1. How do you intend to balance the state budget?
2. What taxes are you willing to increase, if any?
3. Are there any services you are willing to cut?
4. How do you plan to foster economic growth in the Flathead Valley?
5. What role should state government play in managing federal public lands, and how should those management activities be funded?
6. What are the most urgent issues facing your district?
Name: Mark Noland
Age: 59
Occupation: Owner of Flathead Janitorial & Rainbow Restoration
Political Experience: Legislator since 2015
Political Affiliation: Republican
Place of Residence: Bigfork
1. I think we can minimize agencies over-bloated budgets and promote living within our means (don’t spend when we don’t have the money).
2. I would not like to increase taxes. I feel our state government can reduce the burden of paying high taxes by reducing the size of government.
3. As time rolls along and if we are short of funding we may have to look at what agencies, if any, have any fat that can be eliminated.
4. If we can streamline the bureaucratic red tape that is slowing entrepreneurs from investing in our communities, we can grow on many levels, i.e. housing, manufacturing, logging, tourism, etc.
5. I believe that the people closest to our state know better as to how efficiency looks than some agency in Washington D.C. Our local state lands and local forestry folks see firsthand the best way to clean-up our forests, as an example. We need to harvest our timber in a responsible way, getting dried and fallen dead timber that is now a kindling box waiting to ignite, harvested more quickly. Many folks have told me “we like to come to Montana but when we can’t breathe very well because of all your forest fires, we look at other states to vacation in.” I believe that we could start with a small test area and harvest timber properly and that will produce enough income to pay for the management.
6. Affordable housing. Children’s safety when leaving a school bus (people passing school buses).
Name: William (Bill) Jones
Age: 78
Occupation: I am a retired dentist with private practice, military and public health experience.
Political Experience: Represented the Bigfork area, Flathead and Lake county- Montana House during the 2005 and 2007 sessions as a Republican.
Political Affiliation: Libertarian
Place of Residence: Echo Lake, near Bigfork
1. Start by calling attention to waste and then work to eliminate it.
2. None
3. Yes, stop the open enrollment in our University System. Downsize the programs to the number of health care providers, attorneys, teachers, engineers, etc. that we need and select motivated students that have a high level of ability and integrity. Local Community Colleges are more efficient in providing educational needs. Stop government sponsored housing programs and let the free market work. Close some of the less useful agencies. Stop the defined pension benefits for government employees and switch to defined contribution plans. The list is much longer.
4. No to special tax breaks, subsidies, incentives or tax increment zones. Economic growth should not be a role of government.
5. None, because the result will be the loss of public lands.
6. Our out of control militarism, national debt and foreign meddling will lead to a financial crisis. We need to return to the basic truths that people who survived the great depression understood. Their answer was hard work, thrift, saving and eliminating waste. We have to stop taking handouts, expecting politicians to solve problems, provide jobs and every imaginable service. We need the conscience to call out waste. Basic diets, education and health care are part of the right to life, but society’s kindness is being misused. It is wrong retired and low income people are forced to sell their homes because of rising property and inflation taxes that our excessive spending creates. The next major problem is many people reject religion in politics and the principles of Natural Law that protects the Equality of men…Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness as expressed in the Preamble to the Declaration of Independence. This rejection of religion leads to the huge expenses of broken homes, crime and substance abuse that taxpayer’s pickup the costs for. Fortunately, I observe the growing 4th of July celebration in Bigfork of the Declaration of Independence, Pledge of Allegiance and Bill of Rights which endorse our God given rights and Nation.
I suggest we all endorse the culture of Life.