News you can use
News you can use
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Las Vegas card sharks, Mississippi Riverboat gamblers, and Churchill Downs handicappers are pleased that Gov. Greg Gianforte and Montana’s Republican legislators pulled a fast one on Montana homeowners in the 2023 session. Earlier this year, they permanently raised state residential property taxes by 43 percent — $81 million a year, and $162 million over the two-year state budget cycle. Then they pocketed our money. (Just look at your residential property appraisal notice — your home’s value and taxes are soaring as your sp...
Montanans recently received an unpleasant reminder of the perils of bad tax policy in their mail. Spending significant amounts of time in Granite County, I had the displeasure of seeing friends and family face average reappraisals topping 60 percent. Suppose we dive into tax policy developed by the Montana legislative super-majority. We’ll discover a distressing pattern: Working-class homeowners are subjected to massive permanent tax increases, while large corporations enjoy tax relief offset by the aforementioned workers. I...
I was reluctant to come back from Mexico this spring, knowing it would still be cold and wet and cloudy. But I’d gotten used to looking for pretty things while in Mexico. I wanted to share the festivals and the art and the colors. I’d been taking pictures and sharing them on Facebook so my friends and family could see a little bit of the world that surrounded me. Then I got back up north, and it seemed like everything had turned to gray. “This is not a reason to stop takin...
I’m a lawyer and interested in politics. Fortunately, I’ve been able to stay out of Montana tax law for my career, except at a very high level. Is the tax fair? Does it hurt or help those who can least afford to pay? That’s what most democrats ask. This changed when I, like all other Montana homeowners, got my reappraisal notice from Gov. Greg Gianforte’s Department of Revenue and learned my property values had skyrocketed. That, itself, wasn’t news to me, as I watched property sales go out the roof post-pandemic, when out-...
As a proud defender and lover of public land, I have cast deciding votes for Montanans to hike, fish and hunt some of the largest expansions of public land in decades while keeping Montana farmers and ranchers on the landscape. I was recently made aware of a social media campaign soliciting money claiming to fight for interests that I support and will continue to support: local control and public lands. In reality, this campaign would only line the pockets of liberal lawyers to sue me in a case that deserves immediate...
Every day brings its own. Its own what? I can give that sentence a thousand different objects. It’s more fun to leave it open. Use your imagination. Last night brought rain. I love lying in bed listening to the rainfall ping on the roof, plop on the potted palm outside my bedroom window. Rain thuds on the thick, waxy avocado leaves, barely makes a sound on the oleander. Rain, heavenly rain. Finally rain comes to us, not a lot, not with sturm and drang, but rain comes, l...
There are a few things that Montanans of all political persuasions can agree on, and one of them is doing what we can to assure the safety of our kids, and giving them the best start possible for what we hope is a happy, bright and productive future. As a legislator, I am pleased to have advocated and voted in the House of Representatives for proper funding for public education and also for programs aimed at helping keep our children healthy and safe. One such important effort that was successful during the recently...
I have always relied upon my cousin Dane. We grew up together. I’m a year older, but he’s the closest in age of my many cousins. Our families went camping together and bought a cabin up north together, and I’ve gotten into the habit of asking Dane for help whenever I’ve needed it, because Dane is the kind of guy who can be relied upon. Dane works as a stage rigger, and he’s the road manager for a band, so he has to know a lot about a lot of things. He understands electrica...
It seemed like it all happened at once. The heat broke. The rains came. And I spent the night hunched over the commode. It is a wonderful thing when the heat breaks, more-so this year as we sweltered under an unrelenting heat bubble. When the rains come, immediately the temperatures drop, 20 degrees this year. Plants of all species lift their heads and drink largely. Birds lift their beaks in the happiest of songs. Bugs of all descriptions line up outside my door, hoping for e...
Less government and lower taxes!! You hear that political slogan from Republican candidates early and often while they are campaigning. Then comes political reality. How did the largest percentage of Republicans elected in Montana history grow government at the fastest rate in state history — and at the same time raise property taxes on your home? During the pandemic years, the Trump and Biden administrations poured federal funds into states to prop up slowing economies. Funds went directly to state governments and into b...
Despite the fact that we here in Jalisco, Mexico, are still sizzling in a seemingly never-ending, garden killing, daily breaking records heatwave, I promised myself not to write about weather today. What else is there to write about? Ah, ha! Friendship. Michelle’s sister Susan is here visiting for a few days, so the women asked if I’d like to go to breakfast with them the other morning. We decided to go to our favorite coffee shop, Molletes. When they came to pick me up, Mic...
History may not repeat itself, but it rhymes. Patterns and cycles seem to repeat over time. Almost without exception, perceived threats to the racial, ethnic, or religious majority have triggered populist reactions to change. Ethnic minorities have been persecuted because of race; religious minorities because of faith; women and LGBTQ Americans because of gender and sexuality. Over time, all have found themselves in the crosshairs of the “defenders” of tradition. Most people may think they hold a live-and-let live att...
