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The land beneath our feet can tell a lot of stories. They aren’t always happy ones, particularly here in the West.
Additionally, few of them have a clear ending. History often bleeds into the present in ways we’re not necessarily aware of until we dig a little below the surface.
A couple of months ago, MTFP started doing precisely that with respect to a story that stretches back to Montana’s very statehood in 1889. Grist, a Seattle-based news nonprofit with a heavy focus on social justice and climate, had recently embarked on an investigation into the ongoing benefit land-grant universities across America reap from the historic dispossession of millions of acres of Indigenous lands. They compiled a wealth of data on that acreage, now held as revenue-generating state trust lands, and offered to share it with other news outlets.
Recognizing that MTFP likely wasn’t the only Montana publication interested in the stories those tracts could tell, we teamed up with the Bozeman Daily Chronicle and the Indigenous news nonprofit ICT to do some collaborative digging. Part one of that collaboration — our state-level examination of trust lands dedicated to Montana State University and other Montana campuses — debuted across all three outlets this week. We’re also excited for further installments slated to publish in the coming weeks.
The basic story is this: More than a century ago, the federal government purchased or seized the lion’s share of the West from its Native inhabitants, then used some of those lands to set up a system of land-grant universities and other colleges. To this day, money generated from activities such as grazing, timber harvesting and mineral extraction continue to flow to campuses throughout the country — producing, in the case of MSU, more than $17 million in the past decade.
It’s a sensitive subject, one some institutions shy away from. But examining the continued impacts of America’s history is one of those essential conversations. As Salish Kootenai College President Sandra Boham put it, if you don’t have the land, you don’t generate the wealth. And while Montana’s university system does acknowledge ancestral ties to the land beneath its buildings, its officials conceded to us there’s no such statement specific to the trust lands sprinkled throughout the state.
Higher education leaders have attempted to address the disparities faced by Indigenous students in Montana today, offering tuition waivers and fellowships and specialized administrative positions designed to bridge Native and campus communities. University officials tout recent gains in the recruitment and retention of Native students, though they remain single-digit minorities in predominantly white student bodies. Tribal colleges — three dozen of which nationally including SKC now have federal land-grant status — continue to lobby Congress for more equitable funding, and Boham told MTFP that many Indigenous students still lack adequate financial support to act fully on their academic aspirations.
The story may seem like it’s locked in the Montana soil. But it’s in fact continuing to unfold around us, something we hope our collaboration with our friends at ICT and the Chronicle lays bare.
READ MORE: Land, wealth and higher education.
—Alex Sakariassen, Reporter
News of the News 📰
Please forgive us a self-serving plug: Our local coverage project is rolling.
The MTFP Local Project last year added a full-time editor (that’s me) and hired JoVonne Wagner in Helena as our first full-time reporter assigned to cover a specific community. A recent graduate of the University of Montana School of Journalism, JoVonne is already producing some important stories — like this one about taxes maybe going up to fund the city’s police and fire departments or this one about potential school closures.
JoVonne is also curating a new Helena-specific newsletter, Helena This Week. Published each Monday morning, it includes quick takes on city government, public schools, business news and upcoming entertainment and events. For anyone living in Helena, or just interested in the Capital City, I recommend it. It’s free, and you can sign up here.
We also recently started our search for a full-time reporter to cover the community of Great Falls, a position that we’re hoping will let us launch a similar newsletter there. We hope to have that position filled this spring with others to follow in other Montana cities.
— Nick Ehli, MTFP Local Editor
Fact Check ✔️
At campaign stops around Montana this week, Democratic gubernatorial contender Ryan Busse was not shy about flinging political jabs at incumbent Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte. But at least one of the provocative attack lines Busse has used repeatedly doesn’t totally check out.
At two events attended by MTFP, Busse characterized an anti-abortion bill, Senate Bill 154, as promising to “strip the right to privacy” from the state constitution and asserted that Gianforte celebrated that attribute of the legislation. Standing next to running mate Raph Graybill in Pablo on Monday, Busse said:
“Senate Bill 154, to Raph’s point, promises to strip the right to privacy from our Montana Constitution, because they do not want women to enjoy the right to privacy in your health decisions. It’s dangerous. It’s creepy. It’s wrong. And I take them at their word. You don’t have to take me at my word. You don’t have to take Raph at his word. Take Greg Gianforte at his word. He stood up and said, ‘Senate Bill 154, it’s going to strip the right to privacy from the Montana Constitution.’ And I take him at his word.”
