News you can use
News you can use
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In our vast and often brutal Montana landscape, USPS workers frequently brave blizzards and slick October and November roads to deliver election ballots. Too frequently, their most challenging battle is against a lack of resources. Postal delays are more than an inconvenience; they threaten the accuracy and security of Montana’s elections. In the early 2010s, rumors of closing the Missoula and Kalispell sorting centers stirred concern among Montanans, rightfully so. Today, as the USPS grapples with hiring troubles and r...
I tend to be a Christmas maximalist; at least if you ask my husband, Peter, that’s what he would say. Peter would dispense with the tree, the presents and most of the outings. He’d hang a few ornaments on a houseplant, have a nice meal and go to bed early. But Peter cares for me a lot, and he knows how much I love Christmas. I want a live tree. If I can’t chop it down myself, I’ll haul it home from the hardware store. I want lights on the balcony and a little present for eve...
A question I am often asked is “Why? Why are you running?” The answer is simple: These United States of America, all she represents, and all of the opportunities she offers have been good to me, and I need to give back. I need to serve. I need to feel that I deserve all that she has offered without asking anything in return. I need to know that someone like me, from meager beginnings, an unplanned pregnancy to an unwed teenage mother, someone without money or connections, can still work hard and build the American Dream. I kn...
Interesting how we carve time to suit particular purposes. I won’t look it up, but thinking about it, I’d not be surprised that our universal way of dividing our days started with the Industrial Revolution, as a way of getting the workers to be where and when the bosses wanted them to be. That is as political as I am willing to be this morning. My day began yesterday, actually. It rained yesterday, so that jiggered up walk times with Lola, but we managed to wriggle them int...
As we close out National Native American Heritage Month, I would like to introduce myself and my new role as the Montana Department of Labor and Industry’s (DLI) first tribal liaison. My name is Donnie Wetzel Jr. I come from the Blackfeet Nation on my father’s side and Missoula/Bitterroot as a seventh-generation Montanan on my mother’s side, and it is an honor to serve Montana in this role. Over the last month, I’ve received an abundance of information about this work and the limitless possibilities it can bring to our you...
The Montana Supreme Court’s recent order upholding the Montana Department of Revenue’s calculation of the 95 school equalization mills provided a protective shield for residential property taxpayers and students educated in Montana’s public schools. The court’s decision respected and preserved bipartisan decisions made by the 2023 Legislature estimating revenues and appropriating funds to fund Montana’s public schools. Some county officials erroneously asserted that levying 77.89 instead of 95 school equalization mills wou...
I tend to be a Christmas maximalist; at least if you ask my husband, Peter, that’s what he would say. Peter would dispense with the tree, the presents and most of the outings. He’d hang a few ornaments on a houseplant, have a nice meal and go to bed early. But Peter cares for me a lot, and he knows how much I love Christmas. I want a live tree. If I can’t chop it down myself, I’ll haul it home from the hardware store. I want lights on the balcony and a little present for eve...
Skyrocketing property taxes. Astronomical energy rate increases. Thousands of homes that are unaffordable to most Montanans. And yet more big tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy, while the rest of us are left to foot the bill. When we look back on the last year, all these changes and more were brought you by one party and its supermajority: Montana Republicans. And so, as 2023 ends, let’s take a look back over the last 12 months to see where Republicans really took us as a state. Hold on to your hats, because we’re about to get...
Public safety has been a significant and growing concern in our communities for the past several years. The 2023 Legislature heard these concerns loud and clear and acted to make our state a safer place to work, play, and raise a family. We took on human traffickers with HB 112 from Rep. Jodee Etchart. It increased penalties for human trafficking and gave law enforcement more tools to prosecute these heinous crimes. HB 112 has already been credited for a major prostitution bust in Bozeman. SB 265, sponsored by Sen. Mark...
I don’t. Truly, I don’t know. Life is so much more interesting when I don’t know. When I “know,” I limit myself to where it is difficult for new and different information to filter into my brain. Hey, because I already know! A closed door. Right? Take something simple, like tortillas. What is there not to know about tortillas? I feel pretty puffed up that I can make decent corn tortillas. I seldom make flour tortillas because they always come out looking like amoebas....
We had dinner with friends last night. There is nothing unusual about that, except these were all people I did not know; people my husband, Peter, had met while taking his daily hike in Mexico. This was not the first gathering of Peter’s friends we’ve had. My self-professed introvert of a husband has become something of a social butterfly outside of the U.S. He goes to the same botanical nature reserve to hike every day and he meets new people and forms new friendships. Pet...
One of the many things I have come to respect about the Mexican culture, the Mexican people, is their ability to celebrate. Times may seem grim and the larder near empty, but they somehow will scrape together beans, tortillas, tomatoes and peppers, gather family and neighbors into their homes to share a feast, and maybe even shoot off a few fireworks, always with music in the background, even if from a radio. Remember radio? We, my friends, in our country, seem to have...
