State looks to build new transportation facility in North Kalispell
Apr. 8—The Montana Department of Transportation is looking to build a new 28,000 square foot multi-use facility in north Kalispell.
The Kalispell Planning Commission will hold a public hearing on the proposal on Tuesday, April 8 at 6 p.m. in City Hall, 201 First Ave. E.
The state agency is requesting annexation of the 9-acre plot of land into the city, initial zoning of P-1 (public) and a conditional use permit to allow for the facility located at 2905 U.S. 93 North, which is currently being used as a maintenance yard.
The new building would be used to store equipment storage and be fitted with mechanics and welding shops under one roof, according to the project proposal. The state Department of Transportation has a welding and mechanics shop on Fifth Avenue East North but will be relocated to the new building.
"The property is located in a generally commercial area which transitions into multi-family to the east and single-family to the north, along with undeveloped lots slated for multi-family and office use," read the proposal.
The Kalispell Ford dealership and the firearms manufacturing company, Falkor Defense sit across the street from the property along with the new Stillwater Bend subdivision nearby.
The proposed project is in compliance with the municipal growth policy, according to the development proposal.
The conditional use permit would also require the construction of a road connection from Rose Crossing north to Quail Lane. "Without annexation, the road connection is unlikely to be available," read the proposal.
THE PLANNING commission will also hold its sixth meeting regarding the city's new land use plan.
The commission must craft a new and improved land use plan after Gov. Greg Gianforte signed Senate Bill 382, also known as the Montana Land Use Planning Act, into law in May 2023 in hopes of easing the statewide housing crunch.
Tuesday's meeting will entail discussion on portions of the preliminary draft, according to the meeting agenda.
A provision of the act that has drawn criticism from city officials is how it limits public input on site-specific developments. By frontloading public input to creating the land use plan, the act would ditch public hearings in from of City Council on site — specific construction.
However, the provision was ruled unconstitutional by a district court judge in Bozeman in March, leaving city planners with unanswered questions on how site-specific developments will be approached.
The community may provide their thoughts on the city's public engagement website at engagekalispell.com/#tab-59610. Users can post their thoughts on challenges facing Kalispell, tag areas on a map whether the city needs revamping, sign up for project updates and learn more about the legislation.
The new plan must be adopted by May 2026.
Reporter Jack Underhill can be reached at 758-4407 and junderhill@dailyinterlake.com.
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Los Angeles-area mayors demand that Trump administration stop stepped-up immigration raids
LOS ANGELES -- Dozens of mayors from across the Los Angeles region banded together Wednesday to demand that the Trump administration stop the stepped-up immigration raids that have spread fear across their cities and sparked protests across the U.S. But there were no signs President Donald Trump would heed their pleas. About 500 of the National Guard troops deployed to the Los Angeles protests have been trained to accompany agents on immigration operations, the commander in charge said Wednesday. And while some troops have already gone on such missions, he said it's too early to say if that will continue even after the protests die down. 'We are expecting a ramp-up,' said Maj. Gen. Scott Sherman said, noting that protests across the nation were being discussed. 'I'm focused right here in LA, what's going on right here. But you know, I think we're, we're very concerned.' A demonstration in Los Angeles' civic center Wednesday evening just before the second night of the city's downtown curfew was set to start, suddenly turned chaotic, as police in riot gear — many on horseback — charged at a group, striking them with wooden rods and pushing them out of a park in front of City Hall. Officers also fired crowd control projectiles, striking at least one young woman, who writhed in pain on the ground as she bled from her hip. It wasn't clear what initiated the confrontation. But minutes earlier, some protesters had lit fireworks as they approached the federal building, the site of numerous showdowns in recent nights. Simultaneously, a larger portion of the protest had been in the midst of a dance party. 'It was chill the whole time, it was cool vibes, peaceful protesting,' said Raymond Martinez. 'Once we got by the federal building the horses started coming." The LA-area mayors and city council members urged Trump to stop using armed military troops alongside immigration agents during the raids. 