Busse made a similar statement in Helena on Tuesday, referencing remarks that Gianforte made when he signed SB 154 in May 2023.
“May 3, [he] stands in front of this big platform of lots of people, and he says his proudest achievement is signing Senate Bill 154,” Busse said. “Senate Bill 154 promises to strip the right to privacy from our beautiful Montana Constitution. Alright. That is ugliness. That’s wrong.”
SB 154, sponsored by Sen. Keith Regier, R-Kalispell, does not, in fact, promise to strip the right to privacy from the state Constitution outright (an action that would require a statewide vote to amend the Constitution). Rather, the law specifies that the state Legislature’s intention is that the right to privacy “may not be construed as creating or recognizing, a right to abortion or to governmental funding of abortion.”
The passage of that law hasn’t actually changed what’s permissible in terms of abortion access in Montana. As attorneys for the Legislature pointed out last year while the law was being debated, the Montana Supreme Court (which has the actual duty of interpreting the Constitution) has for more than 20 years held almost the direct opposite of the bill’s assessment: that the right to privacy does, in fact, confer the right to pre-viability abortion.
Gianforte echoed the bill’s actual language at the May ceremony but, contrary to what Busse claimed this week, didn’t make a sweeping statement about the right to privacy. Rather, Gianforte said that SB 154 “makes clear the right to privacy in the Montana Constitution does not create a right to an abortion, or government funding of an abortion.”
Responding to inquiries from MTFP this week, two attorneys familiar with SB 154 said the bill hasn’t been challenged in the courts, unlike specific abortion restriction laws signed by Gianforte and sued over by reproductive rights groups. Why not?
“Because the bill does nothing,” one attorney said.
In a response to MTFP’s request for comment Thursday, Busse campaign manager Aaron Murphy stood by the candidate’s statements, saying the Democrat was “talking about Gianforte’s intent, not the legal effect” of SB 154 and was referring to “privacy” as “the freedom to make personal health care decisions, including whether to have an abortion, without government intrusion or interference.”
“This movement makes no apologies for being crystal clear about Greg Gianforte’s plan to strip freedoms from Montanans,” Murphy said.
— Mara Silvers, Reporter
5️⃣ Things
Montana’s K-12 school system plays an essential role in this state — as essential as any of the many public institutions we cover. It’s also an expensive endeavor, with districts across the state spending, according to data from the state Office of Public Instruction, about $2.5 billion last year.
The formulas that determine how that money flows from taxpayers to public school districts are both bafflingly complex and infuriatingly essential for anyone who wants to get to the bottom of perennial debates over school funding.
We published a lengthy visual explainer this week intended to make that task easier. But at 3,000 words — not counting labels on the pictures — the piece is no cakewalk of a read. So we figured we’d try to boil down the most important takeaways we took from the project:
- Classroom instruction is only one piece of the pie (albeit the biggest). General Funds, where the bulk of dollars go to paying teacher salaries, are the center of many budget discussions, ours included. But schools have dedicated pots of money for other distinct needs underpinning that instruction, from building construction to buses to teacher retirement. Those pots in turn have their own distinct funding sources and formulas.
- The state Legislature holds the keys. School boards and their voters have the power to set their local General Fund budgets, but only between defined fill lines calculated from formulas determined by the state Legislature. The maximum funding levels limit the local property taxes collected for schools but also sometimes frustrate school officials who say they need bigger budgets to provide their students with a quality education.
- Funding is driven by enrollment. The funding formula has a bewildering array of components, but the biggest pieces of district budgets are driven directly by the number of students each school district has in its classrooms. This tends to force budget cuts when enrollments decline over time.
