Our View: International comedy at Port of Wild Horse needs to end

It's like watching an old black-and-white movie with the Keystone Cops, or Bud Abbot and Lou Costello, doing slapstick — but maybe, maybe, not as funny.

Once again, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the Canada Border Services Agency have agreed to use the same hours at the Port of Wild Horse north of Havre after — once again — first saying they wouldn't extend summer hours, then saying maybe they would, then saying they probably wouldn't, then one side extending hours with the other not. It's bureaucratic slapstick.

Is hoping that the two governments that oversee each side of the border will communicate and cooperate and coordinate their actions too much to ask for?

The Wild Horse Border Committee group that is pushing to upgrade the border crossing — with the support of Montana's congressional delegation, to its member's credit — has made a very plausible case for nearly 10 years now that upgrading Wild Horse to a commercial port open 24-hours-a-day will benefit both sides.

A study conducted by the Bureau of Business and Economic Research at Missoula's University of Montana backed that up.

The bureau's study found that, using extremely conservative estimates, upgrading the port would create at least $12.6 million annually in new spending in this part of Montana and create as many as 265 new jobs and a 500-person population increase.

Testing those findings seems like a good idea.

"If the door is closed, nobody is coming, so let's open the door and see what happens," said Wild Horse Border Committee member Debbie Vandeberg, executive director of the Havre Area Chamber of Commerce, Tuesday.

However, if people never know when the door is open, they won't come through it.

People, affected by the lack of coordination, have complained that, worse than the border not being open, due to the lack of coordination they have driven miles to cross the border at Wild Horse, only to find it closed — although someone coming the other direction could cross.

The border committee has called for a three-year pilot in which the crossing would stay open the extended summer hours of 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. — instead of 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. — for all of three years.

That would give people, especially commercial truckers, the certainty that they would be able to cross instead of being turned back.

U.S. Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., has proposed in his Customs reauthorization bill that three ports be upgraded to 24-hour commercial status. If that passes, and Wild Horse was selected for the pilot, that would give an even better test of upgrading the port.

But even guaranteeing the port would stay open — on both sides — from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. from March 1 through Oct. 31 for a few years, for five years, for however long, would let people know what the hours are and let the advocates, on both sides, market the extension.

The conflicting actions, and the regular flip-flopping by both sides, over extending the summer hours is, simply, silly.

But it really isn't funny.