The MT Lowdown is a weekly digest that showcases a more personal side of Montana Free Press’ high-quality reporting while keeping you up to speed on the biggest news impacting Montanans. Want to see the MT Lowdown in your inbox every Friday? Sign up here.
As our team here at MTFP gears up for this year’s inevitably busy election season, we’re planning to focus our election coverage primarily on two things: first, how various power players and moneyed interests are trying to influence how Montanans cast our votes and, second, how those votes are likely to translate to government policy after the winning candidates are sworn in.
If you have questions or insight about electoral influence dealing, drop political reporter Arren Kimbel-Sannit a line at [email protected]. (And if you don’t already, take a minute to subscribe to Capitolized, Arren’s weekly politics newsletter).
As for the policy stakes, it’s clear already that Montana’s candidates will have plenty to say about the issues that drive our state and federal politics, debates that cover the wonky waterfront from school funding and property taxes to immigration policy and climate change.
That campaign trail rhetoric might address the issues Montana voters are truly most concerned about this campaign cycle. Or it might not — in which case it will be our job to push candidates to talk about the stuff they’re neglecting.
To do that job well over the next 10 months, we need your help. We want to make sure we have a solid grasp of the issues that are animating your kitchen table conversations. To that end, we’re running a reader survey this week and next and hoping you might take a few minutes to share what’s top of mind as you start to evaluate Montana’s candidates this year:
When we did a similar survey back in 2022, the input that readers like you provided was hugely helpful as we compiled a Q-and-A feature for our election guide and reported other election stories. We expect that to be the case again as we stare down the most crowded ballot Montana has seen in several election cycles.
(One last note: There is of course also a presidential election on the ballot this year. In keeping with our past practice, we’ll be leaving that coverage largely to national news outlets.)
Thanks for your thoughtful attention. And as always, we’re just an email away if you have thoughts you’d like to share without working through a survey.
—Eric Dietrich, Deputy Editor
By the Numbers 🔢
Pages of administrative records included in the Montana Department of Environmental Quality’s review of a Meagher County copper mine.
The Black Butte mine, which is located along a tributary of the Smith River, is expected to produce 14 million tons of copper during its operational life. Conservation organizations wary of the mine’s impact on waterways that support a trout fishery, irrigation and Montana’s only permit-required float sued the state in 2021 to stop the mine.
On Monday, the Montana Supreme Court ruled in a 7-2 opinion that DEQ “made a scientifically driven permitting decision” in its authorization of the mine. The two dissenting justices countered that they considered DEQ’s analysis of water quality impacts “inadequate” and its decision “unsupported by the record.”
Another lawsuit filed by conservation groups, questioning the legality of the groundwater diversion that would be necessary for the mine’s operation, is still pending before the state Supreme Court.
READ MORE: Montana Supreme Court sides with DEQ, Tintina, in dispute over central Montana copper mine.
—Amanda Eggert, Reporter
Following the Law ⚖️
Forty-one climate organizations, conservation nonprofits and businesses have petitioned Montana’s utility board to take climate impacts into account in its regulation of monopoly power companies.
In a petition filed Wednesday, the petitioners argue that the Public Service Commission has an obligation to consider climate impacts, citing Lewis and Clark County District Court Judge Kathy Seeley’s August ruling that sided with 16 young Montanans in the Held v. Montana lawsuit. That ruling found the state has acted contrary to environmental protections enshrined in the Montana Constitution by failing to consider the impacts of greenhouse gas emissions in its permitting decisions.
“As a utility regulator, the PSC has profound impact on state emissions and energy affordability,” Kimber Brown with Gallatin Valley Sunrise said in a press call about the petition. “They now have the opportunity to regard our constitutional right to our ‘clean and healthful environment’ in all of their decisions.”
The groups are asking the PSC, the five-member elected body that regulates public utilities, to adopt a framework for estimating the “social cost” of greenhouse gas emissions similar to the one developed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. That framework is designed to measure “the net social benefits” of reducing emissions, as well as the cost of letting them rise. The petitioners argue that having a framework like that in place at the state level would let the PSC factor in the social, economic and environmental costs associated with different power sources when it decides which generating resources can be incorporated into customer bills.
“The idea is we would be able to use that estimate of the damage of pollution if we have an existing generating asset such as the Colstrip generating plant,” Nick Fitzmaurice with the Montana Environmental Information Center said.
A spokesperson for PSC-regulated utility NorthWestern Energy, which is a co-owner of the Colstrip coal power plant, wrote in an email to MTFP that the utility is “reviewing the petition and looks forward to a thorough discussion on the topic.”
Petitioners are submitting their request under the Montana Administrative Procedure Act, which establishes a process for the public to petition state agencies to adopt new rules to govern their work. The 42-page petition includes material related to climate impacts, PSC’s statutory duties and implications of the Held v. Montana order.
Earthjustice attorney Jenny Harbine said she’s optimistic the commission will hold a hearing on the matter and suggested the petitioners may take the matter to court if they don’t find a receptive audience with the commission.
“If the commission decides not to abide by those constitutional obligations, it certainly subjects itself to legal arguments that it acted unlawfully,” Harbine said. “We’re hoping we don’t have to cross that bridge.”
