News you can use
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BILLINGS — Federal emergency officials started arriving Tuesday in Montana to gauge the damage from flooding expected to continue for possibly several more weeks. Rain that had plastered the state for more than a week finally eased, allowing authorities in the swamped town of Roundup to start pumping water from some areas. Water levels dropped more than 2 feet in Roundup, said First Sgt. Levi Doll of the Montana National Guard. As the Musselshell River receded, Doll said, authorities were finding damage to roads and other i...
HELENA — A Democrat is entering the 2012 attorney general's race even though incumbent Democrat Steve Bullock hasn't formally announced his plans to either run again or seek the governor's office as he is considering. But indications are mounting that such a run is likely. Jesse Laslovich, a former legislator and assistant attorney general who is currently chief legal counsel for the auditor's office that regulates insurance and securities, announced plans Thursday to run for attorney general. Bullock is popular with Democrat...
HELENA — The addresses for one out of every four offenders in Montana's sexual and violent offender registry are unverified and possibly unreliable, casting doubt on the credibility of the registry used by everyone from concerned parents checking out new neighbors to house hunters in search of a safe neighborhood. A new audit found that 26 percent of the offenders in the state's database have not returned a required address verification letter even though not doing so puts them at risk of going back to prison. The report f...
Reducation education funding plan reduced The Associated Press HELENA — Senate Republicans are trimming their education spending plan in hopes of getting full support from their caucus. Some Republicans bucked the original plan that re-crafts key aspects of school funding while increasing funding about 3 percent over the two-year budget period. Late Thursday, a committee reduced the funding a little and made clear that the 2013 Legislature will have to revisit a controversial plan to redistribute some of the oil and gas m...
AP Photo/Wyoming Tribune-Eagle, James Brosher Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar listens as Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead answers a question during a news conference on Tuesday, March 22, 2011, in Cheyenne, Wyo. Salazar is making a vast amount of coal available for mining in Wyoming's Powder River Basin, saying the substance will remain an important source of the nation's energy supply. The coal leases Salazar announced Tuesday in Cheyenne amount to 750 million tons and will take several years to mine. Interior Secretary Salazar...
Some Republicans now backing health care exchange STEPHEN DOCKERY, Associated Press HELENA, — A plan to set up a state-regulated health insurance marketplace is getting a second chance in the Montana Legislature. Republican legislative leaders have often spoken out against the Obama administration's federal health care law, part of which calls for state-run health care exchanges that offer people a choice of health plans with a range of coverage levels and pricing. Many Republicans call it an unjust mandate that unfairly t...
Poll: Montanans not happy with Legislature The Associated Press HELENA — A new poll finds six in 10 Montanans aren't happy with the performance of the 2011 Legislature. Mason-Dixon Polling & Research telephoned 625 registered voters last week and asked their opinions on various politicians and political issues for Lee Newspapers of Montana. The margin of error is plus or minus 4 percentage points. Those surveyed were given four options to rate lawmakers' performance: excellent, pretty good, only fair and poor. The first two w...
HELENA — Senate Republicans spent Monday making quick work of the GOP spending plan already endorsed by the House, making only small changes despite harsh words from Gov. Brian Schweitzer's administration and the threat of a veto hanging in the air. A Senate budget committee was finalizing work Monday, mostly rebuffing proposals from Democrats to restore pieces of Schweitzer's original proposal. The governor said he remained hopeful that Republicans in firm control of the Legislature will change their mind. "I'm o...
BUTTE— Delegates for the Montana Republican Party on Saturday elected Will Deschamps to serve another 2-year term as party chairman. More than 180 party delegates voted, KXLF-TV reported. Mark French, a tea party advocate, was also nominated for the leadership spot....
BILLINGS — A hearing is planned Monday on the fairness of a $3.4 billion settlement reached in a lawsuit that claimed the government mismanaged the accounts of hundreds of thousands of American Indian landowners. The hearing in Washington, D.C., comes six months after lawmakers approved the settlement and a federal judge granted preliminary approval of the deal in December. The lead plaintiff in the 15-year-old class-action lawsuit is Elouise Cobell of Browning, Mont., a member of Montana's Blackfeet Tribe. The lawsuit a...
Montana Senate GOP moves to tilt environmental law HELENA — Senate Republicans are moving forward with their plan to tilt the state's main environmental law in favor of industry, despite objections from Democrats that the plan undermines key protections for clean air and water. The Senate endorsed in a 27-23 late afternoon vote a general revision of the Montana Environmental Policy Act after making some changes aimed at reducing the cost to state regulators. It had already received one favorable vote last month, before GOP l...
BOZEMAN — A retired Montana State University administrator and professor says he will donate $100,000 to the school's library in honor of his wife, who died last year at the age of 78. University officials say 82-year-old Stuart Knapp made an estate gift in his wife's name that will provide books and electronic materials after his death. Knapp says his wife, Bev Knapp, was a strong supporter of the MSU library, chaired the Bozeman Public Library board and was president of the Montana Library Association. The couple also h...
BILLINGS — Federal wildlife officials say they will take more than 1,300 gray wolves in the Northern Rockies off the endangered species list within 60 days. An attachment to the budget bill signed into law Friday by President Barack Obama strips protections from wolves in five Western states. It marks the first time Congress has taken a species off the endangered list. Idaho and Montana plan public wolf hunts this fall. Hunts last year were canceled after a judge ruled the predators remained at risk. Protections remain in p...
