of this act
    are recognized as structural suicide prevention interventions,
    addressing the root causes — material insecurity, social
    isolation, developmental abandonment, and lack of purpose — rather
    than solely the proximate triggers.

DIVISION III — MONTANA EDUCATION MODERNIZATION ACT

This division is the largest division of this act and is non-negotiable. Without education reform, material abundance produces the affluence pathology documented by Luthar. Division I feeds the body. Division III develops the mind that directs it.

SECTION 5. MCA 20-5-102 is amended to read:

20-5-102. Compulsory enrollment and attendance.

    (1) Every parent, guardian, or other person who is responsible for
    the care of a child shall cause the child to attend school on a
    regular basis as provided in this section.

    (2) A child shall attend a public or nonpublic school from the
    age of seven (7) years until the child attains the age of
    twenty-five (25) years, except as provided in subsection (3).

    (3) A person who attains the age of eighteen (18) years may
    satisfy the attendance requirement through enrollment in a
    postsecondary education program that is part of the Montana K-20
    education pipeline established in [this act], or through an
    alternative educational pathway approved by the Board of Regents.

    (4) The K-20 education pipeline established in this act provides
    a seamless educational pathway from kindergarten through
    approximately age twenty-five, encompassing approximately twenty
    (20) grade levels, integrating the K-12 system and all public
    postsecondary institutions in Montana into a single developmental
    framework.

SECTION 6. Title 20, Montana Code Annotated, is amended by adding a new chapter to read:

CHAPTER 26 Montana K-20 Education Pipeline

20-26-101. Short title.

    This chapter shall be known and may be cited as the "Montana
    Education Modernization Act."

20-26-102. Montana K-20 education pipeline — creation — purpose.

    (1) There is hereby created the Montana K-20 education pipeline,
    a continuous educational pathway from kindergarten through
    approximately age twenty-five, integrating:

        (a) The Montana K-12 public school system;

        (b) The Montana University System, including the University
        of Montana, Montana State University, and all affiliated
        campuses;

        (c) Montana's three community colleges: Flathead Valley
        Community College, Dawson Community College, and Miles
        Community College;

        (d) Montana's seven tribal colleges, as full partners in the
        pipeline with their existing accreditation, governance, and
        cultural mission preserved and protected.

    (2) The purpose of the K-20 pipeline is to provide structured
    developmental support through the full maturation of the human
    prefrontal cortex (approximately age 25), integrating academic
    instruction with the eight developmental domains of the Vitruvian
    Quotient framework.

20-26-103. Automatic postsecondary admission.

    (1) Upon completing secondary education, every Montana resident
    is entitled to continue in the K-20 pipeline at a public
    institution of higher education through a placement process
    administered by the Board of Regents, replacing the competitive
    application model for K-20 pipeline enrollment.

    (2) Placement shall consider student aptitude, geographic
    proximity, institutional capacity, and alignment with the
    student's developmental profile across all eight VQ domains.

    (3) Students shall have the right to request placement at
    tribal colleges where culturally appropriate, regardless of
    tribal enrollment status, subject to institutional capacity
    and the tribal college's admission policies.

20-26-104. Fully funded in-state tuition.

    (1) In-state tuition and mandatory fees at all public
    postsecondary institutions in the Montana University System are
    fully funded for Montana residents enrolled in the K-20 pipeline.

    (2) Tribal colleges participating in the K-20 pipeline shall
    receive equivalent per-student funding to ensure tribal college
    students receive the same financial support as students at
    Montana University System institutions.

    (3) A needs-based living stipend is established for students
    below two hundred percent (200%) of the federal poverty level,
    in an amount sufficient to cover housing, food, transportation,
    and educational materials.

    (4) Montana's distance and hybrid learning infrastructure shall
    be expanded to serve students in remote communities, including
    reservation communities, who cannot relocate to a campus.

20-26-105. VQ-aligned curriculum.

