Two PSC districts on Montana ballot: Meet the candidates

This story is produced by Montana Free Press/Mountain Journal in collaboration with Grist as part of the Report for America Local News Initiative.

The Montana Public Service Commission may be one of the most important state offices you haven’t heard of. But if you have a power bill, are stuck waiting for a train to run through town, or pay for trash pickup services, you’re impacted by PSC decisions. 

The PSC is a quasi-judicial agency tasked with regulating monopoly companies. That includes things like water, telecommunications, gas and electric utilities such as NorthWestern Energy, Montana’s largest utility. Five commissioners represent the five districts across the state using a map that’s faced scrutiny in the past for having districts that split urban areas.  

The seats are partisan, and there hasn’t been a Democratic commissioner on Montana’s PSC since 2012. There are two seats up for election this year. The first is District 5, which covers portions of the Flathead Valley, east to the edge of Great Falls and south to Helena. Incumbent Republican Commissioner Annie Bukacek has served in the role since 2022, and is running against Helena-based Democrat Kevin Hamm. 

“The PSC has been failing the people of Montana for two decades, Hamm said in an interview with Montana Free Press. He cited consistent years of rising electricity and gas bills for NorthWestern Energy ratepayers, and a desire to better regulate monopolies to protect Montanans as reasons why he entered the race. Bukacek did not respond to Montana Free Press’s interview requests by time of publication.

Affordability is a top-of-mind concern for Montana voters heading into the election. An MTFP-Eagleton poll earlier this year found 80% of registered voters pointed to cost of living and affordability concerns as “very important” in helping them decide who to vote for. 

Hamm said he would scrutinize utility rate increases. “A lot of times [utility companies] come for a rate increase because they decided they need to make more money,” he said. “But they haven’t proven value to the state of Montana.” 

In an MTFP candidate questionnaire in March 2026, Bukacek wrote that the agency struggles with a lack of resources to be effective. “The PSC is one of Montana’s smallest state agencies,” Bukacek wrote. “The PSC could use additional funding to hire industry-related and experienced forensic examiners. But money is tight, taxes are already high, and we will continue to do the best we can with the resources allocated.”

The other race is for District 1, which covers the entirety of eastern Montana extending to Billings and Great Falls. Republican candidate Jeff Pattison is running against Democrat Angeline Cheek to fill the seat of the current commissioner, Republican Randy Pinocci, who will term out. 

As new technologies emerge, the PSC has been taking on new avenues of regulation like data centers. In the March MTFP questionnaire, Bukacek said the commission was responsible for “scrutinizing the large load tariffs relevant to data centers … to ensure that residential and mom and pop businesses will not be saddled with any of the data center’s share of energy generation demand, transmission, integration and service costs.” 

During his interview, Hamm said the PSC should be more proactive in their approach to regulating hyperscale AI data centers before they are built. “The last thing we want to do is get in position with data centers that are already destructive and taking water and electricity,” Hamm said. 

“They are a problem because of how they’re designed, to be thrown up as cheaply as possible and not worry about the environment or community around them,” he said. “[The PSC can] say no, you have to design them so they don’t become a Superfund site when you’re done with them. Build insulation, cooling systems, water filtration and reuse, and check those systems.”

District 1 Republican candidate Jeff Pattison did not respond to MTFP’s interview requests by publication time. On his campaign site, Pattison wrote that data centers absorb exorbitant amounts of resources. 

“In Montana, a single data center can demand as much power as one of our largest cities and as much water as an entire small town — every single day,” he wrote. “If a corporation requires city-sized power and town-sized water, it must pay city-sized and town-sized costs.”

Angeline Cheek, the Democratic candidate for District 1 also did not respond to MTFP’s interview request by publication time but on her campaign site said she is not opposed to data centers. “I am against approving them before Montana has written the rules for who pays, who is protected, and what happens when one shuts down,” Cheek said.

Commissioners are also now facing a new avenue of regulation: climate change. The PSC has been petitioned by a coalition of businesses and environmental groups to include climate impacts as part of its decision-making process. After several years without a response to the petition, the groups requesting the change this week sued the PSC for failing to act. 

This year’s PSC election is particularly interesting because it could be the commission’s last. Some Republican lawmakers, along with Gov. Greg Gianforte and his hand-picked Energy Task Force, have expressed interest in having commissioners be appointed by the governor, rather than elected by the people. Hamm said he opposes that change “I think direct elections of representatives is more important, having more power concentrated in admin is not what our constitution wanted to do.”