Misty Ann Giles, director of Montana’s Department of Administration, will leave her role at the end of August, according to a Tuesday press release from Gov. Greg Gianforte’s office. Gianforte has named Mark Blasdel, current director of the Governor’s Office of Economic Development and a former state lawmaker from the Flathead Valley, to succeed Giles.
The Department of Administration oversees the state government operations including human resources, accounting and information technology services. The agency also governs the Montana Lottery, manages state employee benefits, performs risk assessment for state assets and processes event permits at the Capitol. Giles has directed the department since 2021.
Giles, a Georgian by birth, education and accent, spent the late 2010s as an adviser to then-U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue, another Georgian. At the end of Perdue’s tenure, Gianforte cold-called Giles about joining his new gubernatorial administration, according to an article in The CEO Magazine.
“I got poached into the job I have now. I didn’t know Governor Gianforte or anyone on his team, but I got this random message,” Giles told the magazine. “I told them, ‘No, I have this job lined up’, but they encouraged me to meet with him, and I fell in love with his vision of government.”
Giles told the magazine that she, like the governor, believes government should be run like a business. She became one of Gianforte’s original cohort of department directors. The governor also named her Montana’s first-ever Chief Operating Officer.
Her early tenure overlapped with the tail end of the COVID-19 pandemic. Giles managed state employees’ return to the office and oversaw the implementation of a multi-hundred-million-dollar federal investment in rural broadband infrastructure.
In 2025, Giles came under scrutiny from some state legislators over the Montana Lottery’s competitive bidding process for vendors and her department’s 2023 approval of a $170,100 contract between then-Senate President Jason Ellsworth, R-Hamilton, and a longtime business associate.
Giles did not respond to requests for an interview on Tuesday. Blasdel also did not respond to requests for an interview.
Blasdel served in the state House from 2007 through 2013 and in the state Senate from 2015 through 2021. Republican lawmakers elected him speaker of the House in 2013 and president of the Senate in 2021. Since 2022, Blasdel has led the Governor’s Office of Economic Development.
He will take over as director of DOA at the start of September.
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