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Earlier this week, I spent a lot of time calling and emailing a clerk in Anaconda-Deer Lodge District Court. She, like court clerks around the state, helps members of the public navigate the vast and complex web of a local court system.
As a journalist, clerks of district courts are often my first call when I’d like copies of court filings that I can see in the state’s public online portal for district court records, called FullCourt. But on Aug. 26, I ran into a problem that Anaconda Deer-Lodge Clerk of District Court Jodi Lechman couldn’t help me with.
The case of Michael Paul Brown, the man accused of shooting and killing four Anaconda residents in early August, wasn’t visible in the public record portal. I knew that Brown, who was arrested Aug. 8 after a weeklong search, made an initial court appearance on a warrant more than two weeks ago and was directed by the judge to be held in a detention center in Butte on a $2 million bond. But prosecutors have not disclosed any charges against Brown, and the list of court filings and scheduled appearances in his case, I discovered, was nowhere to be found.
I searched all variations of Brown’s name that I could think of. I moved my search to neighboring counties, wondering if the case had been transferred to another jurisdiction. I typed and retyped, refreshed and restarted my attempts. No dice.
So, I called Lechman. I told her I was having an issue with FullCourt. Brown’s case wasn’t showing up. Is it happening in another county? What’s the issue?
The case, she said, had been “sealed.” She declined to tell me anything else about the proceedings — including which judge it was assigned to or where it was happening. I was temporarily stumped.
I asked: What do you mean, it’s “sealed”? Case filings are often sealed, sure. Individual case records might have exceedingly private information that attorneys move to shield from public view. But an entire case being sealed? I’ve never heard of that.
Lechman reiterated her statement and told me to take my questions to Anaconda-Deer Lodge County Attorney Morgan Smith. I called Smith’s office and was told the same thing by her legal secretary.
On Aug. 27, I tried again. From Lechman, I requested the order from the judge who decided to seal the case, and any motion and other legal briefs that lawyers for Brown or prosecutors filed in support of sealing the case. This time, in an apparently exasperated phone call, she tried to set me straight.
“Mara, the entire case is sealed,” she said.
Other reporters had run into the same roadblock earlier this month. When the Montana Standard reported on Brown’s first court appearance and bond hearing on Aug. 11, the newspaper noted that a clerk for the Anaconda-Deer Lodge County District Court had said that “all court filings against Brown are sealed.”
But this, I kept thinking, was far, far from normal — especially the fact that the judge’s order to seal the case was itself sealed. I started calling judges and other criminal law experts to gut-check myself. Have you ever heard of this happening before?
No, they all told me. Not like this.
As of the publication of this newsletter, we haven’t made much progress in acquiring more information about Brown’s case. Our article about the situation was republished in most of the state’s larger papers, but Anaconda-Deer Lodge officials still denied our public records requests in writing. In an Aug. 28 email to Montana Free Press, Smith reiterated the gridlock but suggested that the situation could change soon.
“At this moment, I’m bound by a court order sealing all records. I’m unable to release the records you’re requesting as a result of such order,” Smith said. “I can advise that I anticipate that very soon there will be a substantial change to the status of the sealing of the court file. As soon as that happens, both my office and the Clerk of Court will be in a different position should other requests be submitted to us by you.”
What Smith didn’t say gets at the root of this issue: Who issued the court order? Why? When? What has made her expect a change in the status of the case? If it is unsealed, will we know on what grounds?
During this week’s interviews, one expert made this observation: The plain text of the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states that, in all criminal prosecutions, “the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial.” The tragedy in Anaconda — one of the most widely covered violent events in Montana’s recent history — is just the beginning of this story.
At this point, the next chapter is unfolding in the dark.
—Mara Silvers
On the Dial 📱
Montana’s 406 area code is again prematurely running out of room for new numbers, prompting the state’s utility commission to scramble for answers.
The 406, so ingrained in Montana culture that it appears in the names of 486 state-licensed Montana businesses, edges toward the allowable limit for phone numbers every few years. An area code only has room for about 8 million numbers, more than enough, it would reason, for a state with just a bit more than a million people.
