Lobbyist says Ellsworth asked for bogus bid in Helena court

A lobbyist testified in Helena that state Sen. Jason Ellsworth asked him to submit a bogus bid, a claim that puts the mechanics of public contracting at the center of Lewis and Clark County’s latest political trial. If a bid is fake, the competition is only for show, and taxpayers can end up paying for a contract that was never truly open to rivals.

Ellsworth, a Hamilton Republican and former Montana Senate president, has already been accused of official misconduct over a no-bid contract. State officials said they were forced to rush Ellsworth’s contracts, and Ellsworth later pleaded not guilty while arguing legislative immunity. The testimony now moves the dispute from accusation toward a clearer question: whether the bidding process was shaped in advance to produce a preferred result.

That distinction matters because a bogus bid can distort more than one contract. It can make one offer look competitive when the winner was already chosen, steer work away from other firms, and give public agencies a false sense that they received market pricing. When the process is bent that way, residents pay twice, first in public dollars and again in lost trust that state business is being awarded fairly.

The fallout has already reached beyond the courtroom. The Montana Senate voted to bar Ellsworth from the floor for life and remove him from committees, a punishment that showed how far the controversy spread inside the Capitol. The case has become part of a broader timeline around how Ellsworth and the contract turned into a scandal, with each new hearing adding another layer to the fight over what happened and who knew it.

For Helena, where the statehouse sits at the center of civic and political life, the case lands close to home. A witness account that a lobbyist was asked to supply a bogus bid suggests not just a paperwork problem but a possible effort to create the appearance of competition while the outcome was being shaped behind the scenes. The court will now weigh whether that allegation was an isolated request or part of a larger effort to conceal how the contract was handled.