'I'm asking you, please listen to me, stop terrorizing our residents,' said Brenda Olmos, vice mayor of Paramount, who said she was hit by rubber bullets over the weekend. 'You need to stop these raids.' Speaking alongside the other mayors at a news conference, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said the raids spread fear at the behest of the White House. The city's nightly curfew that started Tuesday will remain in effect as long as necessary in a 1-square-mile (2.5-square-kilometer) section of downtown. The city of Los Angeles encompasses roughly 500 square miles (1,295 square kilometers). 'If there are raids that continue, if there are soldiers marching up and down our streets, I would imagine that the curfew will continue,' Bass said. Those who have been caught up in the nationwide raids include asylum seekers, people who overstayed their visas and migrants awaiting their day in immigration court. The administration has cited the protests in its decision to deploy the military. Referring to the demonstrations, which have been mostly concentrated in the LA business district, the Democratic mayor added: 'If you drive a few blocks outside of downtown, you don't know that anything is happening in the city at all.' California's Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, has asked a federal court to put an emergency stop to the military helping immigration agents in the nation's second-largest city. This week, guardsmen began standing protectively around agents as they carry out arrests. A judge set a hearing for Thursday. The Trump administration called the lawsuit a 'crass political stunt endangering American lives" in its official response on Wednesday. The military is now closer to engaging in law enforcement actions such as deportations, as Trump has promised in his crackdown. The Guard has the authority to temporarily detain people who attack officers, but any arrests must be made by law enforcement. The president posted on the Truth Social platform that the city 'would be burning to the ground' if he had not sent in the military. Some 2,000 National Guard soldiers are in Los Angeles, and are soon to be joined by 2,000 more along with about 700 Marines, Sherman said. Speaking in an interview with The Associated Press and ABC, Sherman initially said that National Guard troops had already temporarily detained civilians in the Los Angeles protests over immigration raids. He later said he based his comments on photos and footage he had seen that turned out not to be a representation of Guard members in Los Angeles. Police detained more than 20 people, mostly on curfew violations, on the first night of the curfew and used crowd-control projectiles to break up hundreds of protesters. But there were fewer clashes than on previous nights, and by daybreak, the downtown streets were bustling with residents walking dogs and commuters clutching coffee cups. Los Angeles police have made nearly 400 arrests and detentions since Saturday, the vast majority of which were for failing to leave the area at the request of law enforcement, according to the police department. There have been a handful of more serious charges, including for assault against police officers and for possession of a Molotov cocktail and a gun. Nine police officers have been hurt, mostly with minor injures. Some were transported to a hospital and released. Demonstrations have also spread to other cities nationwide, including Dallas and Austin in Texas, and Chicago and New York, where thousands rallied and more arrests were made. In New York City, police said they took 86 people into custody during protests in lower Manhattan that lasted into Wednesday morning. Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said the majority of demonstrators were peaceful. A 66-year-old woman in Chicago was injured when she was struck by a car during downtown protests Tuesday evening, police said. Video showed a car speeding down a street where people were protesting. In Texas, where police in Austin used chemical irritants to disperse several hundred demonstrators Monday, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott's office said Texas National Guard troops were 'on standby" in areas where demonstrations are planned. Guard members were sent to San Antonio, but Police Chief William McManus said he had not been told how many troops were deployed or their role ahead of planned protests Wednesday night and Saturday. Officers with the Texas Department of Public Safety said the Texas National Guard was present at a protest downtown. The protests began Friday after federal immigration raids arrested dozens of workers in Los Angeles. Protesters blocked a major freeway and set cars on fire over the weekend, and police responded with tear gas, rubber bullets and flash-bang grenades. Thousands of people have peacefully rallied outside City Hall and hundreds more protested outside a federal complex that includes a detention center where some immigrants are being held following workplace raids. ___ This story has been corrected. The commander of the troops deployed to Los Angeles initially told the AP that National Guard members had already detained some civilians. He later said his information was incorrect and Guard members have not detained civilians. This story also corrects a quote that was misattributed to Mayor Jessica Ancona of El Monte. It was said by Brenda Olmos, vice mayor of Paramount. ___