However, there’s unused space counting against the limit. Here’s why: The first three numbers following an area code, known as the prefix, get room for about 10,000 phone numbers. The allotment is filled with zeros representing the four numbers that follow the prefix until numbers are assigned for every possible four-digit combination. The placeholding zeros count against the limit nonetheless.
An area code only has enough room for so many prefixes, and Montana is expected to hit its limit sometime in 2028, Public Service Commission staff said in an Aug. 26 meeting.
One way to slim things down is to reduce the number of prefixes used by having different geographic areas share one prefix. Culbertson, for example, might share a prefix with Sidney, so one prefix’s 10,000-number allotment can be returned to the pool.
The Public Service Commission this week voted to investigate the possibility of consolidating those prefixes.
—Tom Lutey
Hot Potato 🥔
Earlier this month, representatives from the state health department and Gov. Greg Gianforte’s Board of Investments, the lender for state public projects, began exploring potential sites in and around Billings for a new state-run mental health facility to help ease pressures on the Montana State Hospital in Warm Springs.
The exploration surprised many, including local officials from Billings and the surrounding Yellowstone County. Some later recounted that state envoys wouldn’t definitively say what kind of mental health facility they wanted to build, how big it needed to be or how many people it would serve.
“It’s pretty bizarre,” Billings City Councilmember Mike Boyett said in a recent phone call with MTFP.
Boyett was one of the local critics who urged the state to pump the brakes on even discussing the new facility. While Billings is the state’s largest city, officials like Boyett say their services are stretched thin and recruiting new health care workers is difficult.
The din of criticism and confusion appeared to make an impact. As of Aug. 20, members of the governor-appointed Board of Investments decided to pause deliberations on the site location and building specifics until they could get clarity from the Department of Public Health and Human Services about what kind of facility, exactly, the board is being asked to invest in and where.
“We are not in the mental health business or the behavioral health business. So we need to hear from them: Where is your need geographically? Where is the population to be served? And what population will be served?” Board of Investments Executive Director Dan Villa said in the board’s meeting. “They give us that, then we can get going.”
The idea for the new facility can be traced back to a bill passed by the Legislature this year. Lawmakers made a late-stage addition to a large infrastructure bill that added $26.5 million “for the purposes of building a behavioral health facility.” Members of the governor’s team and state lawmakers have said they are working to turn that amendment into a reality.
The sponsor of that amendment, Sen. John Esp, R-Big Timber, said that language grew out of another bill, House Bill 912, that would have established a $60 million fund to develop an eastern Montana forensic psychiatric facility for patients involved in the criminal justice system.
HB 912 failed to advance, despite some early bipartisan support. When that bill died, Esp moved to amend in a reference to the new facility into House Bill 5. He said the language about an “eastern Montana” location, as well as what type of population would be served, didn’t survive the transition.
“But the testimony for and legislative intent as evidenced [by] legislator statements to put something in Eastern Montana lived on in the amendment,” Esp said in an August text to MTFP.
Members of the Board of Investments at the most recent meeting expressed similar perplexity about what the Legislature and the state health department aim to build, and how Villa became involved in the Billings brouhaha.
“What is the intent of the — tell me about this facility. I mean, what does this facility — what is the goal of the facility?” said board member John Milanovich.
“That’s what we’re waiting to get the written guidance on,” Villa said.
Another board member, Cindy Younkin, made a comparison to a 2023 effort by the Legislature to create more housing in Deer Lodge for employees of the state hospital and the state prison. That bill, she said, was specific about what lawmakers intended. By comparison, Younkin said, HB 5’s description of a mental health facility “does not give us a whole lot of direction.”
“I think that the cart is way before the horse, No. 1. And No. 2, we are not the policymakers here, with what this facility is supposed to look like,” Younkin said. “If we want to be that, then we need to get ‘representative’ in front of our name, or ‘senator,’ or go work for the DPHHS and make those policy decisions.”
Asked to comment on the Billings blowback and the pause by the Board of Investments, a spokesperson for Gianforte’s office told MTFP that the governor has repeatedly worked to expand behavioral health services for Montanans and intends to continue that commitment by carrying out the amendment in HB 5.