    (1) The Board of Regents, in consultation with the Superintendent
    of Public Instruction and Montana's tribal education departments,
    shall develop a VQ-aligned curriculum mapping the eight quotients
    of the Vitruvian Quotient framework to Erikson's psychosocial
    stages across five developmental stages:

    STAGE ONE: FOUNDATION (Ages 0-6) — Trust, Autonomy, Initiative.
    Focus on Biological Quotient (BQ), Emotional Quotient (EQ),
    Motor Quotient (MQ), and Language Quotient (LQ). Sensorimotor
    development, attachment, early language acquisition, and physical
    coordination.

    STAGE TWO: KNOWLEDGE ACQUISITION (Ages 6-12) — Industry vs.
    Inferiority. Focus on Knowledge Quotient (KQ), Reasoning Quotient
    (RQ), and Social Quotient (SQ). Core academic foundations, logical
    reasoning, cooperative learning, and introduction to cultural
    literacy (Hirsch) including Indian Education for All content.

    STAGE THREE: IDENTITY FORMATION (Ages 12-18) — Identity vs. Role
    Confusion. Focus on Creative Quotient (CQ), Cultural Quotient
    (as subset of SQ), and integration of all eight domains. Advanced
    academic specialization, artistic expression, vocational
    exploration (Holland RIASEC model), community engagement, and
    structured learning trials replacing passive attendance.

    STAGE FOUR: INTEGRATION AND MASTERY (Ages 18-24) — Intimacy vs.
    Isolation. Full integration of all eight VQ domains through
    postsecondary education. Structured challenge increases through
    Bjork's desirable difficulties. Intellectual lineage requirements:
    students must trace the chain of discovery in their field,
    preventing Historical Apoplexy (Cooper, 2025). Compensatory
    scoring: strength in one quotient offsets deficit in another.
    Van Gennep/Turner structured ordeals as developmental milestones.

    STAGE FIVE: LEADERSHIP AND TRANSITION (Age 25) — Citizen
    readiness. Final assessment of developmental maturity across all
    eight VQ domains. Transition to post-pipeline public service.
    Preparation for full participation as a citizen of the Republic.

    (2) The VQ-aligned curriculum shall build upon and extend the
    Indian Education for All mandate (MCA 20-1-501) by integrating
    tribal knowledge systems, indigenous science, and cultural
    practices as core content throughout all five stages, not as
    supplementary or elective material.

    (3) Structured learning trials shall replace passive attendance
    as the primary measure of educational progress, based on
    Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development and Bjork's desirable
    difficulties.

    (4) The targeting error protection shall apply: Teachers shall
    not be held individually accountable for student outcomes
    attributable to structural conditions outside the educator's
    control (poverty, food insecurity, housing instability), based
    on Bowles and Gintis (1976) corrected by Cooper (2025). The
    stratification is society-wide; education reflects it but did
    not create it.

20-26-106. Tribal college partnership.

    (1) Montana's tribal colleges are recognized as full and equal
    partners in the K-20 pipeline, not subordinate institutions to
    be integrated into the Montana University System hierarchy.

    (2) Tribal colleges participating in the K-20 pipeline shall
    retain:

        (a) Complete autonomy over curriculum content related to
        tribal culture, language, and knowledge systems;

        (b) Self-governance and existing accreditation;

        (c) The right to develop culturally integrated VQ assessment
        methods that honor tribal values and epistemologies;

        (d) Priority in designing Division III implementation for
        reservation communities.

    (3) The Board of Regents shall establish transfer agreements
    with all seven tribal colleges ensuring that credits transfer
    seamlessly between tribal colleges and Montana University System
    institutions.

    (4) Montana's tribal colleges represent the closest existing
    model to VQ-integrated K-20 education. The Montana University
    System shall study and learn from tribal college methods of
    whole-human development, not impose external frameworks upon them.

20-26-107. Distance and hybrid education delivery.

    (1) The Board of Regents shall establish a Montana Distance
    Learning Network connecting all K-20 pipeline institutions —
    including tribal colleges — with high-bandwidth interactive
    instruction capability.

    (2) Every Montana community with a population of five hundred
    (500) or more shall have access to a K-20 pipeline learning
    center, either as a physical location or through distance
    learning technology deployed at existing community facilities
    (libraries, schools, tribal community centers).

    (3) Montana's implementation of the K-20 pipeline through distance
    and hybrid delivery across 147,040 square miles serves as the
    national model for rural education infrastructure. If the pipeline
    works in Montana, it works in every rural state.

