Judge overturns Montana contribution limits, making politics fun again

By Dan Brooks in Montana Politics 4 Comments
The whole state of Montana until yesterday

The whole state of Montana until Tuesday

You can’t hear it, but someone is lazily picking a banjo. The buffalo no longer roam, having decided one place is as good as another. The deer and the antelope play video games. Montana politics is sleepy, so sleepy. But then look what happens: a federal judge rules unconstitutional several elements of our campaign finance law. Suddenly, the dog sits up. As of Tuesday afternoon—three weeks before the primaries—political parties can contribute unlimited amounts to individual candidates. Judge Charles Lovell’s ruling seems to indicate that limits on donations from individuals and corporations are lifted as well, but Commissioner of Political Practices Jonathan Motl believes he must only revert to the limits in place before the ones Lovell struck down, in 1994.

Anyway, the last time this law was briefly overturned—for nine days in 2012—Republican gubernatorial candidate Rick Hill accepted a $500,000 donation. Our easy slumber may have just been broken. I, for one, welcome the impending rush of cash into Montana politics. The 2016 campaign needs a shot of adrenaline. Why, just this week in the Missoula Independent, I wrote about how Bullock versus Gianforte has been a clash of tepid negatives. But the potential for political action committees of all kinds to spend unlimited amounts of money say unlimited amounts of speech ensures a vigorous exchange of ideas. So pander to me, boys. I’m all napped up.

Greg Gianforte and Art Wittich in Montana politics crossover episode

By Dan Brooks in Montana Politics 0 Comment
"Who is this Gianforte— some kind of slacker?"

“Who is this Gianforte—some kind of slacker?”

Ask a Montanan whether he supports preserving access to public lands, and he’ll jam his eatin’ spoon in your eye until he feels it crunch. He didn’t understand the question, and you startled him. To make some kind of meaning from all those empty words, people need a concrete example. My apartment has fallen into abstraction lately, so it’ll take me as second to hunt up a good—here we go. This thing Republican candidate for governor Greg Gianforte did works nicely:

In 2009, Greg and Susan Gianforte sued the Montana department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks, seeking to get rid of a fishing access point that residents of Bozeman had used for almost 40 years to go fishing on the East Gallatin River…The spur led not only to the river but to an entire riparian area of 75 public acres, protected by FWP for the enjoyment and general use of all citizens. But the easement also ran over the far end of the Gianfortes’s property, and so…they viewed it as a trespass.

Props to Ben al-Fowlkes for the link. The Gianfortes filed their lawsuit through a limited-liability corporation called East Gallatin LLC, headquartered at their home in Bozeman. They retained as counsel in the matter of East Gallatin LLC v. Father-Son Fishing Trip one Art Wittich, attorney-at-law in the Bozeman area and R–Belgrade in the Montana State House. The crossover is delightful. It’s like Captain America: Civil War except they’re on the same side, against Montana Cowgirl.

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Meanwhile, in Cascade County, MT

By Dan Brooks in Montana Politics 0 Comment
Rep. Randy Pinocci (R–Sun River) on Facebook

Rep. Randy Pinocci (R–Sun River) on Facebook

One thing I learned from Randy Pinocci’s Facebook timeline is that his wife is about take away his phone.  The rest we must gather from the news. The man from Sun River made headlines last week, when someone gave the Fairfield Sun-Times a copy of an email in which he proposed “a law that says impersonating a reporter is against the law maybe after we put a few of these idiots in jail we can get better reporting.” Bro, you must use punctuation when calling people idiots. It seems like Pinocci was pretty worked up when he wrote that, and he subsequently told the Sun-Times he had no intention to propose such a law. He was just sayin’ stuff.

One of Pinocci’s fellow Republicans from Cascade County, JC Kantorowicz, has been engaging in a little stuff-just-saying of his own. At a meeting of the county Republican Central Committee regarding delegates to the state convention, he became frustrated by the schedule and seemed to threaten a rival’s life. A transcript:

JC Kantorowicz, primary candidate in SD 10: “So does this mean I have to come back on the 21st to keep [former Rep.] Roger Hagan and [rival SD 10 candidate] Steve Fitzpatrick from going?

