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Yahoo
4 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
A moral moment for Montana: Medicaid cuts considered in the U.S. Senate
Rally attendees hold signs at a rally in support of reauthorizing Medicaid expansion at the Montana State Capitol on Jan. 15, 2025. (Micah Drew/Daily Montanan) Last week, by a single vote, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the 'One Big, Beautiful Bill Act.' This is sweeping reconciliation bill that promises to reshape the American social safety net. At the heart of this legislation are more than $700 billion in cuts to Medicaid, a program that serves as a lifeline for tens of thousands of Montanans with disabilities. Medicaid pays for some of the most basic services many people with disabilities need to get by each day, like the basic personal care supports someone with a physical disability may need to get out of bed in the morning, the more intensive skill training and safety supervision someone with an intellectual disability may need to learn to live more independently, and it pays for medication to maintain a person's mental health and more intensive community supports when they have mental health emergency. For Montanans with disabilities, this bill is not just a policy shift – it's a direct threat to our lives. The bill imposes new administrative hurdles, including requiring Medicaid recipients to reverify their eligibility twice a year. For people with disabilities – many of whom already navigate complex bureaucracies – this change increases the risk of losing coverage due to paperwork errors or missed deadlines. Here in Montana, we know this isn't a mere possibility, it was our reality. In 2023 and 2024, Montana required Medicaid recipients to submit paperwork to verify their continued eligibility. When Montanans tried to follow the rules to verify their eligibility, they found the state's phone lines were left unanswered and many people were kicked off for administrative reasons without ever looking at their clinical need. Though the bill includes exemptions, these are often poorly implemented. In practice, people are misclassified, denied exemptions, or fall through the cracks due to inaccessible systems. People with legitimate disabilities are stripped of their health care and there is a big administrative burden on the individual and the state eligibility system to sort through wrongful denials and terminations. When Arkansas implemented work requirements in 2018 similar to the work requirements in the new federal reconciliation bill, more than 18,000 people lost coverage, many of them wrongfully, and there was no meaningful impact on employment. At Disability Rights Montana, we have been here for 50 years serving the disability community and we hear from people every day who rely on Medicaid to live independently, to work, to go to school, and to participate in their communities. These are veterans with PTSD, children with autism, adults with spinal cord injuries, and seniors with dementia. Defunding disability services is a major step backwards in history to a time when people with disabilities were excluded from society and warehoused in poor institutional conditions. This bill sends a clear message to people with disabilities that their lives are not as valuable as tax cuts for the rich. Even if you don't have a disability or don't use Medicaid, you will feel the cuts. It is well known in health care circles that even Montanans who don't rely on Medicaid for their insurance coverage will feel the effects of this bill, especially in rural communities. For example, this year the state legislature heard from hospital administrators and healthcare providers who explained the impact Medicaid expansion has had on our state. It has allowed rural hospitals to add or expand specialty services like orthopedic surgery and mental health care. Without this funding, these services may disappear and that will affect all patients, not just those who are covered by Medicaid. Hospitals and other health care providers serve the rich and poor alike. When the money for poor people goes away, so do the therapists, nurses, and doctors that money paid for. If you lose funding to cover portions of health care professionals' salaries, those positions go away completely because you can't hire 60% of a doctor in a rural hospital. The bill is now before the Senate. Given the slim political margins there, Sens. Daines and Sheehy could cast deciding votes. Budgets are moral documents. Just a couple months ago, the state legislature decided the moral choice was to maintain a robust Medicaid program for Montana. Now Senators Daines and Sheehy must answer the same moral question. What will they do?