20-26-108. Intellectual lineage and cultural literacy.

    (1) Every graduating student must trace the chain of discovery in
    their field, engage with primary sources, and demonstrate the
    shared knowledge base necessary for democratic participation
    (Hirsch, 1987). This prevents Historical Apoplexy — the loss of
    civilizational memory (Cooper, 2025).

    (2) The Analogue Knowledge Base requirement ensures that students
    carry the knowledge internally, not merely know how to access it
    through external references. Benjamin Bloom's Taxonomy of
    Educational Objectives (1956) — Knowledge, Comprehension,
    Application, Analysis, Synthesis, and Evaluation — shall be
    honored in sequence throughout the K-20 pipeline.

    (3) Montana's Indian Education for All content shall be integrated
    throughout the intellectual lineage curriculum, ensuring that the
    chain of discovery includes indigenous knowledge, indigenous
    science, and indigenous governance alongside Western academic
    traditions.

20-26-109. The Butte lesson — anti-extraction education principle.

    (1) The Legislature finds that Butte, Montana, produced the copper
    that electrified America and received in return the Berkeley Pit —
    a toxic Superfund site where 342 snow geese died in a single day.
    The extraction economy removed human capital from Montana just as
    it removed mineral wealth: young people educated in Montana left
    for out-of-state employers, taking the state's developmental
    investment with them.

    (2) The K-20 pipeline shall be designed so that human development
    stays in the community where it is produced. The post-pipeline
    public service requirement established in Division IV is the
    anti-extraction mechanism: Montanans developed through the K-20
    pipeline serve Montana first. This does not prohibit out-of-state
    employment after public service completion; it ensures that the
    state's investment in each citizen is returned to the state
    before market forces distribute the talent.

    (3) Montana State University's land-grant mission — agriculture,
    engineering, applied science — aligns directly with this
    anti-extraction principle. The K-20 pipeline channels Montana's
    educational output toward Montana's productive capacity: feeding
    Montanans, building Montana's infrastructure, and serving
    Montana's communities.

20-26-110. Small-state scalability advantage.

    (1) Montana is the smallest-population state in this legislative
    series with a citizen initiative process. With 1.14 million people
    across 147,040 square miles — the fourth-largest state by area,
    forty-fourth by population, with a density of 7.4 persons per
    square mile — Montana is the scalability test at the sparse
    extreme.

    (2) If the K-20 pipeline achieves full coverage across Montana's
    geography — serving students in Billings and on the Northern
    Cheyenne Reservation, in Missoula and in the Bull Mountains, in
    Great Falls and in communities one hundred miles from the nearest
    campus — then the distribution problem is solved for the hardest
    case in the nation.

    (3) Montana and California together prove the model at both
    extremes: Montana proves rural, sparse, geographically vast;
    California proves urban, dense, demographically complex. If the
    K-20 pipeline works in both, it works everywhere.

    (4) Montana's strong community identity, its everyone-knows-
    everyone culture in rural communities, and its tradition of
    neighbor-helping-neighbor are assets that larger states cannot
    replicate. The K-20 pipeline leverages these social bonds as
    developmental infrastructure — precisely the social architecture
    that Calhoun's mice lacked and that Luthar's affluent children
    were denied.

20-26-111. Structured assessment and developmental milestones.

    (1) The K-20 pipeline shall replace the passive attendance model
    with structured assessment at developmental milestones aligned
    to Erikson's psychosocial stages and Bloom's cognitive taxonomy:

        (a) Foundation Assessment (Age 6-7): Readiness for formal
        instruction. BQ, EQ, MQ, and LQ baseline. Trust and autonomy
        development confirmed.

        (b) Knowledge Assessment (Age 12): Core academic foundations
        in literacy, numeracy, scientific reasoning, and cultural
        literacy (Hirsch). Industry vs. Inferiority resolution.
        Indian Education for All competency assessment.

        (c) Identity Assessment (Age 18): Secondary completion.
        All eight VQ domains assessed. Identity vs. Role Confusion
        resolution. Vocational exploration profile (Holland RIASEC).
        Structured learning trials demonstrating mastery beyond
        attendance.

