Big Sky Cairn

Undeterred by allegations of impropriety in January, the Billings Gazette went full steam ahead today pushing for an $817,000 elementary mill.

Today you have stories on;

• The decrepit elementary budget situation
• The “concerns” of one voter who feels squeezed by inflation already, but he is of course a good citizen and taking a hit on his personal finances to provide for the kids.
• An editorial by the Gazette board touting the good work of the schools’ partnership with local businesses.
• A guest editorial by the Yes for Kids campaign calling for passage of the mill levy.

I do not have a dog in this fight as I am not a resident of Billings. I cannot imagine though, that when you look at the past troubles the Gazette has been in over unpaid advertising, this latest effort is doing any good for the proponents of the mill levy. The reporting is incredibly one-sided, albeit because opposition to school mills tends to be a silent majority, but I just read this stuff with a wary eye.

Meanwhile out West, I should plug a good write-up the Missoulian had a while back on where Montana ranks nationally in school funding issues. Of interest to me was this blurb;

Gov. Brian Schweitzer has refuted the MQEC arguments, saying the recent increases and policy changes have resolved the education funding problem.

Governor, I humbly submit today’s Gazette as evidence that in fact this issue is not resolved. On a broader note, the school funding issue will not go away until the State finds a dedicated funding stream like Roy Brown is pushing, namely by creating a trust fund from new energy development. Until that time you are going to see pitched battles on the local level between the education groups and their allies and property taxpayers who feel stretched too thin.

*Update:  Apparently the Billings Gazette did not get its point across with four articles yesterday so they came right out today and said to care for kids you have to vote yes on the mill before May 6.  Good to see our newspapers taking a balanced view on these issues.  Also, in case you missed it last night, Gee Guy has an interesting post up with the final tally on what a quality education will cost the state.

Well maybe not my backyard precisely, but the US Geological Survey released its report on the Bakken-shale formation today stating they estimate there is 3-4.3 billion barrels of recoverable oil in the area. Compare that to the previous estimate of 151 million barrels a little over 10 years ago. This discovery makes the Bakken the richest oil patch in the lower 48 states.

For those not from the Richland county area, which I assume is most everyone, the Bakken is a huge formation about 2 miles down which was first tapped around 2000 near Sidney and runs in roughly a right triangle from Minot south to Dickenson then diagonal northwest through Sidney to the Canadian border. People have known for a quite while that there was some oil in the formation, but no one knew how to get to it until recently.

So far according to USGS, 65 million barrels of oil have been extracted from Elm Coulee (the Richland county formation) in the past 7 years, they think there is another 410 million barrels in that part of the Bakken. This means at the current pace of drilling, Richland County has another 40 years of oil. Further north, Roosevelt, Phillips and Sheridan Counties are sitting on about 850 million barrels.

Put together, this means the State of Montana has the potential to reap a windfall on production taxes. Personally, I was sympathetic to Roy Brown’s idea of using natural resources to create a trust to fund the education shortfall. But the biggest thing for me, as an Eastern Montanan, is I do not want to see the tax dollars created from oil revenue syphoned off to Helena and Western Montana like they were last legislative session. Compared to the revenue put into state coffers, Eastern Montana got the short end of the stick on transportation funding, school funding and almost everything else related to state spending.

I have not mentioned how any new developments will be impacted by the Governor’s positions (or I suppose more accurately, his appointees) on climate change. New oil exploration, especially in the Bakken where there is a lack of natural gas plants, means increased CO2 emissions. But that will have to be a new post entirely.

Erik Iverson and the Montana GOP took a lot of flack for their February 5 presidential caucus. Most of that came from Montana Democrats expressing their outrage at the “elitist” approach of the caucus. But the chickens are coming home to roost - although the Media is sort of missing the boat on this one.

Roy Brown credits the caucus with increasing interest and participation in the Republican Party at all levels.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Roy Brown said the state party’s Feb. 5 presidential caucus helped spur more interest early in politics, which he said will help statewide GOP candidates like him.

We’ve personally heard similar stories of interest among Republicans here in Missoula. Republicans who didn’t vote in the caucus, but who felt that they had a role to play - and continue to play in the process. Participation in a democracy is about more than the simple act of voting and oversimplifying civic duty to casting a ballot is patronizing.

Remember, participation in the caucus didn’t require any money or official title. That’s an important distinction because the Montana Democrats have been touting their party’s primary plebiscite as less elitist than the Montana Republican caucus. Let’s look at the Democrat’s version of inclusion:

Meet the Presidential Candidates in Butte (if you were lucky enough to be one of the few that could afford to buy tickets and have a computer and have an internet connection and not have a job that prevented you from logging on at 9 am exactly or a well connected friend to give you tickets).

Meet the Hillary in Missoula (if you can afford the $250 minimum donation).

Every vote counts the same to decide how Montana’s 16 delegates vote (unless you’re one of 8 Superdelagate from Montana whose votes will count for roughly 100,000 times more than the average Montana vote).

It’s 3 am. I’m not sure “elitism” is a grenade the Montana Democrats want to be throwing…