“Our office is committed to working with BOI, DPHHS and other parties so we can meet the critical health needs of Montanans,” spokesperson Sean Southard said.
—Mara Silvers
The Gist 📌
It’s been a while since members of Montana’s congressional delegations uttered the word “earmark” in public. The term became verboten amid the Tea Party fury of 2009. Two years later, Republicans regained control of the U.S. House and banned the practice of writing home district projects into the script of spending bills.
But speaking at a Hometown Helena community forum recently, U.S. Rep. Troy Downing dropped the E word, reminding an audience of community leaders that it was OK to request support for specific projects. Before the about-face in 2009, Montana special interests from all walks made pilgrimages to D.C. at the start of the year to lobby for consideration.
“You know that some of my colleagues don’t like it, and I’m going to use the dirty word ‘earmarks,’” Downing said. “But I can tell you that if the Appropriations Committee appropriates money to pay for federally funded community projects, I’d much rather they came to Montana than New Jersey. So, we submitted, I think, about 18 of them this cycle, and a lot of them were related to fire support. A lot of them were law enforcement. There was some water infrastructure, sewer water issues.”
Earmarks resurfaced in 2021, when Democrats under then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi gave representatives each one chance to nominate one home district project for funding in the $715 billion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.
Montana’s preselected project in 2021 was restoring the Milk River Irrigation Project, part of which collapsed in 2024, cutting off water for Hi-line communities and irrigators for 350 miles. Matt Rosendale, Montana’s at-large representative at the time, wouldn’t take the bait.
When Republicans regained control of the House in 2023, they kept earmarks around, rebranded them as Community Project Funding Requests. Both Downing, who represents Montana’s eastern district, and Ryan Zinke, the western district representative, partook.
In the Senate, Republican Steve Daines has condemned community project funding, calling the projects “slimy backroom deals.” Fellow Republican Tim Sheehy, just eight months into his term, has said little about the subject.
—Tom Lutey
Viewshed 🌄
August has been the month of travel. I spent this last week in Billings, Laurel and the surrounding towns for stories and work building out MTFP’s photo archive. Pictured here, Susan Davidson gives her cows a treat during a few hours we spent together for an upcoming story by Mara Silvers (without spilling too much) outside of Huntley Project.
—Lauren Miller, Report for America/Catchlight Local Photojournalist
Highlights ☀️
In other news this week —
- A legislative audit found ‘instability’ in a medical monitoring program for nurses and doctors.
- Hi-Country Snacks in Lincoln laid off 16 workers.
- A Flathead-area lawmaker lost his appeal contesting more than $427,000 in unpaid federal income taxes.
On Our Radar 
Nora — I’ve been bingeing Amy Poehler’s new podcast, Good Hang. She interviews a celebrity each week, but it really does feel like you’re listening to two close friends just hanging out. At the beginning of each episode, Poehler asks a close friend of her celebrity guest for recommendations on what to ask her interviewee. As a reporter, I love listening to the thoughtful, funny and intimate questions they suggest for Poehler.
Zeke — The sound and smell of recent summer storms transported me back to my childhood in central Ohio. On hot, dry afternoons in Montana, I put a speaker near my window and listen to rain sounds.
Mara — I recently became acquainted with the magic of brothy, savory, cheesy dumplings from the South Tyrol region of northern Italy. As we inch toward cooler fall weather, I am (valiantly) preparing to make this cozy comfort food dish again and again until I get it right, though they’ll probably never quite compare to my original samplings.
Eric — With a somewhat less exciting summer travel schedule than Mara, I spent this week on a Billings-area reporting trip. It inevitably involved a stressful encounter with Shiloh Road’s landmark succession of multi-lane roundabouts. I’m hoping this roundabout navigation video from the Texas Department of Transportation will make me less of a menace to society next time.
Lauren — ‘Tis the season of love triangles — via television storylines featuring brothers! I’ve been absolutely bingeing both “The Summer I Turned Pretty” and “My Life with the Walter Boys.” If you want just to turn off your brain and exist in this beautiful little world where everything will eventually be solved and nothing terribly bad ever happens, these are the shows for you.
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