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Since November arrived, I’ve heard a few friends confide that they’re afraid to open a piece of mail lurking on their kitchen tables, sent by their health insurance companies.
Like many Montanans, they suspect those envelopes contain grim forecasts about how their health insurance plans are about to become much more expensive. On Dec. 31, enhanced subsidies for monthly premiums are scheduled to end, unless members of Congress reach an agreement to extend funding. That cliff could mean that 67,000 Montanans who buy their health insurance plans through the Affordable Care Act marketplace will see spikes in their monthly and yearly coverage costs.
At a national level, a dizzying number of stories have been written about how this fight over health care funding has led to the federal government shutdown. Congressional Democrats are pushing to include funding for enhanced subsidies in the current budget negotiations, while their Republican counterparts say that the debate can wait until after the government is reopened.
But, in our opinion, not enough has been written about the people sitting at their own kitchen tables, trying to figure out how they will afford essential health insurance coverage next year.
That’s where you come in.
Montana Free Press is piloting a new tool designed to help us connect directly with people dealing with the fallout of this policy change. If you are one of thousands of Montanans who are getting ready to purchase your health care plan through the federal marketplace, do us a solid and tell us about your experience by filling out this form.
We welcome as much information as you care to share — how much are your premiums going to change? Are you considering a plan with a higher deductible? What health conditions do you need coverage for? — and we promise to carefully read through every response.
We won’t publish any of your personal details without getting in touch with you first for an interview. And, if we call or email you, we hope you’ll pick up the phone. Connecting with Montanans is what we love most about our jobs. It leads to invaluable articles that otherwise would be filled only with the voices of elected officials and third-party experts. No offense to them, but talking to you is by far our preference.
Your input will help guide our reporting, no matter what happens with the federal shutdown. We intend to keep tracking changes in the health insurance landscape and how they impact Montanans — the same way we’re following how disruptions to federal food aid are putting pressure on Montanans’ monthly grocery budgets (if you’re a SNAP user, we’ve got a form for you, too).
At the end of the day, we want to keep impacted Montanans at the center of the news cycle. Thank you for helping us bring the story home.
— Mara Silvers
Verbatim 💬
“Corner crossing remains unlawful in Montana, and Montanans should continue to obtain permission from the adjoining landowners before crossing corners from one piece of public land to another. Wardens will continue to report corner crossing cases to local county attorneys to exercise their prosecutorial discretion.”
—Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Director Christy Clark
FWP issued this guidance on the legality of corner-crossing on Nov. 3, a week into rifle hunting season for deer and elk and two weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take up a landowner’s appeal of a 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision establishing that corner-crossing is not a trespassing violation. Since Montana is in a different appellate circuit, the issue remains legally muddy in Montana.
Clark’s statement is identical to one the department released in 2023, on the heels of the first federal ruling on that case, which involved four hunters from Missouri hunting on a large checkerboard property in Wyoming. At that time, Dustin Temple was leading FWP.
Two days after the Supreme Court’s decision not to take up the landowner’s appeal, the issue came up in an Environmental Quality Council meeting when Rep. Willis Curdy, D-Missoula, asked FWP about its response to the Supreme Court’s decision to let the neighboring appellate court’s decision stand.
Clark told Curdy that while FWP is still treating corner-crossing as trespassing in Montana, the agency is continuing to look at ways to incentivize landowners through voluntary access agreements to open up public parcels in a checkerboard land ownership pattern. She offered to set up a meeting between FWP’s legal staff and EQC member Mike Mershon, who chairs Montana Wildlife Federation’s board, to discuss the department’s legal reasoning. FWP spokesperson Greg Lemon told MTFP on Nov. 7 that the meeting had not yet happened.
Clark’s guidance has come under fire from hunting and public access groups, who’ve argued on social media that it is “simply [FWP’s] opinion” because the law remains undecided in Montana.
