News you can use
News you can use
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By BOBBY CAINA CALVAN Associated Press HELENA — A Montana budget committee rescinded Friday more than $11 million in spending cuts for higher education that could have meant a steep rise in tuition at university campuses. The action by the House Appropriations Committee was a relief not only to students and their families, but to legislative Democrats who had been pushing Republicans to restore funding to education and health programs that were at risk from the budget ax. The $11.6 million restored to the proposed budget of t...
Havre Daily News staff Republican election officials sent out a press release protesting a release from the state chair of their own party in which he said mail ballots for a one-time special election would hurt Republicans in that and future elections. Montana Republican Party Chairman and Billings state Rep. Jeff Essmann issued an “Emergency Chairman’s Report” assailing Senate Bill 305 — the mail ballot bill for the upcoming special election to replace Rep. Ryan Zinke — saying the bill will increase voter turn-out...
Amy Beth Hanson Associated Press HELENA — An eastern Montana judge who has been criticized for handing down a suspended prison sentence in an incest case defended his decision in a statement released Friday. District Judge John McKeon said Valley County prosecutors did not challenge a psychosexual evaluation that said the 40-year-old defendant could be safely treated and supervised in the community. The plea agreement that recommended at least a 25-year prison sentence allowed for a lesser sentence depending on the results o...
BILLINGS — A federal jury awarded creditors of a Montana resort for the ultra-rich a $9 million judgment against the wife of the resort’s founder after she was accused of helping conceal assets in the fallout from the club’s bankruptcy. The verdict against Jessica Ferguson was reached Tuesday and released Wednesday by U.S. District Court in Seattle. Ferguson is the wife of Tim Blixseth, who founded the posh Yellowstone Club near Big Sky that went bankrupt in 2008. Creditors represented by the Yellowstone Club Liqui...
HELENA — Mike Fellows, the state Libertarian Party chairman who was making his eighth run for Montana’s U.S. House seat, died in a car crash, authorities said Tuesday. Fellows, 59, was in a head-on collision with another vehicle on Montana Highway 200 Monday night as he was returning home to Missoula after a campaign event in Seeley Lake, Missoula County Undersheriff Jason Johnson said in a statement. Fellows, who has run unsuccessfully for a statewide office every election since 1998, was a long-shot candidate again thi...
HELENA (AP) — Authorities say Mike Fellows, the Libertarian Party's candidate for Montana's U.S. House seat, died in a car crash. Missoula County sheriff's officials say Fellows, a 1976 graduate of Havre High School, died in a head-on collision with another vehicle on Montana Highway 200 Monday night. Undersheriff Jason Johnson says Fellows was heading toward Missoula after a campaign event in Seeley Lake. He died at the scene. A person in the other vehicle has been taken to a hospital for undisclosed injuries. The 5...
1 states sue over restrooms transgender students can use LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — Ten states sued the federal government Friday over rules requiring public schools to allow transgender students to use restrooms conforming to their gender identity, joining a dozen other states in the latest fight over LGBT rights. The lawsuit was filed in federal court in Nebraska and included nine other states: Arkansas, Kansas, Michigan, Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota and Wyoming. The filing comes after 11 states s...
KALISPELL (AP) — Montana authorities say a grizzly bear has killed a person in the Flathead National Forest just outside Glacier National Park. Flathead County Sheriff Chuck Curry tells the Flathead Beacon (http://bit.ly/29dSG1Y) the person was killed Wednesday afternoon about a mile from the West Glacier KOA campground. He did not identify the person killed or provide details about the circumstances surrounding the death. Curry says authorities are looking for the bear. Neither the sheriff nor a spokesman for Montana F...
HOLLY MICHELS Billings Gazette BILLINGS (AP) — Shelly Fyant from Arlee painted circles around the eyes of a horse named Big Medicine. “The circle gives us a clear vision so we can see our enemy,” she said. The enemy Fyant is talking about is methamphetamine. She and a dozen others gathered at a horse barn west of Billings to learn about equine-assisted therapy and the role it can play in recovery. The event was held in conjunction with a meeting of the Rocky Mountain Tribal Leadership Council to address what is being calle...
MATTHEW BROWN Associated Press BILLINGS — A woman on a Montana American Indian reservation pleaded not guilty Tuesday to murder in the alleged beating death of a 13-month-old relative who was under her care, court officials said. Janelle Red Dog, 42, is accused of striking and killing Kenzley Olson, then putting her body in a trash dumpster before reporting the girl missing April 19. Judge Marvin Youpee denied bond for Red Dog and ordered her back into custody pending a May hearing, according to the Fort Peck Tribal Court c...
MATT VOLZ Associated Press BOZEMAN — "Into the Wild" author Jon Krakauer goes to the Montana Supreme Court Wednesday to demand the release of records that could explain whether the state's higher education commissioner reversed a decision to expel a University of Montana quarterback accused of rape. But he hopes to accomplish more than that, Krakauer told The Associated Press Tuesday after arriving for the arguments at Montana State University in Bozeman. He hopes his case will stop universities from using a federal law c...
HELENA (AP) — Montana Gov. Steve Bullock has agreed to reimburse the state more than $2,500 for travel using a state-owned plane that coincided with campaign events after Republicans criticized Bullock's use of the plane, including a Feb. 10 trip to Billings where he helped the homeless and then attended a campaign fundraiser. Lee Newspapers of Montana reports the governor's legal counsel said Bullock can use state-owned aircraft to fly to a location and attend a campaign event as long as he is also attending official s...
