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Browning Cuts Hours, Considers Bankruptcy

Blackfeet leaders contend the town owes the tribe money and must accept responsibility for its poor fiscal management

By Dillon Tabish

BROWNING — A northwestern Montana town has cut back its operating hours and is considering filing for bankruptcy after running short on funds.

Browning is a town of about 1,000 people on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation. Officials blame its financial problems on a dispute with the Blackfeet Nation over management of a water utility that serves the town.

But Blackfeet leaders contend the town owes the tribe money and must accept responsibility for its poor fiscal management.

It isn’t clear just how broke the town is, but over the past two years, officials in Browning have reduced their operations to four hours a day, four days a week, according to a sign from Mayor Willie Morris that’s taped to the front door of city hall.

By the end of a town council meeting last week, Browning’s four aldermen seemed resolved that bankruptcy was the best option.

“Us as the council, the aldermen, we decided that we’re not going to disincorporate,” Alderman Leo Kennerly said, according to Lee Newspapers of Montana. “We’re going to call a bankruptcy attorney and ask where we’re going from there.”

In 2009, a new pipe was built to bring tribal water into Browning and surrounding areas.

Both the tribe and city agree it was supposed to be run cooperatively through a memorandum of understanding, but that agreement broke down a few years later.

The tribe says the town owes it a share of water bill collections that Browning agreed to pay so the tribe could pay debts it incurred to build the new water system.

Glacier County Commissioner Tom McKay said it was his understanding that the town of Browning basically ran all its operations with what it collected from water bill payments.