Commissioner Pinocci speaks to North Central Pachyderms

Public Service Commissioner Randy Pinocci spoke at a meeting of the North Central Pachyderm Club to discuss the 2020-2021 Legislative Session, spending a fair amount of time at the meeting attacking Havre Daily News.

The issue of "tech censorship" was the primary subject of discussion.

Over the past year, and especially in the months since the attempted insurrection at the U.S. Capitol Building Jan. 6, many social media platforms including Facebook and Twitter have been removing or factchecking misinformation and false conspiracy theories that flooded their platforms in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 General Election.

These platforms have also begun to be more proactive in removing posts containing hate speech such as racism, misogyny, queerphobia and more.

Many prominent conservatives across the U.S. have said this is, or is a cover for, an effort to censor Republicans.

Pinocci compared the recent efforts of these platforms to laws preventing African-Americans from sitting where they wanted on public transit during the days of Jim Crow in the American south.

"I regulate taxi cab services," Pinocci said. "If I got a phone call from a taxi cab saying 'I didn't give a guy a ride to the Trump campaign because he's a Republican,' I would stomp his brains out."

He claimed that he himself has been shadowbanned by Facebook and posts announcing this meeting were not visible to many people who follow him on the platform, though he said he had no proof of this.

He also implied that Christians' speech was being suppressed but provided no evidence to back this claim.

To address this issue, he said, he supported a bill that would allow social media to be regulated as a public utility, which he said is justified because many represent effective monopolies in their industries.

He said he hoped this legislation, which failed in the Montana House of Representatives by one vote, would create a cascade effect and cause other states to introduce similar legislation.

"I'm trying to create policy for the whole country," he said.

He said that under his bill complaints against or by social media companies could be handled by the commission and if the media companies don't like the decision they can take it to court, where they will be responsible for the court fees of both sides.

He said the companies would also pay for the staff necessary to regulate them as a utility.

Pinocci said Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas agrees with his contention that social media should be regulated as a utility due to their status as effective monopolies.

"This is above and beyond the call of duty for a public service commissioner," he said, "but I want you to see that."

He said efforts to rein in social media companies and stop censorship should be a priority in the next session assuming it isn't already too late to do anything.

Pinocci also said he's disappointed in fellow commissioner and friend Brad Johnson, who recently announced his interest in running for Montana's new seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, for not supporting his bill.

The Havre Daily News and HB 411

A substantial part of the meeting was spent addressing a story published in the Havre Daily News in 2019 about House Bill 411 of that year's legislative session.

The bill, which passed, revised the laws related to the aquatic invasive species program and created a fee for all hydroelectric dams to help fund the program. The state implemented the program to detect and prevent the spread of aquatic invasive mussels, first detected in the state in 2016.

Pinocci said money for such a thing should come out of the state's general fund and it is a slippery slope to bills that attempt the same thing for other causes.

He said he also supported a bill this session that would have effectively repealed HB 411.

"Pinocci was committed to stoping this," Pinocci said.

He criticized Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks in general, saying it has too much power and money, and implied that the funds they received to combat these invasive species was not used properly.

How many of you actually think they're spending that money on zebra mussles? he asked.

Pinocci also criticized FWP for buying land, which he considered evidence of having too much money while asking for more funds to combat invasive species, and for some of their facilities not having long enough hours of operation.

"Put this in the paper, this is your government and you get the government you deserve," he said.

FWP uses funds specifically designated for purchase of easements and land, primarily through Habitat Montana. The Legislature set up the habitat program in the 1980s using hunting license fees, primarily from nonresident hunting licenses. Those funds cannot be used for other purposes.

He said bills like this negatively affect senior citizens by effectively putting a tax on their electric bills and the press is not covering the matter sufficiently.

"The press is failing to tell you what is going on," he said. "You seniors are getting ripped off."

The bill allowed a fee to be charged to hydroelectric facilities to help pay for preventing aquatic invasive species, like invasive mussels detected in Lake Elwell south of Chester in 2018, from coming into the state.

Mussels in other parts of the country cause significant damage including to hydroelectric facilities and causes billions in expenses.

Entities including NorthWestern Energy lobbied for the fee, saying mussels coming into the state could damage the hydroelectric facilities.

In the 2019 meeting where he discussed the bill, Pinocci said the Legislature raised rates for NorthWestern Energy customers.

NorthWestern said at the time that it was not a rate increase for the company, but a fee on all hydroelectric facilities that would be passed on to the companies buying the power. NorthWestern is not the only company buying that power, although the cost of the fee would be passed on to customers.

Friday, Pinocci took issue with Havre Daily printing a response from then-Rep. Jacob Bachmeier, D-Havre, about Pinocci calling at the 2019 meeting to vote lawmakers, specifying Bachmeier, out of office for voting for the bill.

He specifically took issue with a Bachmeier calling him incompetent, which he said is incorrect and should not have been printed, at least not without consulting him for a rebuttal.

Bachmeier said in the article that PSC oversees rate changes proposed by NorthWestern Energy and could deny rate increases proposed due to the fee, and that his comments show he does not seem to understand his own job.