        (d) Integration Assessment (Age 24): Postsecondary mastery.
        Intellectual lineage demonstration. Compensatory VQ scoring
        applied. Desirable difficulties (Bjork) documentation.
        Van Gennep/Turner structured ordeal completion.

        (e) Citizen Readiness Assessment (Age 25): Final
        developmental maturity across all eight VQ domains. Transition
        to post-pipeline public service. Preparation for full
        participation as a citizen of the Republic.

    (2) No student shall be denied progression for failure at a
    single milestone. The compensatory framework ensures that
    strength in one VQ domain offsets deficit in another. Assessment
    identifies where additional scaffolding is needed (Vygotsky ZPD),
    not where students are excluded.

    (3) High performers may accelerate; students requiring additional
    developmental time may extend beyond age 25 without penalty.
    The pipeline is calibrated to human development, not arbitrary
    timelines.

20-26-112. The 1972 Constitution and education.

    (1) Article X, Section 1 of the Montana Constitution commits the
    state to developing "the full educational potential of each
    person" and to recognizing "the distinct and unique cultural
    heritage" of Montana's American Indian people. Division III
    operationalizes both mandates simultaneously: the K-20 pipeline
    develops full educational potential through age 25, and the
    integration of Indian Education for All throughout all five
    developmental stages honors the cultural heritage mandate.

    (2) The 1972 Constitutional Convention delegates, who wrote the
    most progressive state constitution of the twentieth century in
    explicit opposition to the Anaconda Company's control of Montana,
    envisioned an education system that served the people rather than
    extractive interests. Division III fulfills that vision: education
    calibrated to human development, not to labor market extraction;
    citizens developed for Montana, not as products for export.

DIVISION IV — MONTANA PUBLIC SERVICE AND RESOURCE LIBRARY

SECTION 7. Title 2, chapter 15, Montana Code Annotated, is amended by adding a new part to read:

PART 40 Montana Public Service and Resource Library

2-15-4001. Public service requirement — creation.

    (1) There is hereby established a post-K-20-pipeline public
    service requirement of two (2) to four (4) years of approved
    public service, typically completed post-age-twenty-five adjunct
    with Montana state university programs.

    (2) Service categories include:

        (a) State and local government service;

        (b) Emergency and first responder services;

        (c) Military service;

        (d) Public education;

        (e) Agricultural and manufacturing service;

        (f) Tribal government or tribal enterprise service;

        (g) Conservation and land management service;

        (h) Healthcare and public health service;

        (i) Community volunteer corps.

    (3) Military service, Peace Corps, AmeriCorps, Tribal service
    programs, and VISTA service shall be credited year-for-year.

    (4) High and low performers may vary from the typical age-25
    start point.

2-15-4002. Resource library — creation — tiers.

    (1) There is hereby created the Montana resource library, a
    distribution system for goods tiered by permanence, adapted from
    the resource library model proposed by Jacque Fresco (2007):

        (a) Constant-need goods (food, consumables): Available to all
        Montana residents through at-cost food assurance centers;

        (b) Semi-permanent goods (clothing, household supplies):
        Available through essential goods program and resource
        library;

        (c) Permanent goods (appliances, one home, one vehicle):
        Available to qualifying individuals, one-per-household for
        housing;

        (d) Currency tier (luxury, custom, specialty): Currency
        survives for goods not covered by the resource library.

    (2) THE UNLOCK MECHANISM: Full resource library access is granted
    upon completion of BOTH the K-20 education pipeline (approximately
    20 grades, through approximately age 25) AND the post-pipeline
    public service requirement (2-4 years adjunct with state
    university).

    (3) The resource library does not eliminate the market economy;
    it provides a floor of material security below which no qualifying
    citizen falls.

DIVISION V — GENERAL PROVISIONS

SECTION 8. Appropriation.

    The following amounts are appropriated from the general fund for
    the biennium beginning July 1, 2027:

    Department of Agriculture (food assurance):       $20,000,000
    Department of Commerce (essential goods):          $8,000,000
    Dept. of Public Health and Human Services:         $3,000,000
    Office of Public Instruction / Board of Regents:  $50,000,000
    Dept. of Administration (public service/
      resource library):                               $6,000,000
    Tribal partnership and food sovereignty grants:    $8,000,000
    TOTAL:                                            $95,000,000

    This total represents approximately 1.46% of Montana's
    approximately $6.5 billion biennial general fund for the
    2027-2029 biennium.