Yahoo
21-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
U.S. Census: Gallatin, Flathead County add most residents in Montana
The Flathead County Courthouse in Kalispell, pictured on Dec. 31, 2024. (Micah Drew, Daily Montanan) Gallatin and Flathead were the fastest growing counties in Montana between 2023 and 2024, while the city of Kalispell has grown nearly 25% since 2020, adding more residents than any Montana city, according to the latest population growth data from the U.S. Census The federal government last week released the latest population counts for the nation's more than 3,000 counties, as well as all incorporated cities and towns. In Montana, 32 of the state's 56 counties saw a population increase, concentrated in the state's western counties, while the mostly eastern counties that saw population declines did so by just over a thousand cumulative residents. As a whole, Montana added 5,931 new residents between July 1, 2023 and July 1, 2024, for a total state population of 1,137,233. The state's growth rate of .52% was slower than the national growth rate of 1%, partly due to a last-in-the-nation level of international migration, and far lower than in recent years. Between 2020 and 2021, Montana added a whopping 19,000 new residents. The United States has added 3,304,757 people between 2023 and 2024. In the last release of census data, Gallatin and Flathead counties added 1,055 and 1,032 new residents, respectively, the first time since the population boom began in 2020 Flathead County hasn't led in raw numbers. But the northwest county had a higher rate of change at .91% compared to Gallatin's .84%. Broadwater County had the highest percentage population increase in the last year, 2.96%, and over the last four years, with 22.2%, but the county's 8,302 residents makes it just the 27th most inhabited in Montana. Since 2020, however, Flathead County has led the state in sheer number of additional residents, adding more than 10,100 to Gallatin's just over 8,000 and Yellowstone County's 6,800. Meanwhile, Kalispell, the county seat of the Flathead, added 1,125 new residents between 2023 and 2024 for a population of 31,296, a nearly 4% increase stemming from the city's annexation of new developments and migration into the area. Bozeman added the second most residents, 788, followed by Billings (686), Missoula (557) and Helena (360). Of the state's most populous cities, Great Falls, Havre and Sidney all lost residents. Kalispell's growth is even more drastic over the last four years. Between 2020 and 2024, the city added 6,218 new residents, a 24.8% increase that ranked the city 39th in the nation for growth among cities with more than 20,000 residents. Helena, which grew by 8.2%, and Bozeman, which grew by 8.1%, ranked in the 260s. Kalispell City Manager Doug Russell said seeing the actual numbers isn't a big surprise for the people who have been working to accommodate the rising population. 'We've experienced that large growth in person over the years,' Russel said. Russell said that planning for increased growth is key to keeping city services and infrastructure at a level to handle the demands of a rapidly growing population. 'Our public works department has done a really great job updating facilities plans on a routine basis and updating growth models to to anticipate where we'll need to prioritize infrastructure projects,' Russel said. Among the major infrastructure projects Kalispell has prioritized in recent years are construction of a new water tower to bolster the municipal water storage and working with the state transportation department to address potential bottlenecks along major transit corridors, such as W. Reserve Drive, along the city's north end. Russell said the city is currently updating its land use policy, which will allow city officials to prepare for the next round of anticipated growth. If Kalispell's growth trend continues, it could soon overtake Helena and Butte-Silver Bow in size. Just north of Kalispell, Whitefish has also grown by nearly 20% since 2020, adding 1,481 residents, while nearby Polson and Columbia Falls have grown 9.6% and 7.4%. Belgrade, a suburb of Bozeman, one of the state's least affordable cities, is the only other large city in Montana to exceed 20% growth, adding 2,265 residents since 2020. On the other end of the spectrum, Montana's smallest incorporated town, Ismay, has stayed exactly the same, with 21 residents since 2020, according to Census data. A call placed to the only publicly listed phone number in Ismay, the Ismay Community Church, did not get a response on Tuesday to verify the town's 21 residents. Two other incorporated towns in Montana showed flat growth rates since 2020, both on the Hi-Line in Phillips County — Dodson, which increased from 126 residents to 127 in 2023, but then returned to 126 in 2024, and Malta, which has fluctuated around 1,853 residents for several years. Nationally, of the 10 fastest growing cities in the country, six are in Texas, and one each is in Florida, Utah, South Carolina and North Carolina. Forney, Texas, added 15,079 residents between 2020 and 2024, a 62.2% increase. The nation's fastest shrinking city was Big Spring, Texas, which lost 14% of its population. The U.S. Census Bureau data breaks out changes to county population by natural change — the difference due to birth rates and death rates — and net migration into and out of a county. While Flathead and Gallatin counties each grew by roughly the same 1,000 residents between 2023 and 2024, they did so in vastly different ways. A quarter of Gallatin County's increase was due to a younger population. The county's birth rate was 1,141 people while only 686 individuals died during the year of record. Meanwhile Flathead, Missoula, and Yellowstone counties had almost equal numbers of births and deaths in their communities, trends that extend back to 2020. Flathead County's primary source of growth is new residents moving to the county. Ninety-nine percent of new residents between 2020 and 2024 relocated to the area, while just three-quarters of new Gallatin County residents did. Both on the eastern side of the state, Montana's two least populous counties, Treasure and Petroleum, with 739 and 535 residents respectively, saw the largest population percentage decline in residents. Petroleum lost 18 residents in 2024, six from a higher death rate than birth rate, and 12 who moved out of the county. Treasure County dropped by 28 residents, gaining two from natural change, but losing 30 to relocation. The state's largest county, Yellowstone, with 171,583 residents, is more populous than the state's 36 least inhabited combined.
