HELENA - In a long-awaited decision, Montana's top political cop says a conservative group that spent nearly $1.2 million promoting a trio of Montana ballot measures in 2006 paid for "campaign speech" and therefore must identify its financial donors.

Commissioner of Political Practices Dennis Unsworth said Monday that the group, Montanans in Action, and its associates violated a basic principle of state campaign finance law: The public has the right to know who is bankrolling campaigns in Montana.

"It's a simple issue of disclosing for voters who's involved, who the players are," he said Monday. "In this instance, it appears that persons and groups were working to avoid disclosure - working hard to avoid disclosure."

Unsworth's 105-page decision, issued late Friday, forwards the case to prosecutors in Lewis and Clark, Fergus and Cascade counties, giving them the chance to pursue a civil action against the group and its associates.

Those associates include the national group Americans for Limited Government and New York millionaire Howard Rich, who helped found ALG and has helped finance conservative causes around the country.

If the county prosecutors decline to pursue Montanans in Action, Unsworth himself can sue the group and its associates, seeking damages up to three times the amount of illegal contributions or spending.

The director of Montanans in Action, Winifred rancher and political activist Trevis Butcher, denounced the Unsworth decision as an extension of "petty bureaucratic harassment" that he said his group has suffered at the hands of Unsworth's office.

"This is the most absurd witch hunt that I've ever seen," Butcher said Monday.

Montanans in Action, formed by Butcher and others in late 2005, channeled $1.17 million into three ballot measures the following year: Constitutional Initiative 97, CI-98 and Initiative 154.

CI-97 would have capped state spending at a certain level; CI-98 gave the public more power to recall judges; and I-154 would have allowed property owners to demand payment from government if they thought a government action devalued their property.

The money, routed through separate ballot measure campaign "committees," went mostly to out-of-state professional signature-gatherers who helped qualify the measure for the November 2006 ballot in Montana.

The Montana group also routed $600,000 to a similar property rights measure in California in May 2006.

Seven weeks before the Montana election, a state district judge ordered CI-97, CI-98 and I-154 removed from the ballot, noting what he called a "pervasive and general pattern of fraud" by signature gatherers.

Meanwhile, a Helena attorney, Jonathan Motl, had filed a complaint with Unsworth's office, saying Montanans in Action had violated campaign laws by refusing to reveal its financial backers.

Motl said Montanans in Action's obvious purpose was to route money to the initiatives' campaign funds, so its donors should be disclosed.

Butcher refused, saying that MIA is a nonprofit group formed for educational purposes and, therefore, is not required to reveal its financial donors.

Motl said Monday that he's pleased with Unsworth's ruling, but that it must be pursued further in court to require Montanans in Action to disclose the source of its 2006 money and to ensure that no other group uses a similar ruse to conceal the source of campaign funds.

"The decision (by Unsworth) shows that the heart of the case is the refusal to disclose, even in the face of investigation," Motl said. "That refusal and the size of the refusal makes this the most extensive, consistent and deliberate assault on Montana's initiative process. …

"We have an open political system in Montana, but we just can't take it for granted."

Unsworth's ruling detailed what he called close coordination among Montanans in Action, Americans for Limited Government and its officers to draft the three Montana ballot measures and organize the effort to qualify them for the 2006 ballot.

Butcher had filed forms to allow the president of Americans for Limited Government and another national group to access and monitor MIA's bank account; a Washington, D.C., attorney associated with Rich drew up the incorporation papers for Montanans in Action; and the Montana group's 2007 tax form listed as its telephone number a Virginia number for Americans for Limited Government, Unsworth noted.

Unsworth also said that Butcher has refused to be interviewed by a state investigator and that MIA and its attorneys have refused to provide many additional documents that could shed light on its campaign-related spending.

"The time has come for these individuals to fully disclose their 2006 Montana campaign financing activities, as required by law," Unsworth said.

Butcher said Unsworth is taking his group's contacts with ALG and blowing them way out of proportion. Montanans in Action sometimes contracted with these groups to do certain services, and naturally was in contact with them, he said.

"If you're going to pay someone (for their services), you certainly want their input and insight," he said.

Butcher largely dismissed Unsworth's lengthy ruling as a "political vendetta," noting that Unsworth is a political appointee of Democratic Gov. Brian Schweitzer and calling Motl's "Schweitzer's Helena attorney."

"These Helena folks just don't seem to like it when you do things differently to give citizens and taxpayers a say in their government," Butcher said.

In a statement, Americans for Limited Government also called the ruling "a partisan political move by Gov. Schweitzer and his political hack Unsworth" and said that its attorneys have assured it that the group has followed the law.

Unsworth was appointed by Schweitzer in 2006 as political practices commissioner, who serves a single term.

The commissioner investigates complaints on campaign-finance and ethics matters. Unsworth ruled against Schweitzer in an ethics case last year, and the governor is suing Unsworth over that case.

Motl, a longtime Helena attorney and occasional political activist, drafted a ballot initiative for Schweitzer in 2006 and has drafted ballot measures for many liberal causes.