Page 25 - Flathead Beacon // 12.16.15

$10.9 million in administrative expenses and other costs.
HELENA
5. Shootings May Push States to
Give FBI Mental Health Records
Six states are not alerting the FBI about people who have been found to have mental health problems that would bar them from owning guns, according to a new report released last week by a gun-control advocacy group.
Three of those states recently passed laws to turn over records of people who are involuntarily committed to mental institutions for use in the FBI’s National Criminal Background Check System. The recent mass shootings in Califor- nia and Colorado could put pressure on the other three, o cials for the advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety said.
Background checks are in the spot- light again after the shootings that killed 14 people in San Bernardino, California, and three in a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, Colorado. President Barack Obama and Democratic presiden- tial candidate Hillary Clinton have called for expanding background checks, which Republican candidates strongly oppose.
The FBI database is checked before a licensed dealer can sell a gun to deter- mine whether the buyer is barred for rea- sons that include criminal convictions and mental health problems.
The push to get states to turn over mental health records began after the 2007 Virginia Tech shootings. Virginia did not submit records that could have agged Seung-Hui Cho, who killed 32 students and faculty members. The next year, Congress passed a law that gave states money to help them set up a records system, and threatened to cut other funding if they did not.
However, six states as of this year have submitted fewer than 100 records since the FBI database began operating in 1998: Montana, Wyoming, New Hamp- shire, Vermont, Alaska and Oklahoma, according to the advocacy group’s data received from the FBI through public-re- cords requests.
LIVINGSTON
6. Feature Film Shot in Montana to Premiere at 2016 Sundance
Montana-made feature lm “Certain Women” has received o cial selection to premiere at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival.
Announced by the Sundance Institute on Dec. 7, “Certain Women” is among only 15 feature lms selected as festi- val premieres, “a showcase of world pre- mieres of some of the most highly antici- pated narrative lms of the coming year.” The Sundance Film Festival is Jan. 21-31 in Park City, Utah.
The lm was shot in Livingston in March and April. A recipient of the Big Sky Film Grant, “Certain Women” is the rst Montana feature since 2005 to receive o cial selection to the Sundance Film Festival. Previous Montana movies to premiere at Sundance include Travis Wilkerson’s “Who Killed Cock Robin?” and Alex and Andrew Smith’s “The Slaughter Rule.”
“Certain Women” is the sixth fea- ture from acclaimed lmmaker-direc- tor Kelly Reichardt, whose previous work includes “Meek’s Cuto ,” “Night Moves,” “Wendy and Lucy.” It was pro- duced by Independent Spirit Producer’s Award winners Neil Kopp and Anish Sav- jani of lm production company Film Science, which produced “Green Room, Blue Ruin.”
Set in Montana, the lm is based on stories by award-winning, New York Times bestselling author and Helena native Maile Meloy. The lm’s story fol- lows how the lives of a lawyer, a cowboy and a married couple intersect in the “New West,” where the men are strug- gling to get their lives right in the face of aging, injury and bad luck – and the women are imperfectly blazing a trail.
BILLINGS
7. Magistrate Judge Rules Against
Polygamous Trio in Montana
A federal magistrate judge has ruled against a polygamous trio in Billings seeking to strike down Montana’s big- amy laws.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Carolyn Ostby ruled last week that Nathan, Victoria and Christine Collier must show that the laws have harmed them, or that they have been threatened with prosecution, before they can le a lawsuit.
Ostby’s ruling is not the nal say. Her ndings and recommendations can be upheld or rejected by U.S. District Judge Susan Watters.
Nathan Collier says he was inspired to le the lawsuit after the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that allowed gay marriage.
He is legally married to Victoria and wants to also legally wed his common-law wife, Christine.
Their marriage license application was denied in June.
BILLINGS
8. EPA Approves Water Quality Rules
for Montana, Tribe
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency waded into a long-running skir- mish between two states by approving water quality rules meant to protect southeastern Montana cropland from wastewater produced during natural gas drilling in neighboring Wyoming.
Wyoming o cials and oil and gas com- panies have assailed the rules as a threat to energy production. The rules set stan- dards that limit how much salty water — a byproduct of drilling — can enter water- ways in the Tongue and Powder River basins along the Montana-Wyoming border.
Gas production in the region has declined dramatically in recent years due to falling prices. But Montana rancher Mark Fix said last week that he continues to see evidence of high salt levels in the Tongue River during the annual spring runo because of past drilling. That has forced him to alter how he irrigates his elds.
Some farmers have said their crop yields dropped by more than half due to poor-quality water owing out of Wyo- ming gas elds.
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