Yahoo
20-05-2025
- Yahoo
Plow crews reach Logan Pass in Glacier National Park
A plow sits in a frozen Logan Pass parking lot in Glacier National park on May 19, 2025. (Micah Drew/Daily Montanan) Midway through May, the top of Glacier National Park's Logan Pass was shrouded in white. Monday morning, thin clouds obscured the prominent peaks that guard the Continental Divide, rime ice coated the treetops visible above the snowpack, and snow drifts piled up to the roof of the visitor's center. On top of a winter's worth of compacted snow sat a fresh inch or so of powder from the weekend's storm. These are the current conditions at the top of the Going-to-the-Sun Road, the iconic alpine highway that bisects the park and during the summer will see hundreds of thousands of visitors a month. But on Monday, the only people at the pass were a gaggle of media members, four avalanche forecasters, heavy equipment operators and Glacier's communications team. 'People are just waiting breathlessly for this road to open,' Glacier spokesperson Gina Icenoggle told the Daily Montanan. 'Once the road is plowed, the side rails are installed, the visitor center is ready and potable water is available up here, we'll open it up.' But that day could be a ways off. Park officials always refrain from giving an estimated opening date for the Sun Road, due to the variability of late spring conditions at higher elevations. But data from the previous 92 years since the road opened tells a story of opening dates trending slightly later in the summer. The average opening date for vehicles to traverse the length of the 50-mile scenic corridor is June 11, but that has trended later in recent decades. The average opening date since 2000 has been June 21, while since 2010 it has been closer to June 26 — due to three mid-July openings, one of which occurred due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Going-to-the-Sun Road hasn't opened to vehicles in May since 2005. The monumental task of preparing the serpentine highway for visitors usually begins in March, when snow in the lower valleys begins to melt. On the west side of the Park, a crew of around a dozen, including avalanche forecasters and heavy equipment operators, plow, scoop and dump thousands of tons of snow each day. Typically, the process begins with a dozer to cut down on the snowpack until it's only a few feet from the road bed. Rotary snow plows do the bulk of the work at that point, but at certain parts of the road it becomes an all-hands-on-deck operation. The Big Drift, a one-mile stretch just east of Logan Pass, is known for accumulating up to 80 feet of snow throughout the winter and requires a fleet of excavators and bobcats to punch through. Because of the steep cliffside nature of the Going-to-the-Sun Road, avalanches are common throughout the spring and early summer, occasionally requiring road crews to double back to stretches of road they've previously cleared. The work can be incredibly dangerous. In 1953, a massive avalanche tumbled down the mountainside into one of the road crews, killing two members, including the foreman, George Beaton. 'It's a lot safer than it used to be,' said Brian Paul, the park's road supervisor, due to a team of avalanche forecasters that are part of the crew. Four avalanche forecasters work in shifts to provide the most accurate data for the road crews, checking overnight temperatures and weather patterns, digging snow pits, and monitoring snowpack along the mountain ridges above the highway. Two forecasters work for the National Park Service, and two are employed by the U. S. Geological Survey. Every morning, the forecasters on duty will start working around 4:30 to look at what the weather did overnight. They'll gather data from nearby weather stations and models for the day and put out an internal forecast for park personnel. At 6 a.m., the forecasters will brief the road crew on the day's conditions, including what parts of the road might be avalanche prone. 'It's been more of a typical avalanche season year on the Sun Road,' said Erich Peitzch, a USGS snow scientist who manages the park service's avalanche program and has been forecasting in Glacier since 2007. 'We usually get, at some point, a late season snow storm where, you know, it'll put more avalanche debris on the road.' During the weekend, new snow triggered a slide on the west side of the Park, shoving 12 feet of debris across the road — a 'pretty small avalanche' by Glacier standards, Peitzch said. 