News you can use
News you can use
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The Montana Legislature is in full swing. Over 1,000 bills and resolutions are making their way through the House and Senate. As busy as it has been, the pace will pick up as we near the first transmittal deadline on March 4. The deadline requires bills without spending or revenue attached to them to transfer from one house to the other to survive. It also marks the halfway point of the 90-day session. I am fortunate to serve on the Appropriations Committee. This is the busiest committee in the Legislature, as we are...
Please don’t grimace like that, Mrs. Hunter. I’m drunk on spring love and language is ours to play games. Spring arrives quickly here in Jalisco, the Garden State of Mexico. I declare, we are definitely in the Sprang stage of Spring. Boing. Boing. Boing. What fun it is. Light opens the sky a little bit earlier. Not much, here closer to the Equator, but a little. And it stays around a little bit longer in the evening before it drops behind the mountains. And the day warms up...
Editor, In week 7, the Senate confirmed a number of Gov. Greg Gianforte board appointments; a couple of north-central Montana locals were on the list. The governor appointed Tony Miller from Joplin to the Board of Respiratory Care Practitioners. Travis Brown, who grew up in Havre and the Hi-Line and who has since moved to Helena, was also confirmed by the Senate for a board position. He now sits on the Montana Tax Appeal Board as a public representative. A bill that brought a lot of attention from the educational community...
House Bill 405 proposes a substantial amendment to the Montana Constitution in an attempt to create something known as a “citizens’ grand jury.” Apparently, the bill is meant to fulfill the objective of a “Platform Principle” adopted by the Montana Republican Party which states that: “We … support reforming the Grand Jury laws to better root out corruption, and support limiting the ability of the MT Supreme Court to abuse its power to protect themselves.” If approved by the Montana Legislature, and then approved by the voters...
There is no singular cause for Montana’s housing crisis. Rising costs of land, materials, and labor combined with people moving into our communities, further straining our infrastructure, has made for an increasingly critical housing situation. On top of that, developers, builders, and local governments are trying to build housing under old, outdated land use and planning statutes from the 1920s. As an attempted quick fix, many of the housing bills this legislative session mandate the same zoning rules for all communities a...
My mother has a pet squirrel named Stubby. He is not, technically, her pet, as he lives outdoors as a wild squirrel. But he spends much of his time sitting on the railing, watching my mother, and my mother spends much of her time sprinkling seeds outside for Stubby, so you cannot deny they have a relationship. While my husband, Peter, and I were up north visiting, however, Stubby had a visitor. “That’s not Stubby!” my mother said, looking out the window at the red squirrel who appeared remarkably at home. It’s easy to iden...
Editor, The Friends of Beaver Creek Park was organized in December 2011 to help support our most-beloved park in the Bear Paw Mountains. We assist in off-setting costs associated with maintaining such a large, beautiful facility. Friends’ mission statement is: The Friends of Beaver Creek Park foster recreation and preservation of the park for generations to come. It is at this time that we look to you to join us in our efforts and invite you to attend our next meeting; exact date and location to follow. For more i...
My bar for evaluating news content is pretty old-school: Is it factual, truthful and unbiased? Sometimes, though, I desire more of this than is provided in article, not in the sense that “Oh, that has inspired me to know more on the topic,” but rather wanting to know “What in the heckfire aren’t they telling us, here?” WSAZ News Channel 3 out of Huntington, West Virginia, reported Tuesday that police in Anchorage, Alaska, responded to a call from a concerned citizen in the cit...
6 was the year of celebrating the 50th birthday of Montana’s Constitution — its visionary provisions and the unique bipartisan approach adopted by the citizen delegates who wrote it. Our perspective is from a combined total of over 30 years of legislative experience under both our current Constitution, as well as the one that preceded it. We see Montana’s Constitution as a truly glorious document. It has honorably served our citizens as well as our landscape for half a century, and we are dismayed that, out-o...
I went to Oconahua to Jane’s birthday celebration for cake and homemade ice-cream. Ninety-five full years. From the stories Jane has told and from stories her daughters told with great glee, that woman was a pistol. She’s still a pop gun. She lived fully and outrageously, a registered nurse, from NYC to Alaska to Washington to Mexico. In what order, I don’t know. There are chapters I’ve not heard. Jane is Michelle’s mother and has a casita on Ana and Michelle’s land a shor...
As I started week six, Judy and I had the opportunity to have a 2023 Senior from Havre High join us for the week. Paige Bertelsen signed up to be a 68th legislative page for the Senate, and I was honored to sponsor her. Paige was recommended by a teacher of Havre High, Lindsey Ratliff. I hope Paige had fun and learned as much as I have fun sharing and learning with her. Paige had the chance to witness one of the most lively debates I have ever seen on the floor of the Senate....
My husband, Peter, does not believe in Valentine’s Day. I mean, he knows it is a thing. It’s just a thing he prefers to ignore. “Stupid!” That is Peter’s verdict. Peter takes offense whenever there is a big marketing effort aimed at getting him to buy things in order to show affection. He feels this way about Christmas, believing it has become too commercialized. He feels this way about birthdays, insisting that the day of his birth is nothing to celebrate. Buying gifts for...
