Two decades earlier Brian Schweitzer, not yet a candidate for governor, raised his pocket-sized state Constitution in front of hundreds of locals gathered to voice concern at a public meeting about the sale of state public lands in the Flathead.
The Judy Martz administration was in town peddling Spencer Mountain to a developer. The plans were drawn and public land owners were mad as hell. This was our land, said so right in our Constitution. The land is a part of who we are, drives our local economy, funds our schools.
I though back to my efforts while serving in Helena. We’d nearly forced a unanimous-decision requirement upon the Land Board before they could sell any state public land. It fell, one vote short. One bloody vote, I remind myself. That lawmaker had promised to vote with us. Now, no one budged. Politics took hold.
I looked at the pizza box on the counter. We’d ordered a roasted red pepper and sausage from the local pizzeria. It was damn good. Chewy crust. Tasty roasted red peppers. On the top of the pizza box was printed a drawing illustrating some of the thousands of acres of lands locals had protected forever through hard work and local dollars.
Locals do good work when working together, I thought. If only we could get a cooperative focus to the 150 lawmakers sequestered in the Capitol. I hear there’s 750 lobbyists in Helena muting local concerns about how expensive Montana became for working families.
It was a matter of time. Public lands would again be for sale. All those campaign promises of never selling the public land became mere words of election season. When it came time to vote, House Republicans in unison – with the lone exception of the Miles City lawmaker – opted to sell a million acres of state public lands.
With the Speaker as sponsor, all Flathead Republicans voted to sell our state public lands through a noncompetitive sale in HB 676 as the bill passed the House, headed to the Senate.
I went online and viewed an agency map of where these public lands are located and it looks like a shotgun splatter all over Montana. Certainly, locals everywhere enjoy their public lands. The map held plenty of potential for public land sales west of Kalispell or east of Columbia Falls.
No one is safe when lawmakers are in session, is an old, mocking saying that resonates with many Montanans familiar with past legislative shenanigans. Another month and lawmakers will return to hometowns, their work done, explaining to the rest of us about where they’ve been all winter, and the good political things that got done on our behalf in the state Capitol.
Eastern Whitefish to Columbia Falls Rep. Lyn Bennett was amongst the Republicans voting to sell off our public lands under HB 676 as the bill left the House. I won’t speculate, seems contrary to her district, but note she flipped a vote on another public land sale bill in this session.
Western Whitefish to Polebridge Rep. Debo Powers was the only member of the Flathead delegation in the House opposing all bills to sell off state public lands. A big hat tip to Powers, who is proving herself a determined worker for the people in her hometown district.
Flathead Reps. Amy Regier, Steven Kelly, and Braxton Mitchell all sat on committee which held House hearings on the Speaker’s public land sale bill. They voted to sell a million acres of public lands with their committee vote and two floor votes. Maybe they didn’t know? I don’t know.
Not to be outdone by the House, Sens. John Fuller and Carl Glimm sponsored SJ 14 along with Rep. Courtenay Sprunger urging Congress to repeal all the wilderness study areas in Montana. Wild land like 34,000 acres in the Ten Lakes area near Eureka, containing mountain ranges like Galton and Whitefish, home to alpine lakes, grizzly bears, lynx, wolverines, fishers, and wolves.
Won’t be but a year until lawmakers again run for office and remind us that they won’t be selling the biggest asset in Montana, our public land. But when the votes came rolling in, Flathead House Republicans put public lands not just for sale, but for noncompetitive sale.
As I mused about how many locals earn their livelihoods living and working near public lands, I ate the last slice. Roasted red peppers were good on pizza, I said to myself looking at the box again. On the pizza box people recreated on the public water and public land.
Even with a billion-dollar state surplus lawmakers vote to sell off our public lands, then insist during campaign season that they never would really to sell our public land. I shook my head, ever so slightly. It sounds all too familiar.
In real life, tens of thousands of locals use the public lands and public waterways throughout the valley at all times of year. Selling our way of life is a bad idea and everyone outside the lobbyist-infested Capitol knows it.
Maybe the state Senate hears your voices. They did, it seems. For now, anyway. Late last week, a Senate committee ripped the public land sales out of the Speaker’s bad bill.
Schweitzer served his eight years for Montana. As governor, he permanently conserved thousands of acres in the Flathead, in some of the fastest growing places of Montana. Places where the local economy is driven by the Great Outdoors, where locals are willing to work together. Places where locals find solace, recreating in our public forests, on our public water.