Montanans just enjoyed the largest sporting event of the year, with more than 27,000 of us coming together in person to witness this year’s version of the Brawl of the Wild. The football game and intrastate rivalry between the Montana Grizzlies and Montana State Bobcats is 122 years old and began only eight years after Montana obtained statehood in 1889. By any measure, this contest is so much more than just another game and has become an important part of the fabric of Montana. Our two flagship universities have been e...
I have always liked Thanksgiving. I know its origins are dubious. I cringe a little when I think about the construction paper American Indian costumes and the happy story I learned as a child about that first Thanksgiving. I cringe a little more when I read about people missing their holiday meal so they can work at retail jobs where customers trample one another at the store’s entrance to get in and buy things. I don’t understand this, I have to confess. I have never bee...
By now, we all have seen our actual property tax increases. We know how high our property taxes have gone up — not like the mystery when we got our confusing reappraisal notice. Many of us are angry. As we prepare to write an actual check for our home property taxes, we are livid. The state reappraisal of all Montana homes for 2023 resulted in an average 49% increase statewide in home appraisals. Because of that appraisal many if not most of us will see a property tax increase on our home — and for some this increase is enorm...
My friend Jim from Glasgow sent me a short video clip of the Little Rockies, Three Buttes, Snake Butte and the Bear Paws. Immediately, I yearned, homesick. I shared the video with friends. “This is my beautiful country.” Their response, not unexpected, “Ah, yes. Uh huh. Beautiful,” as they looked for an exit. Which brought on this following chain of thought. To some this will sound as though I am describing two foreign countries, and I am. Both countries have disappe...
Taxes were the topic of our Local Government Interim Committee. Recent home reappraisals have shown significant increases. In some areas of the state, home sale prices have more than doubled. With folks moving in from out-of-state to places like Bozeman, the Flathead, and other areas, and bidding wars leading to properties at twice the asking price, the committee clearly has a number of challenges to address. First off, locals cannot compete with the prices that Montana homes are reaching. The next issue is that our tax...
It’s important to have a good coffee cup. My husband, Peter, makes the coffee, and has since we were married. We will be celebrating nine years of marriage this spring, so you might not be surprised to hear that I no longer remember how to make coffee. This is called “learned helplessness” in psychology circles, and is certainly true in my case. Peter makes the coffee, and I drink it. This seems to me like a fair division of labor. And having the proper cup is essen...
There aren’t many of us here on the rancho. Not all of our houses have their people. But the last several days, we who are here, me, Nancie, Julie, Lani and Ariel, Tom and Janet, frequently found ourselves running up against, no, not a wall, but a hole. This hole has a specific size and shape, exactly the size and shape of Leo. Leo helps all of us with gardening, planting, pruning, mowing, cutting, watering. But Leo is more than a gardener. He has helped all of us, at one t...
In Montana, our strength lies in our sense of community. As a child, I learned this at my kitchen table, where my father instilled the significance of our democracy and the values that every Montanan holds dear. These lessons drove me to a life of public service and allowed me to form lasting relationships with people throughout our state. Honesty, respect, and altruism are the foundation of Montana, and they bind us together. While individualism is vital to Montana, it does not define us. Instead, our democratic values stem...
I just spent a wonderful long weekend with my sister and her son, Beau, “up north” at my parents’ cabin. Stubby the red squirrel is doing well. Since the tragic loss of the end of his tail (and his subsequent unofficial adoption by my mother), he has flourished. The end of his tail, while still cut off at a sharp angle, has sprouted an impressive line of dark fur, and he looks dapper, sitting on the railing, shaking his tail and showing off his new plumage. Mom still dutif...
No Montana community is untouched by the mental health crisis. Suicide. Addiction. Loneliness. The struggle to find mental health services or appropriate supports for individuals with developmental disabilities. Patients receiving care in places that aren’t best for them. The list of challenges facing our communities is long and years in the making, and the time for setting that list aside is over. This spring, Gov. Greg Gianforte and the Montana Legislature invested $300 million to reform and improve Montana’s beh...
Last week, a registered historic hotel in Glendive burned. The night the fire was started was also the night of the first winter blizzard. Firemen from a hundred-mile radius came to fight the fire which razed the hotel and a neighboring building. My daughter’s office is in the upper floor of a building adjacent to the hotel. Firemen battled the blaze all night and the following day to keep her building from burning. For three days the hotel fire smoldered and flared. For three...
Recently, opinion pieces and information sent to legislators regarding the counties’ decision to levy 77.9 mills instead of the state-directed 95 mills has been circulating in both statewide newspapers, and internal legislative correspondence. It appears that the message being distributed is counties are giving large tax breaks to corporations and out-of -state homeowners while doing little for the average Montanan. While the numbers can be interpreted to support that message, and they — the numbers — are in fact accur...
My Auntie Jo gave me a beautiful pair of gloves yesterday. They are elegant, with embroidery on the top, and I immediately did what I usually do — I put them away for safekeeping. “I’ll wear these to something special!” I told myself. I have a date to go with my niece to see “Peter Pan” in December. I decided I would wear those gloves when I go out with my beautiful 20-year-old niece before she heads out to Spain to study for a semester in Madrid. That will certainly b...