Montana farmers and ranchers face numerous challenges. Some of these challenges such as weather, commodity prices, and bank loan rates are beyond a single farmer’s ability to manage. On the other hand, there are challenges faced by Montana producers, which one could reasonably consider as manageable yet in reality are not. One of the biggest challenges thrown in the face of Montana agriculture that falls in this category is when original equipment manufacturers lock farmers and ranchers out of repairing their own e...
The redistricting wrangling is now over. The Commission has made its decision, will formally file the legislative district structure, and the 2024 elections will move forward. For the sixth time that the difficult and politicallycharged redistricting process has been handled by the Commission created by the 1972 Constitutional Convention — ConCon. Montana’s redistricting process over 50 years has stood the test of time. The Commission created by the ConCon called for four partisan members appointed by the legislative leaders...
Valentine’s Day is one of the oddest holidays of the year. I can remember back in grade school being required to fill out little Valentine’s cards for all my classmates and thinking that this was one of the stupidest, most awkward things I ever had to do. I asked my mom when I was in first grade why I had to give cards to all the kids, including the kids I didn’t know, the ones who were mean and the ones I had no thoughts on at all. Navigating social norms is difficult enoug...
Some say confession is good for the soul, and growing up Catholic, I’m a believer. Here is something I seldom talk about. First, though, the catalyst. For the past week, on my sunrise walk with Lola, I’ve been singing. Here is what you need to understand. I don’t sing. Ever. I love music. Songs weave through my days, mostly in my head. Silently. I don’t allow the songs to exit my mouth. Unlike bad words which squeak through frequently and often appropriately. My fear of bein...
In Taxation Committee, Week 5 started with bills to lower taxes for certain types of income or property taxes. SB 194 proposed to give tax credits to landlords who lower rent to below market rate, with taxpayers picking up the tab for the rest of the tax burden. The legislator who carried that bill pulled it after the cost to the state’s other taxpayers was pointed out. SB 125 is a bill still floating around that would require all mill levies passed by a vote of the people to have an automatic sunset (end) in a standard n...
“The worst thing,” I told my mother, “was when you made us eat venison sausage for lunch. That sausage lasted forever!” I am visiting my parents, and we somehow got to discussing our less-than-favorite foods. My mother always made wonderful school lunches with fresh fruit and a homemade cookie. But memory is fickle. What I remember most clearly was when my father brought home from work what seemed to me, as an elementary-school-age kid, a venison sausage the size of a basebal...
All Montanans have seen the bumper stickers and heard the chatter warning potential newcomers against changing Montana. This proud defense of our state often emanates from folks a lot like me; from hunters, anglers — people who love to hike our mountains and camp in the backcountry. Most of us have been quoting those bumper stickers assuming that any change would probably come from interlopers in rainbow-painted VW vans, or maybe from dangerously liberal urban yuppies with their shiny new electric vehicles and brand-new Monta...
I recently recognized the fact that I’ve been working my way through the five stages of greed. All I can say is that not all of life’s progress is in a positive direction. I’d like to blame my office’s personal benefactor, the cookie lady, who is, after all, a sweet little old cookie pusher. So I do. She has grandma-style old-fashioned manners, which mean she has her own wiliness. It’s like that social media challenge “How do you tell me (something), without actually te...
We finished Week Four of the 68th legislative session last week. For breakfast one morning last week, we were hosted by 4-H members from most of the counties throughout Montana. My home county sponsored me, and I also got to say hello to Chouteau County 4-H’ers as they sponsored Rep. Paul Tuss. Additionally, the School for the Deaf and Blind from Great Falls performed a song for us using American Sign Language. It was a very impressive program to have on the floor of the Senate. I just looked at the proposed constitutional a...
On a cold winter morning in the town of Clancy, state legislators gathered to make sausage. Clancy has two bars, two churches, a school and a post office. It’s the kind of place that lends itself to community sausage making. There is an old expression that you don’t want to see two things being made: sausage and laws. But when the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Center brought together a bipartisan group of legislators, we learned that saying sells both short. We were called together to learn, both literally and figuratively, how...
My Grandma came to live with us when I was four so that my Dad didn’t have to farm me and my sister out to relatives. Grandma was a good cook and taught me the learn-it-by-doing-it method. She told me that she had to bake bread every day raising her own seven children and she didn’t intend to bake another loaf of bread. Funny, she made bread rolls every Sunday and the pies, cakes, cinnamon rolls, cookies that rolled out of her oven were bountiful and delicious. There were thi...
Thank you, Sen. Russ Tempel, for voting no on the unconstitutional SB 154. Your commitment to protecting the Right to Privacy as guaranteed in Montana’s Constitution is greatly appreciated. All Montanans deserve to make their own medical decisions and the Legislature should not be dictating how the judicial branch can and can’t interpret laws. We urge local community members to contact your representatives in the House and ask them to vote no on SB 154. Josh Kassmeier, House District 27, 406-781-5386, email Jos...
Consumers have the right to know the origin of the beef on their tables, and ranchers have the right to a fair and competitive market. This is a reasonable expectation. However, after 2015, beef and pork were exempted from country of origin labeling laws. As a result, consumers do not know where their beef comes from, and ranchers do not have fair prices. That’s why we are bringing forward country of origin placarding legislation (HB 350), which will set the story straight. Today, the “USDA Graded” and “Product of the USA...
