Tester calls for extended summer hours at Wild Horse

Montana's U. S. Sen. Jon Tester has stepped into the fray over extending hours at the border port north of Havre.

Tester sent a letter to the acting director of U. S. Customs and Border Protection urging him to reconsider the agency's decision not to again extend the summer hours at the Port of Wild Horse.

"The Port of Wild Horse is an economic asset to north-central Montana, " Tester said this morning. "I'm pushing Customs and Border Protection to bring back extended hours for the port and encourage the Canadian side to do the same.

"It's critically important to have Canada and the (United States) working together on this one, " Tester added. "Because both sides of the border have yet to extend the hours for a significant time, we have yet to see the true economic possibilities of extended hours. "

An international group, co-chaired by the mayors of Havre and Medicine Hat, Alberta, has been pushing for most of a decade to have the border port upgraded to a full-time commercial port.

The port now is open 8 a. m. to 5 p. m. during winter hours, and 8 a. m. to 9 p. m. in the summer. Commercial vehicles can only use the port if they receive a special permit.

In 2009, Customs and Border Protection gave a longer period of extended hours, from March 1 through Oct. 31 rather than the standard May 15 through Sept. 30.

In that trial, the Canadian Border Service Agency did not start its summer hours until May 15, although it did keep the hours until Oct. 31. But, advocates of the expansion said, that meant that travellers — and more importantly commercial truckers — could get into the United States after 5 p. m., but not into Canada.

When Tester and Montana's senior U. S. Sen. Max Baucus brought Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and then-CBP Commissioner Alan Bersin on a tour of the Hi-Line in 2010, Bersin announced in Havre that the pilot extended hours would begin again, starting that fall and running through the fall of 2011.

Canada did not match the extension in the fall of 2010, but announced it would use the summer hours starting March 1, 2011. What was not discovered until after the summer hours started was, as was the normal procedure going into Canada at Wild Horse, that the extension did not apply to commercial vehicles.

While that was changed and Canada began fully mirroring the U. S. side, proponents of the extension said, in all three years, a true measurement of the impacts never happened because of the confusion on the different sides.

Last October, committee co-Chair and Havre Mayor Tim Solomon sent a request that the extended hours be used again. One day before the pilot would have began, on Feb. 28, CBP announced it would not use the summer hours.

In his letter to CBP Acting Commissioner David Aguilar — Bersin resigned effective Dec. 30 — Tester wrote that he believes the data gathered is incomplete because Canada never fully mirrored the U. S. action.

"Given the current fiscal climate and our ongoing efforts to identify savings throughout the federal government, I remain fully aware of CBP's difficult task of fulfilling its responsibilities amidst budgetary limitations, " Tester wrote. "However, I also strongly believe that facilitating trade along the northern border and improving cross-border commerce is critical to our economic development and job creation. "

Baucus said this morning that he is pursuing other ways to upgrade ports and increase cross-border trade.

"There's no question that more traffic through the Port of Wild Horse means more good-paying jobs for Montana, which is why I pressed CBP to continue the current pilot program, " he said. "But there's always more than one way to skin a cat, so I'm looking to the future and collecting input from Montanans to help craft a new customs bill that will work even better for business along the northern border. "

One provision Baucus has said he wants in the new customs authorization bill is a pilot program allowing small ports, such as Wild Horse, to stay open round-the-clock year-round.

He also is looking at the data impacting CBP's decision not to extend the program to make sure the data has given a complete picture, his office said.

The Havre Daily News had not received a reply by deadline to a request this morning for comments from Montana U. S. Rep. Denny Rehberg.