Rose and her family have lived in the valley for a half century. She and her family are Bulldogs, born into the local public school system. Rose raised her kids back when Whitefish was a timber and railroad town, decades before second home owners found paradise. Years before the magazine covers, private jets, and billionaires turned a hometown into a playground.
We’ve weathered a lot of change in the Flathead. Over recent years, many fences moved into town. Yet locals adapt. The hardest hasn’t been the nonstop traffic, the acre-sized McMansions, or blocked public access. For Rose and many old-timers, the real pain of progress, it’s watching Helena rip away our constitutional right to self-govern our own damn town.
For the last several years, the state legislature has been on a preemption crusade, passing laws that explicitly ban our local city councils and county commissioners from doing a better job. And for locals who’ve lived, worked, and paid taxes in this valley for decades, the lingering pain is like a legislative kick to the shin.
Both parties mouth local control during campaign season. Home rule is clearly written into their party platforms. Yet once elected to Helena, they only listened to a hallway of paid lobbyists. The parties insist that only they know best and passed laws to preempt local self-governing.
The most recent slap in the face is the state’s new 60-foot construction mandate. For decades, locals worked hard to protect the historic charm of downtown Whitefish and Kalispell. Locals kept building heights reasonable for firefighter safety, so people could actually see the mountains from the street, such that the sun could reach the sidewalk, and that the 100-year-old storefronts wouldn’t be swallowed in the shadows of sheet-metal cladded penthouses.
Yet the all-knowing, self-dealing legislature decided that local historic character was an unreasonable obstacle to developers. Lawmakers passed laws forcing Flathead cities to allow 60-foot buildings in our downtowns. As Whitefish tried to use reasonable designs to preserve a historic downtown, a Missoula Democrat implied legal action through a nasty missive.
We losing our historic downtowns because Helena lawmakers decided to roll out the red carpet for luxury penthouses, overriding locals who actually live and work here, yet must now compete with San Francisco wages for housing. Local dark money activists and their Missoula compadres enjoy telling old-timers in Whitefish, Columbia Falls, and Kalispell how best to grow up.
It’s a familiar preemption tale. Years earlier, working-class teachers, snowplow drivers, restaurant workers were already being priced out of the county. Whitefish spent thousands of hours with business leaders and community members, engaging through townhalls to find a reasonable homegrown solution. Out-of-state developers who profit off our resort town should include a few affordable housing units for local workers.
Helena responded with familiar bluster as powerful building industry lobbyists whined to the state. Lawmakers promptly passed a law banning local affordable housing mandates, steamrolling home rule in places like Bozeman and Whitefish. They flattened locals, killed plans overnight, and big development laughed all the way to the bank.
Then Helena told locals how we must zone residential neighborhoods. The state passed laws forcing Flathead towns to duplex and backyard apartment single-family neighborhoods, and banned locals from requiring that big development add enough parking.
They claimed it would create affordable housing. It did, just not for locals. Lawmakers simply marketed to an out-of-state buying frenzy for second homeowners and remote workers. Our cost of living is suddenly more expensive than San Francisco. That weird housing miracle they keep touting works better for second home buyers than local wage earners.
It’s not just housing and zoning where Helena preempts self-governing. Locals who live in some of the most beautiful places on earth sought to keep their lakes and rivers clean of tourist trash. As towns started talking about banning single-use plastic bags or styrofoam takeout containers to reduce the petroleum trash blowing like tumbleweed around our western towns, state lawmakers promptly preempted the banning of plastic. No home rule for you.
The hypocrisy stings. The politicians of Helena beat their chests about small government, freedom, and getting bureaucrats out of our lives. But the second a local Montana town tries to exercise its constitutional right to self-govern, those same politicians act like a nanny state, dictating exactly how tall our buildings must be and what we can and cannot do in our towns.
It feels like every time lawmakers tout an accomplishment, Rose pays more. After the state reappraised her 50-year-old home, lawmakers greedily charged Rose a lot more in property taxes because the state insisted her home was worth extra after the government valuation.
It’s an old Helena trick. Lawmakers force Rose to pay more for local schools, so the state can pay less and more easily balance their budget. Rose is stuck paying extra for someone else’s tax cuts since lawmakers only listened to lobbyists.
Without even asking a single local, all-powerful lawmakers believe they know better. Lawmakers should stop only listening to the dark money advocates who block local control in our towns.
Dark money is making local living unaffordable by preempting our way of life. They got a wheelbarrow full of cash from some secret, ultra-wealthy multinational and their well-paid lobbyists who seek high-density penthouses for a Yellowstone film set Montana.
Our 1972 Montana Constitution guaranteed a right to local control. Instead, state lawmakers shout that they know best for the Flathead, even as they’ve never lived in the valley. Helena is not fixing, rather costing you more, and dictating how best to live your life.