I spent the week visiting my parents at their retirement home “up north,” and so I got to see them and my mother’s outside pet, Stubby, the red squirrel. I hadn’t seen Stubby since last winter, when he had made an elaborate network of tunnels in the deep snow outside my parents’ window facing the lake. My mother fed him on the ground beneath the bird feeder, and Stubby would pop out of one of his several tunnel entrances to eat, then pop into his tunnel and emerge on the other side. He occasionally had some red squirrel...
In Jalisco, we are held fast in the grips of unrelenting heat and drought. As northeastern Montanans, we all know what that is like. Hot. Dry. Dusty. Depressing. Blue skies. Not a cloud in sight. My tender magnolia flowers all dried up in the fragile bud, turned to brown dust without opening. Even with daily watering, vegetables I planted poked up their little slender heads, looked around, said, “No, not me, uh huh, no, and keeled over.” As each bucket is harvested, I’m leavi...
Property tax appraisals are currently arriving in the mail. It’s important to review the valuation and appeal it if you do not agree with the valuation. The appeal instructions are in the letter that was mailed to you. You only have 30 days, so do not wait. If the value of your property increased by 30% that does not mean your taxes will increase by 30%. However, generally if the value of your property increased, most likely your taxes will be increasing. Property tax calculations are complex and understood by few. To c...
Property tax reappraisals are arriving in Montanans’ mailboxes this week and the news is not good. The Montana Department of Revenue is expecting average property tax reappraisals to jump a whopping 43% — Some properties are seeing an increase of 60% of its taxable value. “We have Gov. Gianforte to thank for our soaring tax hikes,” said Sheila Hogan, executive director of the Montana Democratic Party. “Because of his abject failure to do anything to permanently address property tax increases, working Montana families,...
It has been one year since the U.S. Supreme Court — SCOTUS — issued the Dobbs decision, eliminating the federally protected right to abortion. Here in Montana with the 2023 legislative session having ended in early May, we saw unprecedented attacks on the right to abortion and bodily autonomy, with record numbers of bills having been brought forward by legislators. However, Montanans can breathe a sigh of relief knowing that the right to abortion, despite the attempts to ban and restrict, remains legal and safe. The path lai...
It’s time to be thinking about Father’s Day — even if all we do is think about it. The woman who suggested Father’s Day in 1909 was named Sonora Smart Dodd. She was raised, along with her five siblings, by her father after her mother died in childbirth. The idea took a long time to catch on, and didn’t become a national holiday until Richard Nixon was in the White House. If you’re thinking it’s too bad that Ms. Dodd wasn’t around to see her dream fulfilled, you’d be wrong — sh...
In statistics, the term mutually exclusive refers to two or more related things or events that cannot exist or happen simultaneously. Common real-life examples of this state include that war and peace cannot coexist at once; the result of flipping a coin can’t be both heads and tails; and you can’t turn right and left at the same time. But all this does not mean that two opposite, but related, things can’t both be true at the same time — especially when dealing with that lo...
It’s not you, it’s me. And I’m really sorry, but I’m breaking up with you. I have to go away for a while and sort some things out. I don’t plan on this breakup lasting forever, but you should know that my brain is broken, so it’s a possibility. I know, my brain always has been set a hair off center, but I like to think that it’s in an off-beat, weirdly charming sort of way. COVID, though, B-R-O-K-E it. So, yeah, I am seriously going to take time off from writing and publishin...
I know better. I set myself up to fail. All the signs pointed to early rain. I jumped in with both feet and gleefully shouted to everybody I know, “This year the rains will come early in June. What a wonderful wet year we will have.” Ha. I know better. Sure, it rains in summer. Late June when we are lucky, July, August, and rains dribble off in September. The rest of the year is bone dry and that is easy and safe to predict. If I really wanted to be right, and who doe...
During the legislative session that just ended, Republicans spent a lot of time on hollow rhetoric about protecting Montana’s children — but that rhetoric was empty, and now we’re seeing the awful proof of that. Gov. Gianforte is refusing to accept $10 million to help feed hungry kids this summer, money that will otherwise just sit unused. And this isn’t the first time the Montana GOP has refused to act to make sure our kids have enough to eat. I would think that if there is anything we as Montanans can agree on, it is that n...
Folks have been asking what a legislator does during the interim (time between legislative sessions). First off, we get assigned to an interim committee and connect with other legislators on the committee. In the past, I have been on the Education Interim Committee and this interim I have been appointed to the Local Government Committee. Having not been on Local Government before, I reached out to a couple of the members who served on Local Government during session. I wanted to find out if there might be a study that was pla...
I heard him yelling before I saw him. He was in front of the church. His possessions were loaded into a shopping cart, and it appeared he was trying to navigate the steep hill. And he was yelling. Was there a fight? Should I be worried? But when I finally saw him, he was standing alone with his shopping cart. His face was flushed, and his voice was loud. I walked until I stood on the sidewalk in front of him. “What’s the matter?” I asked. He stopped yelling immediately. He lo...
The No Labels Party thinks the country needs a centrist option for the 2024 presidential contest — maybe something like a West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin/former Maryland Republican Gov. Larry Hogan unity ticket. But do the two big parties really have that much trouble uniting when it counts? The recent debt ceiling drama answers the question. Whatever the partisan uproar might be about who gets to say what on Twitter and what books kids get to read in school (...