'For now, things are relatively stable, but we're still in the mountains, and the road still passes through dozens of avalanche chutes. And the road is what we call a terrain trap — snow will just pile up when an avalanche comes down and it can get pretty deep.' After road crews finish clearing snow, and debris, off the road, a series of guardrails are installed along the outer edge of the highway. Eventually, water will flow back to the visitor's center, the bathrooms will be cleaned and ready and the Park will accept cars along the full length of Going-to-the-Sun Road. Until then, hikers and bikers are allowed on both the east and west side of Going-to-the-Sun Road past the marked vehicle closures. Hiker/Biker closures are in place on weekdays until 4 p.m., after which visitors can continue up the road until reaching the avalanche hazard closure. Going past the avalanche closures is punishable by a $5,000 fine and as long as six months in jail. The latest conditions for the road can be viewed online. And while no one can say for certain when visitors will be able to drive up to Logan Pass this summer, park officials assure the public it will be as soon as safely possible. 'So many surrounding businesses and the local economy counts on this road being open,' Icenoggle said. 'When it's go time, it's go time.'
Yahoo
19-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Judge extends pause on ‘bathroom bill' with preliminary injunction
A sign outside one of the bathrooms in the Montana State Capitol. House Bill 121 would restrict access to bathrooms based strictly on biological sex. (Micah Drew/ Daily Montanan) A district court judge in Missoula extended a pause on state officials from enforcing a new Montana law restricting access to public restrooms, changing rooms and sleeping spaces based on an individual's sex assigned at birth. Missoula District Court Judge Shane Vannatta's 51-page ruling Friday delivered a preliminary injunction blocking House Bill 121 from being enforced. Vannatta last month issued a temporary restraining order on the bill. 'This ruling reaffirms the truth about bathroom bans: they're motivated by prejudice, and they don't protect anyone,' said Robin Turner, Montana staff attorney at Legal Voice working with the plaintiffs, said in a statement. 'HB 121 undermines Montana's strong constitutional protections against government overreach and subjects people to unacceptable privacy violations. Transgender people are vulnerable to violence in restrooms, and they deserve protection instead of persecution.' HB 121, sponsored by Billings Republican Rep. Kerri Seekins-Crowe, applies to all public facilities and those that receive public funding, including correctional centers, juvenile detention facilities, local domestic violence programs, public buildings and public schools. It includes leased public spaces and covers libraries, museums, hospitals, and university buildings, and it requires covered entities to 'take reasonable steps' to keep members of the opposite sex out. In the suit, plaintiffs, including transgender and intersex Montanans, argue HB 121 violates their rights under the state constitution, including 'the rights to equal protection, privacy, to pursue life's basic necessities, and due process.' Attorneys for the State of Montana argued that the law is intended to provide additional protection and privacy for women and girls in these spaces from biological males. 'Today, we're maintaining equal opportunity for all Americans, while also protecting women and girls and their right to safe and separate facilities and activities,' Gianforte said in a statement when he signed HB 121 in March. 'Because we think it's pretty simple. A man shouldn't be in a women's restroom. Shouldn't be in a women's shower room. And shouldn't be housed in a women's prison.' In the court ruling, Vannatta says that the state's argument that the law is not discriminatory against transgender people — because the definitions of 'sex,' 'male,' and 'female' apply to all Montanans — is 'disingenuous.' The plaintiffs in court documents argued that transgender Montanans have been subjected to repeated unequal treatment by the state, pointing to five separate bills passed by the Montana Legislature over the last three sessions that target transgender individuals. 'Transgender Montanans have been subjected to such a history of purposeful unequal treatment and have been relegated to such a position of political powerlessness as to command extraordinary protection.' The court order also says that the state has so far failed to support its arguments that the law helps protect women by not providing evidence of 'how female privacy and safety are threatened by trans females.' 'In addition, the State does not provide evidence of how the safety of trans females may be implicated by requiring trans females to use men's restrooms. The State does not provide evidence of how cis female privacy and safety may be implicated by requiring trans males to use the women's restrooms,' according to the order. The state can appeal the decision to the Montana Supreme Court. Meanwhile, the preliminary injunction will remain in place until the court rules on the complaint. The decision follows another last week by a Missoula County District Court judge that permanently struck down a law from the 2023 Legislature that sought to ban gender-affirming healthcare for transgender youth.
