News you can use
News you can use
Sorted by date Results 1095 - 1119 of 5551
Week 16 was a marijuana-intensive week. Early in the week, we were given an overview of what was in the 260-some page SB-701. There were many questions and some of the last-minute requests were also addressed. Fortunately, a special committee was assigned to take care of the recreational part this issue. When the medical marijuana bill came to be a couple sessions ago, it was assigned to the Tax Committee, of which I am a member. We had to figure out how to make a law that not only worked and made sense, but was also...
For decades, Montanans of all stripes have worked to create a responsible and commonsense pathway for the restoration of wild bison outside the boundaries of Yellowstone National Park. But Gov. Greg Gianforte just sunk those efforts. In doing so, he has allied himself with a fringe wing of political operatives who are highly motivated to privatize Montana’s wildlife and limit our access to land and water. This is a very dangerous signal of things to come. All Montana hunters and anglers who remain proud of our wildlife h...
Freedom was at the forefront last week in Helena. This week at the Legislature, we made significant progress in ensuring freedom and protecting liberty for Montanans all across the state. House Bill 702 prohibits discrimination against all Montanans based on their vaccination status. That means employers may not punish or fire employees for personal medical decisions, nor can they require employees to get a COVID vaccination. However, employees must understand the policy manual of the employer. This bill is not an attack on...
I got to pull stitches out of my husband’s face Wednesday and I was so excited about it I did a happy dance while he wasn’t looking. He never wants to let me play doctor on him. I get it — and by that I mean I get it, and I don’t get it all at the same time. John is, let’s say, sensitive. He lives with pain 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I get that. So a new pain, even — or maybe especially — little pains like from a sliver, cause a sort of excited nervous system respon...
April 3, Montana lost a wise and deeply decent public servant. Stan Stephens, our state's 20th governor, passed away at the age of 91. A native of Calgary, Stan's father suffered a debilitating illness when Stan was a small boy, leaving Stan's mother and her five young sons in perilous circumstances. Trained by his musician father, at the age of seven, Stan was able to use his remarkable gift for music to play trumpet solos in the Calgary Symphony, and soon after as the child...
I’d been out of bed five minutes when I heard the clang-rang of my gate bell. We respect each other’s boundaries. When neighbors visited, they stood out by the gate and yelled, “Sondra, are you home?” I’d lived here a year when I figured there must be a better early-warning system. At the tianguis in town I bought a goat bell. I had a welder make an arch and attach it to the gate so the bell would hang free. When I hear the bell, I go out to the gate and open it for my guests....
“Oh my gosh. I don’t want to open that box.” Moving furniture and books and clothing is easy. It’s moving memories that is hard. I am going through the last of my boxes. I used to say I was not a packrat. I thought I was more like my mother than my dad. My dad might tuck a piece of wood away, thinking it would find a use someday. My mother would be of the opinion that it’s easier to buy a board when (and if) it was needed. Generally, it wasn’t. This approach keeps my parents’ house very tidy — with the possible except...
Montana’s response to the COVID pandemic has put our state’s public health system in the spotlight, as well as into the crosshairs. Through numerous bills this session, members of the Montana Legislature have sought to attack our state’s public health system and insert politics and bureaucracy into the process of making decisions that keep our communities safe and healthy. However, a new poll indicates that these efforts by legislators are driven more by special interests and ideology than by what Montana voters actually want...
While much ado has rightfully been made of the repeated attempts to undermine and privatize Montana’s wildlife hunting access and privileges, less attention has been paid to numerous dirty water bills working their way to Gov. Gianforte’s desk, each of which threatens fisheries, clean water, countless jobs and businesses, and our way of life. Recent rhetoric about cutting the proverbial government red tape is a nice soundbite, but in practice will have the opposite effect of the so-called jobs and recovery focus of this ses...
Dear Editor, I’ve never written a letter to the Editor before but I have an issue that has been bothering me for some time. Why do we have to climb a hill to get in the clinic to see our doctors? When it’s icy it’s very difficult to walk up or push someone in a wheel chair up the hill. Why can’t the first parking lot be brought up level with the clinic doors? I’ve talked to my neighbors and friends and they all agree, something needs to be done to level the 1st parking lot. Then we all can get in and out without much diff...
Editor, As faith leaders in Montana, we encourage you to receive the COVID vaccination if you are able. We believe we have a personal responsibility to get vaccinated as good stewards of God’s creation — our bodies. We believe we should get vaccinated out of love for our neighbors who may be physically vulnerable and not able to withstand the side effects of COVID-19. We believe we have a responsibility to get vaccinated to actively collaborate with our community to preserve life. We invite people of faith to join us as we...
The issue of plastic bags and garbage blowing out of the landfill has been an ongoing problem from its creation, and a timely subject since Earth Day is April 22. As my husband owned land adjacent to the landfill, we were continually picking up garbage, mostly plastic, from the property and fence lines. Checking cattle one day we discovered a calf nearly dead from trying to ingest a plastic grocery bag sticking partly out of his mouth. Plastic is toxic to cattle, every other type of animal, bird, and fish because of its chemi...