BOZEMAN (AP) — The Gallatin County Sheriff's Office says a Gallatin County woman shot and killed her husband and their infant child before killing herself on Friday. Authorities on Saturday identified the victims as Jennifer and Joseph Knarr and their son, Daniel. Both of the parents were game wardens with Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks. The Bozeman Daily Chronicle reports (http://tinyurl.com/jxu76wf ) the gun used was Jennifer Knarr's duty weapon. Sheriff Brian Gootkin said investigators may never know the reason for t...
DEER LODG (AP) — The latest in the clemency request from a Montana man convicted in a 1979 murder he has long denied (all times local): Barry Beach has walked out of the Montana State Prison after serving three decades behind bars for a 1979 killing that he long denied. Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock signed a clemency order allowing his release Friday. Flanked by supporters, the 53-year-old Beach told reporters he expected "a lot of healing and a lot of tears" during the four-hour drive back to his Billings home. Beach d...
TORONTO (AP) — TransCanada, the company behind the controversial Keystone XL pipeline from Canada to the U.S Gulf Coast, has asked the U.S. State Department to pause its review of the project. TransCanada said Monday it had sent a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry requesting that the State Department suspend its review of the pipeline application. The pipeline company said such a suspension would be appropriate while it works with Nebraska authorities for approval of its preferred route through the state that is f...
HELENA — Montana will become the 30th state to expand its Medicaid program after federal health officials on Monday approved provisions that include requiring beneficiaries to pay premiums that amount to 2 percent of their income. Gov. Steve Bullock announced the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services' approval of the federal waiver needed for state officials to start enrollment immediately and begin coverage on Jan. 1. "I am pleased to stand before you today to say that for over 70,000 Montanans, the wait is finally o...
HELENA — Superintendent of Public Instruction Denise Juneau is considering challenging U.S. Rep. Ryan Zinke for Montana's U.S. House seat next year, a spokeswoman for the Democrat said Wednesday. Juneau, 48, has been the state's public schools superintendent since 2009 and is the first female Native American elected to statewide office in Montana. "Denise is seriously considering a run for office because she sees an opportunity to bring a Montana work ethic and her record of getting things done to the U.S. House," s...
HELENA — Montana's colleges and universities are required to develop emergency operation plans that include responding to an "active shooter" on campus, but what goes in them and how often staff and students are trained for such a situation varies from campus to campus. Nationwide, school employees and students are asking whether campuses should do more following the shooting deaths of nine students at a community college in southern Oregon. Because each school is unique in the size of the campus and community where it is l...
HELENA, Mont. (AP) — A federal court has rejected Montana's request to rehear its defense of state campaign contribution limits. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Tuesday that none of its 44 judges moved to reconsider the case that the court already decided was tried on out-of-date standards. A panel of three federal judges ruled in May that a state District Court must re-examine the constitutionality of Montana's contribution limits based on legal tests outlined in the U.S. Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United r...
HELENA nday, while other fires closer to the central part of the state continued to spread and threaten rural residences. After most fires grew on Saturday because of warm, windy conditions, Sunday's weather brought at least cooler temperatures across the state. "We were hoping that today would not be so active and that's the way things have been working out," Brad Purdy, spokesman for a complex of fires burning in the Kootenai National Forest near the Idaho border, said Sunday afternoon. Purdy said conditions improved so muc...
GREAT FALLS (AP) — Access to 50,000 acres of federal land in the Upper Missouri River Breaks in north-central Montana will be reopened to the public soon. The road on the ranch owned by Dan and Farris Wilks has been closed since 2011. But in a show of goodwill to Montana hunters and the Bureau of Land Management, Farris Wilks says the road will be opened from Sept. 1 through Jan. 1. The brothers have proposed a land exchange with the BLM to consolidate their ranch holdings in Fergus County. The proposal is still pending r...
HELENA (AP) — Montana has reached a settlement with CenturyLink requiring the telecommunications company to improve maintenance response times and accept a federal grant to expand broadband in the state. The Public Service Commission voted 4-0 Tuesday to approve the agreement. It includes a plan for reforming some maintenance practices and demands CenturyLink take the six-year, $90 million grant from the Connect America Fund. The grant comes with tight deadlines and strict geographic requirements for making phone and I...
HELENA (AP) — Smoke of wildfires fouled the air in southwest Montana as firefighters continued battling dozens of fires in the western half of the state. Cooler temperatures on Saturday helped some, but most fires remained active thanks to erratic winds and little moisture. The Montana Department of Environmental Quality issued an air quality alert for counties in the southwest part of the state, including Missoula, because of smoke from large fires burning in western Montana forests and grasslands. Fires are burning in G...
GREAT FALLS (AP) — Montana's largest landowner is proposing a new land exchange with the federal Bureau of Land Management after a previous one met opposition from hunters. Farris Wilks and his brother, Dan, who own the NBar Ranch at Grass Range in Fergus County, are proposing, on a preliminary basis, to give 5,200 acres of their land to the BLM in return for 4,900 acres of BLM land. About 3,400 acres of the Wilks property that would be exchanged is inside the Upper Missouri Breaks National Monument and 640 acres is a...
HELENA (AP) — Gov. Steve Bullock has appointed former Montana political reporter Charles Johnson to the state Historical Society Board of Trustees. Bullock announced the appointment of Johnson and Blaine County Museum executive director Jude Sheppard of Chinook as trustees on Friday. Johnson retired earlier this year as Lee Newspapers' Montana statehouse bureau chief. He was a journalist for more than 40 years, and covered the 1972 state constitutional convention for The Associated Press. The trustees oversee the Montana H...