Chairman George Paul: Well, there’s a good chance you’re going to have to come back.

Sec. Judy Tankink: Unless you have a proxy. Would a proxy work in a situation like that?

Kantorowicz: A bullet would.

That’s not cool, but Kantorowicz has assured the Great Falls Tribune that he intended no threat, “implied or implicit,” to harm anyone. “If I make a remark because I’m tired as hell, I’m hungry, I want to go home and I sure as hell don’t want to come to the next meeting, it’s a flippant remark,” he said.

When I get tired, I talk about shooting people on-record at political party functions, too. Kantorowicz and Pinocci are on one side of a rift in the Cascade County Republicans that mirrors the larger split in the Montana GOP. Hagan and Fitzpatrick are moderates. Pinocci and Kantorowicz are hard-right conservatives. Their faction has largely been kept from the levers of power, partly because the schism has weakened the Republican majority in the legislature and partly because moderates have shut the right-wingers out. That’s probably a good thing, but it has accustomed them to operating in the realm of pure rhetoric.

Loose talk has become the modus operandi of Montana’s conservatives. They stand so little chance of making laws that their careers have become performances. Their speech, like their politics, is mostly theoretical. You can read all about it in this week’s column for the Missoula Independent. We’ll be back tomorrow with Friday links.

Commissioners sign petition, deny bias, postpone decision

By Dan Brooks in Montana Politics 0 Comment
In the years after World War I, the Missoula Mercantile building moved three tons of huckleberry fudge a day.

The Missoula Mercantile, which once moved three tons of huckleberry fudge per day.

Bad news for business travelers: Missoula’s Historic Preservation Commission has put off deciding whether to let developers knock down the Missoula Mercantile Building and build a Residence Inn. It met for four hours last week. In addition to public comment that compared HomeBase Montana to ISIS, the commission addressed the recommendation of City Attorney Jim Nugent, who advised four members to recuse themselves for bias.

“I am still in shock that somehow we’ve been found guilty without any due process whatsoever,” commission vice chair Steve Adler told The Missoulian. I find him guilty of exaggeration. Nugent issued no verdict, because he held no trial. He did tell four commissioners that the city could be vulnerable to a lawsuit if the they didn’t recuse. Nugent’s office discovered that Adler, an architect, worked on his own plan to develop residential condominiums in the Mercantile building. He also signed a Save the Merc petition and liked various postings from a group of the same name on Facebook. So did commission chair Mike Monsos and commissioners Kate Kolwicz and Cheryl Cote.

First of all, alliteration on the Historic Preservation Commission has gotten way out of hand. Second, and perhaps even more importantly: Did you guys think signing petitions and liking Facebook posts from parties to a permit dispute that you’re adjudicating was appropriate? I am scared the answer is yes. Now’s a good time to remember that Missoula’s commissioners of historic preservation are all volunteers, and we’ve asked them to stop putting plaques on mansions just long enough to intercede in multimillion-dollar development deal.

This may not be a job for amateur government, but it has fallen to the amateurs’ lot. We installed these people, and we will foot the bill if their predictable errors in judgment trigger a lawsuit. You can read all about it in this week’s column for the Missoula Independent. Official motto: Your local newspaper that has an editor.

With more potholes than cash to fix them, Missoula again considers gas tax

By Dan Brooks in Montana Politics 0 Comment
Downtown Missoula

Downtown Missoula

Bad news for my veteran pickup truck: Missoula transportation manager Jessica Morriss has announced that the city needs more transportation improvements than it has money to execute. Spring is here, and that means gaping holes in the city’s roads. We might get help from the federal Highway Trust Fund, but that’s insolvent. The state of Montana has no excess of funds, either, possibly because the gas tax hasn’t been raised since 1994. That’s the last year anyone in the federal government was able to raise it, too. We need money, but popular consensus on Missoula City Council is that a local gas tax is a nonstarter. Voters don’t like it, even though we don’t like potholes, either. Meanwhile, inflation effectively lowers the gas tax every year. What we have here is a system of unintended consequences. You can read all about it in this week’s column for the Missoula Independent, which contains lots of whimsical jokes about what’s to be found in very deep holes. The Indy indulges me so. We’ll be back tomorrow with Friday links!