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17 hours ago
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Why Starmer's homelessness reform could see Britain overrun by rough sleepers
The 'tent city' on Park Lane, in the central reservation near Hyde Park Corner, comprises 23 tents, tables, office chairs, shopping trolleys and washing lines. A neatly stacked pile of bin bags lies to one side while Lime bikes have been discarded around the settlement. A handful of large white signs are stacked up, reading: 'I'm hungry, God bless.' Those living here suggest there is little difference between their circumstances and those of the thousands of rough sleepers across the country, who will be decriminalised under plans announced by Sir Keir Starmer this week. To tourists, residents and those working in the surrounding Mayfair streets, however, the scene might more aptly be described as illegal camping. 'It's not good at all, but we don't have a permanent place where we can wait for approval from City Hall [for housing],' says Mihai, 54, from Romania, the only inhabitant prepared to speak to The Telegraph, who refuses to give his surname. 'Would you like to live here?' He says he has lived at the site for two years, has indefinite leave to remain in the UK and works as a cleaner. He has also camped at Marble Arch and in Hyde Park. There were more people in the camp previously, he says, but they have gradually been found housing. A mile to the east, at Tottenham Court Road, Mel, 60, who also refuses to give his surname, lives in another encampment with his nephews Danny, 27, and Liam, 22, and their dogs, Cain and Sierra. Mel was born in west London and says he used to have three full-time jobs – in sales and advertising, as an estate agent and as a supervisor at a bowling alley – but has been living on the street for six years since he was kicked out of his council house over a dispute with a neighbour. 'It's not a choice for me living on the street,' he says. 'If it was, I wouldn't have been here for nearly seven years now.' He adds that Romanian migrants are more comfortable living this way. 'People from other places have a tent mentality,' he says. 'What bugs me is we're a first-world country, and these people don't have the understanding that when you come to a better country, you have to make yourself better. You can't just stand on the corner drinking beer and whistling at women. It's easy for them because they grew up in desolate countries.' The situation in central London encapsulates the complexity of legislating around homelessness. On Tuesday, the Government announced plans to decriminalise rough sleeping, continuing a Tory proposal from 2022 to repeal the 1824 Vagrancy Act. The Bill was originally brought in to deal with rising homelessness after the Napoleonic Wars and has long been considered out of date, with references to 'vagabonds' and 'rogues'. 'We are drawing a line under nearly two centuries of injustice towards some of the most vulnerable in society, who deserve dignity and support,' said Angela Rayner, the Deputy Prime Minister. 'No one should ever be criminalised simply for sleeping rough and, by scrapping this cruel and outdated law, we are making sure that can never happen again.' To ensure the police still have authority to combat antisocial behaviour, the Government promised to create new offences, including facilitating begging for gain and trespassing with the intention of committing a crime, both of which were previously included under the 1824 Act. Experts warn legislation against begging may yet rub up against the European Convention on Human Rights; in 2021, the court ruled that Switzerland had violated human rights when it fined a woman who had been begging. Homelessness is a global issue, of course, and there is a huge range of government responses to it. While Britain is moving to decriminalise rough sleeping, America has gone in the other direction. Last year, the US Supreme Court ruled that punishing rough sleepers was not a 'cruel and unusual punishment,', as prohibited by the Eighth Amendment. Homelessness has become a pressing problem in several American cities, most notoriously San Francisco. An estimated 771,000 Americans were homeless last year, more than any year on record. Since the ruling, at least 163 municipalities have passed rules banning camping. There are signs that policy is working. Last year, the California governor, Gavin Newsom, promised 'no more excuses' for the state with the highest 'unsheltered' rate in the country. Since encampments began to be cleared after the Supreme Court ruling, California's rate has stabilised. While, nationwide, homelessness increased by 18 per cent, in California it rose by just 3 per cent. In Fresno, California, members of the public can now report camps via an app. Rough sleepers could face fines of up to $1,000 or a year in prison, or they can ask to be taken to a shelter to discuss treatment or housing. When asked about whether the new rules were simply moving homeless people out of sight, Jerry Dyer, the city's Republican mayor and its former police chief, recently told The Economist: 'I'm sure there are people that have now chosen places that are less visible publicly, which is not a bad thing.' Some fear that the relaxing of rules in the UK will lead to the proliferation of rough sleeping seen in California prior to last year's Supreme Court ruling, in which Park Lane-style encampments spread across the country. 