"Randy Pinocci is incompetent and fundamentally misunderstands his job as a Public Service Commissioner," Bachmeier said. "The core purpose of Randy Pinocci's job on the PSC is to regulate NorthWestern Energy, and approve or deny their requests to increase rates on utility payers."

Pinocci said Friday that Havre Daily News does not apply its standard for who is entitled to a rebuttal evenly, claiming his opponents are afforded the opportunity while he is not, and specifically accused Havre Daily News Editor Tim Leeds of misleading him by saying he would get a chance to respond to his opponents.

When he ran for commissioner, his primary opponent Rob Cook spoke in Havre and listed his goals and qualifications for the position. His only comment on Pinocci was referring to Pinocci's using the Confederated Salish Kootenai Tribes Water Compact as a campaign issue. Cook said the Montana Supreme Court had ruled the compact was constitutional and cited benefits he said it would bring.

When Pinocci spoke in Havre later, he spent much of his time attacking Cook and the water compact, and Havre Daily offered Cook a chance to respond.

The Havre Daily ran responses Pinocci made to Cook's claims.

Pinocci also claimed the story says that NorthWestern Energy was making record profit, and he, his staff, and legal team, demanded a retraction, but the story says no such thing.

The story cites Bachmeier as saying NorthWestern netted $197 million in profits in 2018 and he has no sympathy for any proposed rate increases. The story does not say NorthWestern made record profits.

Pinocci said the story reports muscles could cause billions of dollars in damages, which he said was an exaggeration, but the story only points out that billions of dollars in damages have occurred in the Great Lakes states due to the animals, not Montana.

Montana has not had reports of invasive mussels in its waterways outside of the larvae detected in 2018. No mussels have been confirmed in Montana since then.

The programs the state has put in place are intended to prevent mussels from coming in and causing damage.

Montana's official aquatic invasive species site, http://cleandraindry.mt.gov, reports that expenses associated with ecological damage and control of invasive species across the country is estimated at $137 billion per year and increasing.

"In the United States, congressional researchers estimated invasive mussels cost the power industry $3.1 billion in the 1993-1999 period, with its impact on industries, businesses, and communities over $5 billion. ... In Canada, Ontario Hydro has reported zebra mussel impacts of $376,000 annually per generating station," the site says.

It adds that costs to power companies due to aquatic invasive species would be passed on to the companies' customers.

Pinocci chastised the paper for not actively supporting his efforts to fight House Bill 411.

As a result of this article he said the Havre Daily News has been banned from receiving stories from the commission, but also criticized the paper for not covering his work on the anti-tech-censorship bill.

"The newspaper comes off of a roll, just like toilet paper and it's the paper's responsibility to make sure (expletive) not on it," he said quoting his communications director.

Havre Daily continues to receive press releases from PSC.

Conspiracy theories and fake news

During the meeting Pinocci passed out articles from the Montana Daily Gazette, a conservative blog that has been criticized as faux news, as well as the Epoch Times, a far-right publication that has pushed a number of widely-discredited conspiracy theories and has been banned from most social media platforms for that reason. He touted the former as a more honest account of his work.

An attendee at the meeting also touted Infowars, another far-right, conspiracy, and fake news website and media company, and received no push-back.

The man also received no pushback when expressing the idea that the 2020 General Election was stolen, which has been proven false.

The Department of Homeland Security, in a statement after the election, said it was the most secure election in U.S. history; more than 60 lawsuits filed by the President Trump's campaign and his allies were thrown out due to a lack of merit, and no evidence has been presented of significant voter-fraud that would have changed the outcome of the election.

The commission and its authority

Pinocci also talked about McCone Electric Co-op and the companies which supply them power to provide to Circle Montana.

He said they turned off the power in the town so they could sell it to Texas during the severe winter storm that hit the state which was unable to supply power to residents leading to the death of over 100 residents.

He said this is the reason the commission's authority should be expanded to regulate co-ops and the companies that supply to them so he can, in his words, "stomp their brains out."

McCone Electric Co-op General Manager Michael Hoy said the decision to shut off power was not the co-op's at all, nor was the motive profit.

Hoy said Western Area Power Administration, from which the co-op gets the bulk of their power, were asked to reduce their load so the Southwest Power Pool, which extends from Canada to northern Texas, could be stabilized and avoid a full blackout during the extreme conditions and the company told the co-op that their power would go off for a half an hour.

Pinocci also said the commission should be authorized to reactivate dormant power plants, to prevent events like the storm in Texas from happening again and that the state should have more commissioners because their regions are too big to keep track of effectively.

The next time, he said, he wants to talk about high-efficiency power lines that he wants to see installed in the state, which he said waste far less power will pay for themselves in three years and will allow him to lower Montanans' rates.

Havre City Council Member and Hill County Republican Central Committee Chair Andrew Brekke, who introduced Pinocci at the meeting, said Public Service Commissioner Brad Johnson will speak to the club in two weeks, and Rep. Ed Hill R-Havre and other legislators will have their turn over the next month.