Private contractor says he’s the one who split controversial contract, not former Senate president
A private contractor at the center of a Montana Senate ethics probe is pushing back against allegations of waste and abuse directed at the chamber’s former president, Republican Jason Ellsworth.
Stevensville resident Bryce Eggleston, in a deposition obtained by Montana Free Press, testified that it wasn’t Ellsworth’s call to divide into two contracts a $170,100 work agreement awarded to Eggleston.
Eggleston under oath said it was him and not Ellsworth who wrote the contracts and estimated the cost of his services, details intended to discredit a Legislative Auditor’s conclusion last week that Ellsworth deliberately split the work into two contracts to avoid Montana’s competitive bidding laws for government work of more than $100,000. The auditor deemed that splitting of the contract an “abuse of (Ellsworth’s) government position.”
“The original proposals were drafted by me,” Eggleston said the deposition.
“In my mind, if you potentially are going to subcontract the work, that you might have to have a separate agreement in order to do so, to subcontract the entire contract, except for a portion thereof,” Eggleston offered as an explanation for the division.
Eggleston described the work to be done as post-legislative analysis of the state’s rollout of up to 27 bills to reform Montana courts, once the bills became law. Eggleston said that he expected the work to involve many hours monitoring the Montana judiciary to see how courts put the new laws into practice, during which he would prepare an analysis of elements of the new laws that needed to be changed. He estimated the cost of the work at $6,300 per bill and separated the work so he could farm it out if the job proved too large for his business, Agile Analytics, of which Eggleston is the only employee. Agile Analytics was incorporated within weeks of the contracts being submitted.
The contractor disputed several of the Legislative Audit Division’s claims about the contract and said he had never been contacted by investigators working on the report. He said in the deposition that he received several calls from the press, to which he didn’t respond.
Eggleston’s deposition was attached to a request for a correction to the Legislative Auditor’s report. Ellsworth’s attorney, Joan Mell, authored the correction letter to Auditor Angus Maciver and conducted the 120-page deposition of Eggleston.
The Legislative Auditor’s report didn’t include testimony from Ellsworth, who requested his attorney be present for discussions with the auditor. Ellsworth told Montana Free Press that Maciver indicated a willingness to allow the senator to have a lawyer present for questioning but then allowed the senator less than two days to find one.
Wednesday marked the first meeting of the Senate Ethics Committee. Evenly divided by political party, the four-member committee met to discuss rules for proceeding with an investigation into the contract, which was awarded in December in the final days of Ellsworth’s two-year term as Senate president.
Tuesday, current Senate President Matt Regier, R-Kalispell, announced that he had hired Matt Monforton, a conservative firebrand, to represent the Senate in ethics committee proceedings. Monforton, a former legislator, has made several social media posts critical of Ellsworth since the 2025 Legislature convened.
Regier emailed the press Wednesday, clarifying that Monforton was his personal attorney in the matter, after questions arose over whether the Senate had hired Monforton without considering other attorneys.
The ethics committee Wednesday quickly divided over whether Monforton could be impartial. Sen. Laura Smith, a former federal prosecutor and Helena Democrat, said Monforton’s comments about Ellsworth on social media should be disqualifying. Smith and Sen. Chris Pope, D-Bozeman, suggested they work with Republican members Sen. Forrest Mandeville, of Columbus, and Sen. Tom McGillvray, of Billings, to select an impartial attorney.
“This is a committee decision about what kind of (attorney) should be shepherding us through what must be a fair and impartial process,” Smith told committee members.
However, McGillvray and Mandeville said legislative committees as a rule don’t pick their staff. The choice was Senate President Regier’s, they said.
The ethics investigation is the latest in a series of antagonistic exchanges between Senate Republican leadership and the chamber’s former leader. Ellsworth, of Hamilton, joined with Democrats on the first day of the session to stage a surprise amendment to the Senate Rules, which resulted in several members of an undesirable Senate committee receiving better assignments. Ellsworth later described the committee as a means for Senate Republican leaders to sideline several lawmakers — Ellsworth, four other Republicans and three Democrats, including Senate Minority Leader Pat Flowers, D-Belgrade.
Senate leadership shut down committee bill hearings for a week after the uprising. An attempt by leadership to regain control of Senate Rules failed. Then, on Jan. 17, news of the $170,100 contract with Eggleston broke. By Jan. 24, the Legislative Auditor produced a report based on interviews with legislative staff and the Department of Administration that suggested Ellsworth handcrafted two contracts to get around state competitive bidding laws and, in the process, awarded work to Eggleston, a former Ellsworth employee.
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This story was originally published by Montana Free Press and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.