    THE FEDERAL SNAP COST-SHIFT. Federal H.R. 1 (2025) increased
    the state share of SNAP administrative costs from fifty percent
    to seventy-five percent, effective October 1, 2026. This state
    currently routes SNAP benefits through commercial retailers
    where 75.7 cents of every food dollar pays for markup rather
    than food. At at-cost routing through Division I, approximately
    95 cents of every dollar reaches the recipient as food
    (production cost plus five percent surcharge) — a 3.9-fold
    increase in delivered food value per SNAP dollar that
    independently offsets the federal cost-shift.

    DIVISION I FOOD PROGRAM TARGET. The at-cost food assurance
    program established in Division I, serving Montana's population
    of approximately 1.08 million residents (MT.gov, Census 2025),
    requires approximately $658 million per year at production cost
    ($609 per person per year for a full baseline of 37 staple food
    items at 30 percent of cheapest retail price per USDA Food Dollar
    Series methodology). Against Montana's annual budget of
    approximately $8.2 billion ($16.46 billion biennial, NASBO HB 2
    signed June 2025), this represents approximately 8 percent.
    Montana's per-capita state spend of approximately $7,593 per
    resident supports the full baseline. Verified April 18, 2026
    via SearXNG.

    THE FISCAL LOCK. The argument that Montana "cannot afford"
    this Act is refuted by the state's existing expenditure on the
    less efficient version of the same programs while absorbing a
    federal SNAP cost-shift the state did not request. The fiscal
    question is not whether to spend, but whether to continue
    spending four times as much as required to accomplish the same
    objective.

SECTION 9. Effective dates.

    (1) Division I (Food Assurance): July 1, 2027 — pilot centers
    operational within two years;

    (2) Division II (Health): July 1, 2027 — baseline assessment
    within two years;

    (3) Division III (Education Modernization): The K-20 compulsory
    education extension is phased in beginning with students entering
    ninth grade in 2029-30, with the first full cohort completing the
    pipeline in 2036-37. Full tuition funding phased in over three
    fiscal years beginning FY 2028;

    (4) Division IV (Public Service): July 1, 2030 — applies to the
    first cohort completing the K-20 pipeline.

    CONSTITUTIONAL EDUCATION OBLIGATION. Article X Section 1
    of the Montana Constitution recognizes "the goal of
    developing the full educational potential of each person"
    and requires "equality of educational opportunity." Columbia
    Falls Elementary School v. State (2005) held the Legislature
    must fund education at a level that meets quality standards.
    Division III completes this mandate.

SECTION 10. Severability.

    If any provision of this act or its application to any person or
    circumstance is held invalid, the remainder of the act and the
    application of the provision to other persons or circumstances
    is not affected.

SECTION 11. Tribal sovereignty.

    (1) Nothing in this act shall be construed to diminish, modify,
    or eliminate the sovereign authority of Montana's federally
    recognized tribal nations.

    (2) All programs established in this act that operate on tribal
    land or serve tribal communities shall be developed and
    administered in genuine partnership with the relevant tribal
    government, pursuant to the government-to-government relationship
    between Montana and its tribal nations.

    (3) Tribal nations may elect to participate in, modify, or
    decline any program established in this act as it applies to
    their sovereign territory.

SECTION 12. Coordination with Montana Constitution.

    (1) This act is enacted pursuant to and consistent with:

        (a) Article II, Section 3 (right to a clean and healthful
        environment);

        (b) Article II, Section 10 (right to privacy);

        (c) Article X, Section 1(2) (preservation of cultural
        integrity of American Indian populations);

        (d) Article III, Section 4 (initiative and referendum);

        (e) Article XII, Section 1 (the Montana Constitution
        controls when in conflict with statute).

    (2) The Legislature declares that this act operationalizes the
    constitutional framework envisioned by the delegates to the
    1972 Montana Constitutional Convention.

SECTION 13. Safety clause.

    This act is declared necessary for the immediate preservation
    of the public peace, health, and safety.