- 3% a year funding increases have become a friction point. Lawmakers habitually tweak the per-student portion of the funding formula to provide schools with inflationary increases at 3% a year, but higher consumer inflation in recent years — 8.0% in 2022 and 4.1% in 2023 — has some school leaders and state lawmakers arguing that’s not enough to keep up with actual expenses.
- State and local dollars both fill the pot. Much of the complexity in the school funding formula comes from math that divides the cost of school funding between local dollars (i.e., local property taxes) and state dollars (including the largely income tax-funded state General Fund). Again, the Legislature controls the formula that determines precisely how things are divvied up.
READ THE FULL EXPLAINER: How Montana pays for its public schools, in pictures.
— Eric Dietrich, Deputy Editor and Alex Sakariassen, Reporter
Campaign Trail 🗳️
In a blast from Montana’s political past, former congressman Denny Rehberg has joined the already crowded field of Republicans vying to replace Matt Rosendale in Montana’s eastern U.S. House district. (Rosendale launched a short-lived Senate campaign; whether he will attempt to keep his seat in the House isn’t clear.)
Rehberg, who represented Montana’s then-at-large district in Congress from 2001 to 2013, touted his experience in D.C. and support of former President Donald Trump in his campaign announcement on conservative news radio.
Rehberg, of Billings, is a real-estate developer, ranching family scion and former fast food franchise impresario who, though he’s been largely out of the public eye for the last decade, had a long career in Montana politics. Before being elected to Congress six times, he served as lieutenant to governors Stan Stephens and Marc Racicot. He made failed U.S. Senate bids in 1996 and again in 2012 when he lost to Democratic U.S. Sen. Jon Tester by about three points.
Though he was generally considered a reliable conservative in Congress — opposing the Affordable Care Act, among other Obama-era legislative priorities — he broke with the caucus on some spending issues important to the state.
He also had his share of scandals. In 2009, Rehberg was on a boat piloted by an intoxicated former state Sen. Greg Barkus that crashed into rocks on the shore of Flathead Lake, injuring the congressman and several members of his staff. A few years earlier, D.C. outlet Roll Call reported that Rehberg got drunk on ceremonial shots on a junket to Kazakhstan and fell off a horse.
In 2010, his company sued the city of Billings, alleging firefighters failed to protect the Rehberg Ranch Estates subdivision from a wildfire and requesting compensation from the city. He eventually dropped the suit.
Since leaving office following his 2012 election loss, Rehberg has opened and shut fast food restaurants in Billings and served as co-chairman of the public affairs firm Mercury, which was embroiled in the Paul Manafort scandal.
READ MORE: Former Congressman Denny Rehberg announces bid for Montana’s eastern House district.
— Arren Kimbel-Sannit, Reporter
On Our Radar 
Amanda — This Bozeman Daily Chronicle story on the recently released 2022 Census of Agriculture includes a dizzying array of stats, but I was especially struck by two dynamics: Gallatin County’s loss of 114 farms (totaling 45,000 acres) between 2017 and 2022, and a 470% increase in Montana acreage devoted to the production of camelina, which is used in biofuel.
Alex — One of the things I love about doom-scrolling on Instagram is the occasional glimpse into the goofier side of the National Park Service. Example? This hilariously dramatic (and informative) reel on how the Virgin River shaped the Zion landscape.
Arren — My goal is to make my first trip to the Corner Bar, “the best dive bar” in Helena, before it shuts its doors in the first week of March.
Mara — Rent caps? Unlike Montana, another Western state is considering heading in that direction to try and curb the crisis of housing affordability. The New York Times presents the situation in Washington state, with enough national context to let you thoroughly chew on the issue.
Eric — Watching GOP primary politics play out the last few weeks, I’ve found myself wondering whether the venerable ‘all politics is local’ maxim is still true for us here in Montana. This Columbia Journalism Review thinkpiece, focused on the Iowa presidential caucuses, argues that America’s increasingly nationalized politics reflect the declining influence of local news outlets.
JoVonne — If there are any dog lovers out there, The Dogist, where New York photographer Elias Friedman captures the many canines of the city, is one of my favorite social media accounts. Among my favorite posts is Charlie the Shiba, who only walks on the left side of his walker.
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