NEW YORK — A "60 Minutes" investigation alleges that the inspirational multimillion seller "Three Cups of Tea" is filled with inaccuracies and that co-author Greg Mortenson's charitable organization has taken credit for building schools that don't exist. The report, which airs Sunday night on CBS television, cites "Into the Wild" author Jon Krakauer as among the doubters of Mortenson's story of being lost in 1993 while mountain climbing in rural Pakistan and stumbling upon the village of Korphe, where the kindness of local r...
HELENA — What's next for Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer has become a favorite guessing game in Capitol hallways and political circles as the popular Democrat nears the end of his final term, fresh off a legislative session where he took the lead battling the tea party wave. Would Schweitzer actually challenge one of the state's two Democratic senators? Could he take a cabinet post? Is he thinking about a future run for president? AP Photo/The Independent Record, Eliza Wiley In this April 13, 2011 photo, Gov. Brian S...
BOZEMAN — Officials with Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks are working on a new policy for poisoning streams to kill nonnative fish in the wake of a poisoning attempt last year that went farther downstream and killed more fish than expected. "We made a mistake and we learned from that mistake, and we're putting additional safeguards in place," fisheries biologist Travis Horton told the Bozeman Daily Chronicle. The streams will be poisoned with a naturally produced chemical called rotenone. They will then be restocked with n...
Democrats' job training bill stopped in committee HELENA — Legislation to train veterans and unemployed Montanans to be truck drivers has halted in committee after initially gaining bipartisan support. Some opponents of Senate Bill 359 were skeptical that the bill targeted veterans since the proposal opened up its training services to all unemployed Montanans. Others said the price tag could spiral well beyond the initial estimate of about $650,000 a year. Supporters of the bill sponsored by Democratic Sen. Mary Caferro of He...
CODY BLOOMSBURG Community News Service UM School of Journalism HELENA — By session's end, lawmakers say the taxman will most likely have new marching orders in Montana: Take less from businesses and, at the very least, no more from private citizens. Two competing bills promise to cut the state's property tax on business, and legislators are also considering an income-tax credit for homeowners. The session's tax bills also include a handful trying to address the problem of property values skyrocketing past Montanans' i...
HELENA — The commission charged with drawing Montana's legislative districts is adopting a new statewide approach rather than doing it piecemeal by region. The Montana Districting and Apportionment Commission made the decision Tuesday in hopes of having a proposed map for public review by year's end. The group has two members chosen by Republicans and two chosen by Democrats. The fifth and deciding member was chosen by the state Supreme Court after the group could not agree on a chairman. They are charged with drawing 100 n...
HELENA — A tea party advocate is making a run for chairman of the Montana Republican Party as the GOP faithful gather later this week in Butte to pick leadership in advance of the critical 2012 election cycle. Republicans are gearing up to back undisputed GOP leader U.S. Rep. Denny Rehberg in his challenge to U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, and Rehberg's speech on Saturday highlights the event. But first Republicans will have to sort out a challenge to current Montana Republican Party Chairman Will Deschamps. Tea party advocate Mark Fr...
BILLINGS — Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer has decided Exxon Mobil and the state don't make good roommates after nearly a week of working together in close quarters to clean up an estimated 42,000 gallons of crude oil released into the Yellowstone River. State officials have moved out of a joint command post overseeing the response to the spill — a mess that has painted a fresh target for scorn on one of the world's largest energy companies. AP Photo/Jim Urquhart Cleanup workers use oil absorbent materials along side the Yel...
Montana's U.S. Sen. Jon Tester said Friday afternoon that Republican opposition to passing a budget and preventing a federal government shutdown is political grandstanding at its worst, and that all should work together to keep operations running while conducting long-term planning to reduce the deficit. Unless a budget or short-term resolution is passed by midnight, all but essential government services — military and law enforcement, essentially — will shut down. Tester said the Senate has been working to meet the Hou...
House GOP introduces new school funding plan MATT VOLZ, Associated Press HELENA — Republicans running the House Appropriations Committee on Friday restored millions of dollars they had threatened to ax from Montana's public education budget, but on the condition that the Legislature pass separate measures that would change the way schools are funded. The plan adopted by the committee would funnel $183.5 million next year and $96.6 million in 2013 into an account dedicated to school funding. The money would come from a variety...
HELENA — With more than 16 months to go before the 2012 general election, Montana voters are already getting a steady sample of the acrimony to come as Democratic Sen. Jon Tester and his challenger, Republican Rep. Denny Rehberg, seek an early opening in what's expected to be one of the closest races in the nation. Each is finding plenty of early material to work with: The six-term congressman, Rehberg, is testing his opponent's image as a populist. He's calling the senator "Wall Street Tester" because of Tester's efforts to...
HELENA — Some of the changes in Montana's medical marijuana law that took effect Friday have created confusion among users and distributors after a judge blocked other parts of the restrictive overhaul. Helena District Judge James Reynolds on Thursday temporarily blocked portions of the law that eliminated Montana's "caregiver" system for distributing marijuana. The law renames caregivers as providers and bans them from making a profit or distributing marijuana to more than three patients. But while the judge blocked the b...