LEGISLATIVE ROUTING NOTE

COMMITTEE ASSIGNMENT:

    Senate Agriculture, Livestock, and Irrigation Committee
    Senate Public Health, Welfare, and Safety Committee
    Senate Education and Cultural Resources Committee
    House Agriculture Committee
    House Human Services Committee
    House Education Committee
    House Appropriations Committee

FLOOR VOTE:

    Senate: Simple majority (26 of 50)
    House: Simple majority (51 of 100)
    Governor's signature or veto override (two-thirds)

REFERENCES

The research and citations supporting this act are drawn from:

FOOD AND COMMODITY ASSURANCE: - USDA Economic Research Service, Food Dollar Series (2023) - Military Commissary Act of 1867, 10 U.S.C. Section 2484 - Cooper, "The Mathematics of Abundance" (2025) — Paper III - FRAC, SNAP State Fact Sheet — Montana (February 2025) - USDA NASS, Montana Agricultural Statistics (2024) - Montana Free Press, "Montana still has more cows than people" (July 2025) - Fresco, "Designing the Future" (2007) — Resource library three-tier model - Galbraith, "The Affluent Society" (1958) - Veblen, "The Engineers and the Price System" (1921) - Cooper, "Stolen Futures" (2025) — Paper IV - Penck, Earth carrying capacity calculations (1925)

EXTRACTION HISTORY: - High Country News, Berkeley Pit snow geese (December 1995) - Audubon Society, Snow Geese Die in Poisonous Mine Waters (2016) - EPA, Butte Mine Flooding Operable Unit Fact Sheet (2019) - Malmstrom Air Force Base, 341st Missile Wing Fact Sheet

PUBLIC HEALTH AND HIERARCHY: - Marmot, The Whitehall Studies (1967-present) - Marmot, "The Status Syndrome" (2004) - Sapolsky, "Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers" (1994); "Behave" (2017) - Shively, Social Stress and Coronary Artery Atherosclerosis (2009) - Blackburn & Epel, "The Telomere Effect" (2017) - Montana DPHHS, Suicide in Montana Report (September 2023) - Montana Department of Labor and Industry, Reservation Economies (2024)

EDUCATION AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT: - Erikson, Childhood and Society (1959) - Vygotsky, Mind in Society (1934/1978) - Bjork, "Desirable Difficulties" (1994) - Luthar, "The Culture of Affluence" (2003) - Calhoun, "Death Squared" (1973) / Universe 25 experiments (1962-1973) - van Gennep, "The Rites of Passage" (1909) - Turner, "The Ritual Process" (1969) - Bowles & Gintis, "Schooling in Capitalist America" (1976) - Cooper, "The Targeting Error" (2025) — Paper V - Jackson, "Life in Classrooms" (1968) - Hirsch, "Cultural Literacy" (1987) - Bloom, "Taxonomy of Educational Objectives" (1956) - Gardner, "Frames of Mind" (1983) - Goleman, "Emotional Intelligence" (1995) - Bar-On, "The Emotional Quotient Inventory" (1997) - Holland, "Making Vocational Choices" (1959/1997) - Smith, "The Wealth of Nations" (1776) - Cooper, "Historical Apoplexy" (2025-2026) — Papers I through X - Cooper, "The Vitruvian Quotient" (2025-2026)

MONTANA-SPECIFIC: - Montana Constitution (1972) - Indian Education for All, MCA 20-1-501 - Montana tribalnations.mt.gov, Directory of Tribal Nations - Montana University System (mus.edu) - Montana Department of Labor and Industry, Reservation Economies - Urban Institute, State Fiscal Brief — Montana (2024) - Census Bureau, Montana QuickFacts (2025) - 1972 Montana Constitutional Convention (Wikipedia; U of Montana archives) - Ballotpedia, Signature requirements for ballot measures in Montana

END OF BILL

MONTANA FOOD, RESOURCE, AND COMMODITY ASSURANCE ACT Sixty-Ninth Legislature of the State of Montana 2025 Regular Session

Prepared by: The Amanuensis — theamanuensis.com Originally proposed: 2016 (Cooper, for Colorado) Montana adaptation: March 2026

---