April is always a fast-paced month at the Legislature, and this year is no different. The Senate has been busy voting on a lot of bills that covered a wide variety of topics. I am confident that the bills we passed will improve lives of Montanans in many ways, however nothing is perfect. This past week the Senate passed two critical appropriations bills that will help our state move past the pandemic and sustain prosperity for decades to come. As we decided what to do with the federal stimulus money, Republican leaders in Hel...
The 67th Montana Legislature is turning its back on Montana voters and the public lands we rely on. From Billings to Butte, Great Divide to Glendive, Helena to Havre, Montanans of all stripes find pleasure, beauty, and much of their protein outside. In Montana, we know that our public lands can’t just serve as an empty slogan for politicians to lean on during campaign season. Public lands shape our way of life, our dinner plates, our economic health, and the state we pass down to our children. Back in November, Montanans o...
Editor, Thank you to Karen Jelly, our mortician, and my friend, for the excellent job she is doing during this pandemic. She has seen it, done it and lived it from day one. She deserves our greatest gratitude. Sincerely, Faye James Havre...
Editor, How can they? … Is it not enough that they control our House, Senate and governor’s seat? … They now demand total political appointment of judges and 10 percent of all state jobs? When we voted “More jobs...less government” did they mean “More jobs for political pals. … Less service for people?” How can the party of “less government” dictate who can vote and what you can smoke? Force you to pay and burn coal and smother solar? Glorify guns and snare traps but withhold funds from facemasks? Pick what women shall we...
Apparently, this last Thursday there was a positive COVID test in the Capitol. I was notified late in the day Thursday, and, as of this writing, what will happen this coming week is up in the air. Friday’s Senate floor session and committees were not held. It has given me free time to catch up on communications. I have been getting so many emails this last week for a variety of bills, many in support of or against the same bill. It is clear which bills are controversial to all. With this unprecedented number of emails coming...
We all have a voice, and for good, bad or weird animals do too. NPR’s Madeline Sofia talked March 25 to U.S. Department of Agriculture entomologist Sammy Ramsey about cicadas because the annual cicada hatch is coming up soon, and this should be a big year — a big, noisy year, even for the notoriously noisy insect. Cicadas, Ramsey said, come in 23 different broods, or types, that hatch every 13 or 17 years, depending on the particular type of cicada. Brood X, which stands for...
Some days I can’t lose for winning. Sunrise, up earlier than I wanted. I moped around, felt mildly depressed. Not real depression. Real depression is serious stuff. Me, I’m in sort of a down-in-the-dumps lite. Ice-cream for breakfast sounds good. Will ice-cream help? But my freezer is empty. I haven’t had ice-cream for weeks. Back in the easy-peasy days before COVID, I bought hand-packed ice-cream from a woman in town. But knowing precautions were loosely held in that tiend...
The tree was lying on its side when I got to it. It was a nice-looking pine tree, fluffy and full and as tall as me. The strong winds coupled with some unstable footing had caused it to fall over. This seemed too sad to simply walk by. I went over to the tree and, with a little effort, got it standing upright again. It looked much happier. I finished my walk, feeling I had done my part. The next day, it was lying on its side again. I examined it more closely. It had been...
This past Friday was the 68th Legislative Day in Helena. We have 90 days per session to accomplish all we set out to do at the legislature, so that means we are quickly approaching the end of the session. But I am proud of what we have accomplished so far. This past week, the Senate passed House Bill 2, which is the bill that decides the state budget. The budget is split into separate sections, A through E. I presided over the debate and passage of Section A. Section A funds the legislative branch and all the essential parts...
Senate Bill 379 is a bill that is anti-jobs and anti-economic development. For a legislature supposedly focused on the governor’s rightful concerns for entrepreneurship, it’s a real step backward. Higher electricity bills will harm efforts to attract businesses to Montana. I support helping Colstrip, but not at the expense of every other business in Montana. I have been part of the Billings’ business community for more than 40 years and have served a half dozen governors, both Republicans and Democrats. In the early ’80s,...
State legislators are rushing a massive overhaul of our income tax system through the legislature at the last minute. Senate Bill 399 would cost the state millions in revenue and result in one in five Montanans paying more in income taxes. Sen. Hertz, R-Polson, introduced this bill on March 26. It was heard in committee less than a week later. The committee voted just minutes after the hearing, sending it to the Senate floor where it passed on a largely party line vote five days later. Normally a bill of this magnitude and...
After surviving the past year, 2017 seems like a lifetime ago. But for individuals with disabilities, it was a pretty memorable and terrible year in Montana. As a reminder, in 2017 Montana experienced a revenue downturn, and the Executive and Legislature responded with cuts. The Department of Public Health and Human Services experienced the deepest cuts. The Legislature made cuts to programs helping seniors and people with disabilities stay in their homes, to chemical dependency treatment, and also closed 19 rural public assi...
Voters turned out in record numbers in 2020. Hundreds-of-thousands of folks in our state cast their ballots and exercised their most fundamental right as an American. Unfortunately, Republicans across the nation and here in Montana are working around the clock to take that right away. Today there are 361 bills introduced across 47 states to make it harder for eligible American voters to cast a ballot. In Arizona, Republican lawmakers responded to election losses by quickly introducing a voter suppression bill to make it...
