Commissioner of Securities and Insurance Matt Rosendale presented an overview of the State Auditor’s office to a joint meeting of the Montana House and Senate Business and Labor Committees on Wednesday.

Rosendale said his office provides million of dollars to the state’s general fund.

“I was pleased to let the legislators to know that we are an agency that is funded by special revenue,” said Rosendale. “The revenue that we generate to operate this agency is from license fees from the people we provide oversight to, and we actually generated over $90 million to the general fund in fiscal year 2018, so rather than drawing money from the general fund, we literally are a cash cow. We send $90 million to the general fund.”

Rosendale was also proud of his work on the State Land Board.

“While we were managing the over 5 million acres of school trust land, we were able to expand access to over 27,000 acres of new public access in 2018,” he said. “Through the Land Board we contributed $42 million of revenue for the school trust, which included harvesting over 61 million board feet of timber here in state lands.”

Rosendale also reminded the legislative committees of a little-known fact about the State Auditor’s office: that it’s a criminal justice agency which prosecutes “white collar” crime both administratively and criminally. Rosendale’s office resolved 273 legal matters in 2018, with $11.4 million in ordered restitution to victims and another $1.2 million in fines imposed on bad actors.

Rosendale spoke to a joint meeting of the Montana House and Senate Business and Labor Committees.

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