Tuss challenges Hill for House District 28

Bear Paw Development Executive Director Paul Tuss, a Democrat, is challenging Republican Incumbent Ed Hill for his seat in the Montana House of Representatives in the upcoming election.

Hill did not set an interview after Havre Daily News declined to give him the questions in advance.

Tuss said he's been serving northern Montana in the field of community and economic development at Bear Paw Development Corp. for 22 years, and that work has given him a very clear picture of how the Hi-Line's economy works, what makes it tick.

He said his experience has shown him what the community's assets are and where it needs help, and that, combined with his 10 years of experience on the Montana State University Board of Regents, makes him think he's well-equipped to represent the interests of the area in the Legislature.

One of the first issues the Legislature is going to address is an expected significant budget surplus and what to do with the money, with many Republicans advocating for it to be returned to the taxpayers.

Tuss said he agrees in spirit but feels there are ways in which the state is not sufficiently serving the people of Montana and he wants to see those issues addressed before anything else.

One of the issues he's specifically concerned about is access to mental health services in the state, which he says is at a crisis point and desperately needs to be addressed.

"You can't talk to anyone in the mental health arena or law enforcement that doesn't believe that the state doesn't need to invest seriously in our mental health infrastructure," he said.

He said another issue the state is facing is the lack of sufficient funding for nursing homes and long-term care facilities, many of which have needed to close because they are not receiving the help they need from the government.

Tuss said he has a friend in Malta whose mother needed to move to a facility in Havre because hers closed because the state wasn't sufficiently reimbursing them for the services they offered.

He said this issue is also reaching a point of crisis and while he agrees with Republicans that the government should not be sitting on excess funds, he feels there are ways to use it that are badly needed by many people in the state.

Another issue the Legislature seems poised to address early in the session is that of abortion.

In the wake of Roe v. Wade being overturned many Republicans have been advocating for bans on the procedure, but Tuss said, as a potential legislator, he has absolutely no interest in getting involved in the personal decisions people make with their bodies.

"The government doesn't need to know how many rifles I have in my gun safe, and I don't think the government should be dictating to my daughter the decisions she makes with her own health care," he said.

This attitude extended to his opinion on recent legislative attempts to restrict access to certain health care procedures and public services for transgender people.

He said people are well-equipped to make those intensely personal decisions and he trusts them and their doctors to make those choices, something the government should have no place in.

On the subject of public health, Tuss said he believes the state did an adequate job of responding to the pandemic, but it was a unique situation and there are always things that could be improved now that they have the benefit of hindsight.

One thing Tuss said the state definitely needs to do better is trusting local public health.

He said local public health officials are experts in their medical fields and understand the dynamics of their communities better than politicians in Helena do, so they need to be trusted to do their jobs, not interfered with.

He said the Legislature, in passing bills to curtail the power of public health, has done significant damage to the relationship between the state and public health and legislators need to fix that.

Another tense relationship Tuss commented on was the one between the Legislature and the judiciary.

He said recent efforts by Republicans to change the system by which Montana Supreme Court justices are voted for, with many advocating that they be voted for by district rather than by everyone in the state, are misplaced.

He said these judges make decisions for all of Montana, so everyone in Montana should get a say in who is on the bench, a perfectly sensible system that isn't broken and doesn't need to be fixed.

"I think it's a solution looking for a problem," he said.

Tuss said he felt the same about recent efforts to pass more restrictive voting laws, something that Republicans have largely insisted is for the sake of election security.

He said Montana's elections have been proven to be secure over and over again, so advocating more restrictive laws only gives the impression that the elections are somehow less trustworthy than they are, just another "solution looking for a problem."

In light of the fact that the elections are secure, he said, making voting arbitrarily harder is damaging, and they should be doing the opposite.

"I do not believe that democracy is served by putting obstacles in the way of people voting," he said. "Democracy is sacred, and I believe strongly that instead of trying to restrict access to elections we should be looking at how to expand the franchise."

As for the subject of climate change, Tuss said he thinks the first step to solving the problem is to get everyone to realize that there is a problem, and there are still too many who aren't listening to scientists.

He said he recently sat down with some local experts who showed that between 1986 and 2005 five federally declared disasters occurrred in Montana, but between 2010 and 2022 there were nine.

He said the matter is no longer abstract or far off, it's before everyone's eyes, and thus shouldn't be a partisan issue.

Tuss also talked about education in the area, saying he believes that an educated populace is the backbone of democracy, and public schools around the area, as well as institutions like Montana State University-Northern need a representative who will fight for their interests, which he vowed to be should he be elected.

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Paul Tuss

Age: 57

High school: Anaconda High School

College Degrees: Bachelor's degree in political science from University of Montana

Military Service: None

Previous political offices held: None