'San Francisco is the worst example but loads of these Left-wing-run cities in America have taken an approach of non-enforcement of laws around rough sleeping and petty crime,' says Fred de Fossard, the strategy director of the Prosperity Institute and a former Tory special adviser at the Cabinet Office, highlighting the absurdity of the UK taking such an approach when the United States is tacking in the opposite direction. 'Repealing the Vagrancy Act paves the way for [American levels of rough sleeping] here. This, in turn, will lead to a clamp-down in the future that will be 'more authoritarian than people are comfortable with and it will be entirely avoidable because we have taken a misguided, short-termist approach to these laws. This will fortify these encampments and make it harder for police to get rid of genuine criminals.' Certainly, those in charge of clearing encampments such as the one at Park Lane may wish police had similar powers to their US counterparts. The problem has been rumbling on for years. Last month, a court granted Transport for London (TfL), which owns the land, a possession order to remove the camp on Park Lane. A TfL spokesman said: 'We had to take enforcement action to regain possession of the site on two occasions last year; however, a number of people have returned with tents and other belongings.' David Spencer, the head of crime and justice at Policy Exchange, a think tank, and a former Met Police officer, says the situation at Park Lane encapsulates the difficulties facing those trying to disperse groups of rough sleepers, and the risks of removing their powers. 'Aggressive begging, rough sleeping and associated antisocial behaviour are things residents bring up all the time with the police,' he says. 'The reality is that they are issues which the police and local authorities are not able or willing to get to grips with. The police would never look at arrest and prosecution in the first instance, but what the Government is doing is removing the backstop, taking away almost any power the police has to deal with it. 'What we risk is a constant slide towards the degradation of our public realm, with government, police, authorities seeming to take a more permissive attitude to things like graffiti, begging, rough sleeping, fare dodging, which come up all the time with law-abiding people going about their lives,' he adds. 'People are sympathetic to those who find themselves in these situations, but we risk taking away the backstop that lets authorities do something about it. If we look at Park Lane, things have really got out of control. While some rough sleepers in central London beg, others manage to work, often in marginal gig-economy employment as delivery drivers or kitchen porters. Others choose to leave offered accommodation altogether. In June 2023, dozens of asylum seekers camped outside the accommodation they were offered in Pimlico, having balked at the prospect of sleeping four to a room. Signs by their camp read: 'This is a prison, not a hotel.' The Home Office stated that the accommodation was offered on a 'no-choice basis' and met 'all legal and contractual requirements.' In May 2024, Sadiq Khan pledged to end rough sleeping by 2030, and secured £17 million in central funding to do so. But if dealing with homeless people who want to find accommodation is difficult enough, what to do about those who – like the asylum seekers in Pimlico – prefer to sleep outside? Rough sleeping is only the most visible form of homelessness, which can also include living in temporary accommodation, sofa-surfing – sometimes called 'hidden homelessness' – and statutory homelessness, where a tenant has been served an eviction notice. The nature of rough sleeping can be difficult to quantify. According to the Ministry of Housing, which collates estimates from local authorities, there are around 2,000 rough sleepers in London, a figure that has more than doubled since the pandemic. Its data show that in that period, rough sleeping has risen across the country, in some areas by many multiples, including 1050 per cent in Charnwood, Leicestershire. Other sources put the figures much higher. According to the homelessness charity St Mungo's, there were 4,427 people recorded rough sleeping in London in the first quarter of 2025, an increase of 8 per cent on the same period last year. 