Petitioners include climate- and environment-focused groups such as Families for a Livable Climate, Montana Environmental Information Center, 350 Montana, Save Wild Trout, Western Environmental Law Center and Montana Wildlife Federation. A handful of businesses including Bridger Bowl Ski Area, Blackfoot River Brewing and Parks’ Fly Shop also signed the petition, as did Lander Busse, one of the Held v. Montana plaintiffs and a son of Democratic candidate for governor Ryan Busse.
—Amanda Eggert, Reporter
Viewshed 🌄
Since 2019, the Yellowstone Bison Conservation Transfer Program has transferred 414 bison to the Fort Peck Reservation in northwest Montana. A record 116 animals were transferred this February. Bozeman Daily Chronicle reporter Isabel Hicks and photographer Samuel Wilson observed the 2024 transfer to produce the first-hand feature story they shared with MTFP readers earlier this week.
READ MORE: Bison transfers to tribes grow as state pushes to shrink Yellowstone herd
Glad You Asked 🙋
Over the past year, we’ve fielded many reader emails about charter schools in Montana. The curiosity is understandable — one of the two charter school laws passed by the 2023 Legislature is currently tied up in district court, and the other has already generated 19 public charters in nearly a dozen communities. But one recent email posed a question we hadn’t yet covered: exactly how much state funding did the Montana Legislature direct toward these new educational institutions?
The short answer is about $1.2 million. Both House Bill 549, which established public charter schools, and House Bill 562, which set up a separate system of “community choice” schools, called for any new charters to receive state funding through what’s known as K-12 BASE Aid. That’s the same formula the Legislature uses to fund public schools. In setting Montana’s two-year budget last spring, lawmakers set aside about $817,000 in extra BASE aid for public charter schools and another $425,000 for community choice schools.
Subsequent events have made the story a bit more complicated. The Legislature’s appropriation for HB 562 community choice schools is, for the time being, moot after a state district court judge in Helena barred state officials from approving any applications under that law until a legal challenge against it is resolved.
As for HB 549, lawmakers underestimated the immediate appeal the law would have for public school districts throughout the state. The Legislature’s fiscal projections were based on the assumption that five charters would start up during the current budget cycle. Instead, the Montana Board of Public Education wound up fielding 26 public charter applications in the first wave, and has approved contracts for 19 of the proposed schools to start operating within the next year and a half. The board and the Office of Public Instruction are still sorting out financial details, but the new charters will be receiving at least a portion of their K-12 BASE Aid this fall.
“The program was more popular than we had anticipated,” Rep. David Bedey, R-Hamilton, told MTFP this week. “But funding will be made available in order to support those programs that were approved by the Board of Public Education.”
Bedey, who chairs the Legislature’s Education Interim Budget Committee, also noted that additional funding for the public charters, if necessary, may be allocated through a supplemental appropriation in the early days of the 2025 Legislature.
—Alex Sakariassen, Reporter
Hot Potato 🥔
We don’t know if incumbent Montana Congressman Matt Rosendale had a secret reason for dropping out of the race for U.S. Senate only six days after he launched his campaign, and, as we wrote in this week’s edition of our Capitolized newsletter, chances are you don’t either.
But that lack of knowledge hasn’t stopped legions of readers, social media posters, sources of various degrees of authority and even a candidate for governor from speculating rampantly, and publicly. The speculation reached its peak (so far) when former Democratic U.S. North Dakota Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, speaking this week on a political podcast, floated a rumor that Rosendale dropped out of the Senate race because he had allegedly impregnated a young staffer.
We’ve spent two weeks digging into that rumor, which we first heard from sources long before Heitkamp took to the airwaves. Doing so, we found ourselves swimming in a pool of innuendo and half-truth, chasing conflicting narratives from people with vested interests in boosting or sinking Rosendale’s political career.
We haven’t been able to pin down whether the rumor has any truth to it, which is why we were somewhat hesitant to join the legion of other news outlets now reporting on Rosendale’s official denial. But we have learned a fair bit about how and why rumors of this nature are spread, and who gets hurt when baseless speculation runs rampant — the young people who are often the alleged accomplices to a politician’s misdeeds.
READ MORE: Let’s talk about the rumor.
—Arren Kimbel-Sannit, Reporter
On Our Radar 
Amanda — The writer in me was really impressed with the way “Origin” filmmakers shaped a plot around what’s essentially a book of ideas about commonalities between racism in America, the Holocaust and India’s caste system. It made for a sticks-with-you think piece that was also highly watchable.
Alex — In yet another shakeup reported by the Flathead Beacon, trustees at Kalispell’s ImagineIF public library this week voted to reverse a decade-old rebrand and return the four-branch library system to its former name: the Flathead County Libraries.
Arren — This week we mourn the passing of the comedian and Curb Your Enthusiasm fixture Richard Lewis. Here are some of his best moments, per CNN.
JoVonne — Montana Public Radio’s Ellis Juhlin reported on how cities and tribes in the state are tackling climate change after establishing action and adaptation plans.
Mara — Even though I haven’t lived there in almost four years, it’s still hard to avoid being hooked by some New York City-centric stories. Case in point: the wonderful and tragic legacy of Flaco the owl, an escapee from the Central Park Zoo, who died a few weeks back and was mourned across the five boroughs. This interview with one of the reporters who chronicled Flaco’s life on the run (fly?) is worth a read.
Eric — A tech billionaire is quietly buying up parcels in this mountain town, sparking concern from locals. Three guesses which state this is? (Hint — not Montana): “I came to [XXX] for the first time and fell in love,” he tells NPR.
*Some stories may require a subscription. Subscribe!