“Do not take this statement as law, as the director of FWP is not law enforcement, an attorney, nor a judge. The choice to prosecute still resides with local law enforcement and local county prosecutors,” Jake Schwaller, an attorney from Billings who chairs the Montana Chapter of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, wrote in a Facebook post.
FWP did not provide MTFP with references to statute or case law to support its position on corner-crossing by press time for this newsletter.
When the Billings Gazette asked a similar set of questions in response to FWP’s 2023 statement, the department referenced a pair of rulings pertaining to airspace occupation and a dispute between neighbors regarding pond runoff. University of Montana law professor Michelle Bryan told the Gazette that neither case directly addresses “the unique situation of corner-crossing to access public lands.”
—Amanda Eggert
Say What? 🤔
Toward the end of the Environmental Quality Council’s four-hour meeting on Oct. 22, Sen. Willis Curdy, D-Missoula, asked the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation why fighting the Windy Rock Fire, a mid-sized blaze this year near Drummond, cost so much.
“Now I normally don’t have much criticism on how a fire is managed, but I found it rather curious that we spent $51 million on a fire that was less than 6,200 acres,” Curdy said, citing the cost listed by the National Interagency Coordination Center in Boise, Idaho. Curdy has a history in firefighting, including working as a smokejumper, according to a campaign website.
DNRC’s State Forester Shawn Thomas was ready for the question. He rebuffed the $51 million figure, saying that the fire actually cost $40 million. (DNRC has not yet confirmed either number in response to a request from MTFP.)
Thomas said there were good reasons for the price tag.
“Fires that we deal with in Wilderness Study Areas, we’re more restricted on the particular tools that we can utilize. It’s more Hotshot crews. It’s less machine line building. There was a lot of aviation resources,” Thomas said. “There were 130 homes threatened to the west side of that fire, it had a big push several nights that pushed that fire right into people’s backyards. So there was a lot of emergency response for structure protection involved [in] the front end of that fire.”
Thomas said that the fire lasted from June to October, though a U.S. government site that tracks disasters nationwide says the fire began in mid-August, as does a press release from Gov. Greg Gianforte’s office. Thomas said the fire required complex incident management teams, which are specialized and relatively expensive, on two occasions.
“It was there for several months, and we had a really difficult time trying to just put a line around this fire because of the conditions that were present within the [Wilderness Study Area] and the firefighter safety concerns in a really severely dangerous fuel type,” Thomas said.
The Bureau of Land Management opened much of the public lands near the Windy Rock Fire’s burn area on Oct. 18, and the DNRC county assist team on the fire issued its last update on the blaze Oct. 3, citing incoming heavy rain and snow en route to the area.
Thomas also noted the DNRC is anticipating a $20 million Fire Management Assistance Grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. That didn’t ease Curdy’s concern.
“I look at what is happening to FEMA and what it’s not doing on other projects nationwide — I have doubts that the FEMA program is going to be something that’s going to bail us out in the future,” Curdy said.
The DNRC did not provide answers to a list of questions from MTFP sent this week, including queries on the total costs of the Windy Rock Fire and the price of statewide firefighting efforts over the course of the fire season.
“We’ve received a high volume of information requests regarding the Windy Rock Fire and are currently compiling a fact sheet to ensure consistent and accurate information is shared,” spokesperson Anna Lau wrote in an email.
—Zeke Lloyd
6️⃣ Things
This week’s local elections were a whirlwind, even without major statewide and federal positions on the ballot. Here are five things to know about the results:
1️⃣New mayors in Billings, Bozeman, Helena and Kalispell. In Billings, Montana’s largest city, hotelier Mike Nelson edged out runner-up Jennifer Owen in a close, four-way race that, according to unofficial results, was decided by a mere 185 votes. Races in Helena and Kalispell were also close, with Emily Dean securing victory in Helena by 203 votes and Ryan Hunter winning in Kalispell by 263 votes. In Bozeman, though, the results were lopsided, with incumbent city commissioner Douglas Fischer handily winning a three-way race with a 4,924-vote margin.