'More people are becoming homeless and people are staying homeless for longer,' says Sean Palmer, the executive director of strategy and transformation at St Mungo's. 'It's getting more difficult to move people off of the streets, because there's not a supply of social housing, there's a block at the end of the system.' Rough sleeping has already been in effect decriminalised, with only five people sentenced for 'sleeping out' in England and Wales since 2017. Begging prosecutions have also fallen: the 160 sentences handed down for begging in 2024 was the lowest annual total on record, less than a fifth of the series high in 2018. But Palmer says the law can still have a deterrent effect on people seeking help: 'The Act as it is now isn't good for our clients, people suffering from homelessness and people rough sleeping. Sometimes it encourages them to hide more because they don't want to be criminalised and are less likely to receive the help and support they need to resolve their homelessness.' He says Mungo's clients come from a wide range of situations. 'It could be problems with the housing market, problems with money. A lot of people are bouncing around insecure accommodation and eventually they run out of goodwill and end up on the streets. Often our clients have backgrounds in the care system, sometimes in the military. Often people are leaving a government institution – they might be discharged from hospital, or be being moved on from the asylum system, or they might have left prison. 'I can't see how criminalising someone is helpful. We see the numbers of people coming out of the criminal justice system into homelessness. Feeding them back into the criminal justice system for being homeless, or feeding people who are homeless for other reasons back into the justice system, seems entirely counterproductive.' Proposed new offences target aggressive beggars and gangs, rather than individuals. The cautionary example of the US, however, shows what can happen when authorities have insufficient powers to disperse rough sleepers. The knottier issue at the heart of legislation is that many people don't think camping ought to be illegal and have great sympathy for those who find themselves homeless, even if they object to the sight of tent cities in some of London's most prestigious areas. The legal fudges reflect this Nimbyism. It also means that as a political issue, rough sleeping will not be moving along any time soon. Additional reporting by Ollie Corfe Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
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a day ago
- Yahoo
Ousted NC elections director led through chaos. Her replacement promises change
Karen Brinson Bell's departure from her post as North Carolina's top election official was hardly unexpected. For nearly a decade, lawmakers had sought to restructure the state's election apparatus to strip appointment power away from the governor — an office which Democrats have won in the last three elections despite Republicans maintaining strong majorities in the General Assembly. After five attempts were foiled by courts or voters, the sixth proved successful. The state's appellate courts allowed a new law to take effect transferring appointment power over the State Board of Elections away from the governor and toward the newly elected Republican auditor. So when the board's new Republican majority voted last month to replace Brinson Bell with Sam Hayes, a lawyer who had worked for the state's top lawmakers, it didn't come as a surprise to her. 'You know when you're in an appointed position that it can always come to an end,' Brinson Bell told The News & Observer in an interview. 'So I tried to treat each day of the job just like you're supposed to treat your life: you never know if you'll get another day, so just do with it what you can while you can.' With Brinson Bell gone and the board's partisan majority flipped for the first time in nearly a decade, major changes are likely coming to the way the state runs its elections. Procedures surrounding voter registration and military and overseas voting are in question. So is the agency's independence. And all of this comes on the heels of a dramatic six-month legal battle over the results of the 2024 state Supreme Court election. Hayes has promised change for the oft-embattled agency, but says it will not come at the expense of voters. 'We will focus not only on access to voting for eligible voters, but also on election integrity and making sure that voters trust the system. These two goals are not mutually exclusive,' he said in an email to The N&O. 'We can have secure elections that are also accessible to any eligible voter who wants to cast a ballot.' Brinson Bell's unceremonious ousting last month — in which the board refused to allow her to give a farewell speech — was not the cap she had envisioned to her 19-year career in elections. 'I wanted to give recognition to an incredible group of people at the state agency and across the state who really pulled off some very remarkable, unprecedented things and give that recognition as it was due,' she said about that moment. 'I think not only did it disrespect me, it disrespected the state staff and all 100 counties.' The vote came shortly after the state's Republican-dominated Court of Appeals allowed Senate Bill 382 — a wide-ranging power shift bill — to take effect. The bill stripped the governor of his power to appoint a majority of members to the State Board of Elections — a practice which has been in place for over a century. Instead, that power was given to the state auditor, Dave Boliek, the first Republican to win the office in 16 years. A trial court had ruled that the law was unconstitutional, but the appeals court reversed that ruling in an unsigned order that did not include the reasoning for the judges' decision. Within a week of that order, the new board had taken office and voted to remove Brinson Bell as one of its first actions. It was a dramatic end to a tenure that had already been far from ordinary. During her six years as director of the State Board of Elections, Brinson Bell contended with COVID, Hurricane Helene and an unprecedented effort to overturn the results of a Supreme Court election. Each disruption to the normal election process brought increased scrutiny to the board and to Brinson Bell herself, who Republican lawmakers frequently lambasted on social media or in hearings at the legislature. While state lawmakers had voiced concerns with the board before, hostilities reached a tipping point in 2020, Brinson Bell said. As President Donald Trump spread false claims of voter fraud nationwide, North Carolina dealt with its own challenges to voting. Prior to the election, an advocacy group had sued the elections board over its mail-in voting rules, arguing that voters needed more opportunities to get their ballots in given the COVID-19 pandemic. The board (which at the time had three Democrats and two Republicans) unanimously agreed to a settlement with the group that allowed the state to accept mail-in ballots up to nine days after the election and gave voters more opportunities to fix issues with their ballots. To this day, state lawmakers refer to this as a 'collusive settlement' and list it as one of the primary reasons the board needed to be changed. 'It's unfortunate, because it's sowing distrust in the system that obviously, fairly and securely got them elected — and they didn't question their results,' Brinson Bell said. 'So why are we questioning the results of other contests that were carried out the exact same way?' Only four years after organizing voting in a pandemic, Brinson Bell had to organize voting in the wake of a deadly hurricane that ravaged Western North Carolina. The storm was personal for Brinson Bell, who lived in the area for 20 years. 'I knew the creeks and the hollers and the ridge lines that were being affected, and I knew a lot of the people being affected,' she said. Shortly after the storm hit, the board approved a variety of rule changes to make voting easier for mountain residents — all of which were later adopted by the legislature. Despite Helene, voters in Western North Carolina actually outpaced the rest of the state in turnout during early voting. The board's response to Helene won the agency a national Clearinghouse Award from the U.S. Election Assistance Commission — its fourth such award during Brinson Bell's tenure. But shortly after a national election in the wake of a massive hurricane, Brinson Bell had one more unexpected complication to deal with, one that would not be resolved until the very day the board voted to oust her. After all outstanding mail-in and provisional ballots from the 2024 election were counted, Republican Supreme Court candidate Jefferson Griffin came in 734 votes behind Democratic incumbent Allison Riggs. The state proceeded to two recounts, which are standard procedure for a close election such as this one. But both affirmed the result. Rather than ending there, a novel and chaotic legal battle erupted. Griffin, alongside the NC GOP, challenged the validity of over 65,000 ballots cast in the election. Targeting a variety of longstanding voting and registration practices, Griffin sought to toss out tens of thousands of votes — potentially flipping the race in his favor. After six months of courtroom fights, Griffin conceded the race after a federal judge appointed by Trump decisively ruled against him. His concession came just as the election board's new Republican majority prepared to vote on replacing Brinson Bell. She alluded to the challenge in her farewell message, telling the attendees who stuck around after the board adjourned that she hoped election workers could be 'rewarded for their work, rather than vilified by those who don't like the outcome.' 'I hope we return to a time when those who lost elections concede defeat rather than trying to tear down the entire election system and erode voter confidence,' she continued. 