2️⃣Old mayors in Missoula and Great Falls. Missoula’s Andrea Davis and Great Falls’ Cory Reeves cruised to re-election on comfortable margins, with Davis picking up 70% of the vote and Reeves picking up 73%.
3️⃣ Year-round fireworks restrictions pass in Great Falls. Voters in the Electric City chose to extend fireworks restrictions within city limits to last all year, nixing a prior exception around the Fourth of July holiday that came under scrutiny earlier this year after fireworks appeared to cause a fatal house fire. That ballot measure passed with 55% of the vote.
4️⃣ Bozeman’s water-or-affordability initiative went down hard. An initiative that would have nixed the mechanism most Bozeman housing developments use to meet water supply requirements unless the houses meet specific affordability targets failed with support from only 28% of voters. The measure had attracted well-funded opposition from a range of opponents, including business associations, tenant associations and the progressive youth advocacy group Forward Montana.
5️⃣ Belgrade and Columbia Falls lost their school bonds. The smaller school districts on the outskirts of Bozeman and Kalispell, respectively, had hoped their voters would approve bond measures that would allow them to raise property taxes to fund school construction projects. The primary funding measure for a new elementary school in Belgrade failed with support from only 37% of voters, and a high school renovation bond in Columbia Falls failed with support from only 32%.
6️⃣New year-of-birth requirements on mail ballot envelopes increased ballot rejection rates. A measure adopted by this year’s Legislature resulted in the rejection of thousands of mail ballots with envelopes that didn’t include a voter’s birth year next to their signature. While election staff were able to work with many voters to remedy those rejections, that tally is likely to become a factor in ongoing litigation over the requirement, which proponents had called a reasonable election security measure.
SEE MORE: Our running tally of local election results.
Editor’s note: Bozeman mayoral candidate and water initiative backer John Meyer is married to MTFP reporter Amanda Eggert. Eggert had no involvement with this item.
— Eric Dietrich
Viewshed 🌄
The Lewis Range rises steadfast beyond the horizon. I made this image while on a reporting trip in Browning with Indigenous affairs reporter Nora Mabie, who has been reporting on a story about mental health in that part of the state for the past year and a half. I’m excited to read it — and you should be too.
Highlights ☀️
In other news this week —
- We mapped five years of highway crashes in Montana. Here’s what jumped out at us.
- A conservative college activist captured audio of a Montana librarian defending a book featuring a same sex teen romance and a teacher lamenting art censorship. The clips went viral, inspiring legislation and debate.
- Montanans could see some food assistance benefits held up by the federal government shutdown “in the coming weeks.”
On Our Radar
Amanda — Glasgow resident Andrew McKean weaved together an unlikely combination of occurrences — the death of his mother and a “grim accounting” of the fatal, local emergence of “blue tongue” disease in his local white-tailed deer herd — to powerful effect in this short Outdoor Life essay out this week.
Holly — All hail the king! As in King Arthur’s chocolate pecan pie, the superior choice for your Thanksgiving table. Make a practice pie now, because more pie!
Katie — For those looking for their next read, I would argue Stephen Graham Jones’ “The Buffalo Hunter Hunter” is perfect to pick up right now. A historical horror novel set in 1912, the story follows a Lutheran priest who transcribes the “confessions” of a vampire haunting the Blackfeet Reservation in search of justice. Not only does the story take place in Montana, it has the perfect chilly atmosphere as we transition from fall to winter.
Zeke — Step aside, “Groundhog Day”! The 2020 romantic comedy “Palm Springs” features Andy Samberg, Cristin Milioti and J. K. Simmons trapped together in a time loop that takes place on Nov. 9. If you hit play at midnight on Sunday, you can get in exactly 16 viewings before Monday. Unless, of course, Monday never comes.
Eric — I’m consistently amazed at how much a good commentator can do to bring a niche sporting event to life by explaining the finer points of an otherwise inscrutable competition. Here’s a case in point from… the 2025 Word Cup Scrabble championship.
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