'And I hope we recognize that the conduct of elections is the very core of our democracy.' Since taking over as director last month, Hayes has mostly worked behind the scenes. The new board has yet to meet since it voted to select him as director, and Hayes has not issued any press releases — other than the one announcing his hire. But changes are sure to come to the state's election processes under his leadership. While Griffin's effort to overturn his election loss is dead, the board is working to implement changes to the state's election policies based on the arguments he made. Griffin's main challenge argued that over 60,000 voters who didn't have a driver's license or Social Security number in the state's registration database should have their votes thrown out. Those identification numbers are required by a federal law called the Help America Vote Act, which includes exceptions for voters who do not possess either form of identification. The Trump administration sued over the issue late last month, asking a judge to order the state to fix the discrepancy within 30 days and cancel the registrations of any voter who does not provide the missing identifications. Hayes said he plans to work with the administration to address the problem. 'We don't need a lawsuit to tell us what's right,' he said. Voters with missing identification numbers will receive a mailing from the board informing them of how to fix it, Hayes said. If they don't respond, they will be contacted by phone and email. Instead of outright canceling the registrations of voters who don't answer at that point, Hayes said the voters would be flagged in the system to provide the missing information the next time they show up to vote. While Brinson Bell agreed that earlier registration practices were unclear pertaining to the HAVA numbers, she said Griffin's challenge of the election results was unnecessary and damaged trust in elections. 'It conveys such inaccurate information (and) a lack of understanding,' she said about the challenges. 'Just by filing it, you're sowing those seeds of distrust.' But Hayes shifted blame to the former board. 'I think failing to collect the information required by HAVA undermined trust in the 2024 election results,' he said. Collecting that information won't be the only change under Hayes. Despite being exempt from the state's voter ID law in the past, military and overseas voters will have to provide identification in future elections to have their votes counted in state and local races. This was another issue Griffin had sued over, though he only challenged voters registered in Democratic-leaning counties for this part of his complaint. While his effort to have those ballots canceled was unsuccessful, courts agreed with him that these voters should be subject to the ID requirement going forward. Changes could also come from the state legislature through the budget process. The House's budget proposal would add seven new employees to the State Board of Elections who would be exempt from the State Human Resources Act — essentially making them political appointees. Brinson Bell said this move could chip away at the agency's independence. 'You're losing the established public servant who works for the state, who works for the voters,' she said. ' And now inserting someone or individuals who — that's not who they answer to — they answer to that person who appoints them.' Hayes confirmed that he requested this change be added to the House budget, saying it would give him staffing flexibility. It isn't the only staffing change he's made. Shortly after taking office, Hayes hired Brian LiVecchi as his chief of staff — a position that had not previously existed in the agency. LiVecchi previously served as chief of staff to former Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson. He resigned in the midst of Robinson's gubernatorial campaign after bombshell reporting from CNN tied Robinson to a series of sexually explicit and disturbing online comments. Hayes said that most other agencies have a chief of staff and that he chose LiVecchi because he has a 'wealth of experience in election law and administration that will be of great benefit to the agency.' Amid this change, an audit is likely coming. Hayes said he asked Boliek — who appointed the board's members — to conduct a performance audit of the agency. 'It will help us determine where we need to spend energy and resources in the future to ensure we are efficiently fulfilling the many duties and responsibilities of this agency and providing the best possible service to voters, candidates, and the 100 county boards of elections,' Hayes said. As for Brinson Bell, she plans to continue working on elections — though she isn't sure exactly how, yet. Her husband calls her 'the busiest unemployed person he's ever met,' she said, as she continues to connect with election directors across the country and share advice on best practices. To her successor, Brinson Bell also has one piece of advice as he assumes the role of elections director for one of the country's most consequential swing states. 'He should never forget that he is now the caretaker of democracy,' she said. 'And that's a pretty big charge.'