Yahoo
06-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
GOP majority, governor had few victories in push to overhaul judicial system
The door to the old Supreme Court Chamber at the Montana Capitol. (Micah Drew/Daily Montanan) In the final hours of Montana's 2025 Legislative session, a long, drawn-out war over whether to allow the state's highest elected judges to run with partisan affiliation had its final battle. Judicial reform was a stated priority for the GOP-dominated Legislature this session, an idea backed by Gov. Greg Gianforte. In particular, he sought to have state Supreme Court justices elected on a partisan basis, instead of the current, nonpartisan elections. Many Republicans said a party affiliation would offer voters transparency to better understand the candidates on the ballot, while opponents of the idea said politicizing the court system would lead hurt a justice's impartiality. Even recently elected Montana Supreme Court Chief Justice Cory Swanson, a more conservative member of the state's highest bench, warned lawmakers against making the judiciary partisan. Lawmakers seemed to take Swanson's words to heart, killing a half-dozen bills that proposed different ways to bring about the partisan change to the judiciary branch. But during the last two weeks of the session, Gianforte remained optimistic, telling the press repeatedly that there was 'still time.' On the morning of April 30, the last day of the session, during a round of votes on a few final pieces of legislation, House Minority Leader Katie Sullivan, D-Missoula, received a text. And then another. The governor's office, a lobbyist told her, was planning to attach an amendment to House Bill 710, a bill titled 'Generally Revise Laws Related to the Judiciary,' that would have made Supreme Court races partisan. The governor's office did not respond to requests for comment on this story. However, in Montana, a governor can make a suggestion to a bill with an amendatory veto, meaning it's a suggestion until it's approved by the state House and Senate. Sullivan said she never saw the specific amendment — though a previously published gubernatorial amendment to another bill would have allowed Supreme Court candidates run with a partisan affiliation — but she confirmed the governor's office was working on a similar amendment. The amendatory veto would have dropped the drastic and much debated issue in the closing moments of a long Legislature that had been in session nearly constantly since Jan. 2. And she wasn't going to have it. 'I was going to leave,' she told the Daily Montanan. Using her own legislative power, Sullivan sent word back that if the governor proposed the change, she was ready to stand up and make the motion to sine die, adjourning the Legislature on the spot. If the Legislature adjourned right then and there, it would have ended the process of reforming the judiciary – and halted several other key bills Republicans supported. One of the few bills left for the chamber to vote on included final approval of one of the major property tax bills, which gave Sullivan additional leverage in her threat to leave. With 42 Democrats, she only needed nine Republicans who wanted to end the session, and 39 had opposed the property tax bill. She could tank that bill to keep partisan elections at bay. There still would have been a property tax relief bill — another one had already passed — but the bills were linked and Sullivan said it would have created difficulties in the implementation. It was the 'last thing I wanted to do,' she told the Daily Montanan. But 'something as explosive as that issue was all session… why do it in a governor's amendment at the end unless you're trying to play games and cause chaos?' Ultimately, through discussions with other legislators including Rep. Llew Jones, R-Conrad, the architect behind the property tax bill and close legislative ally of Gianforte, the governor's amendment never materialized. The Legislature adjourned hours later, and in 2026, an open seat for the Montana Supreme Court will be decided in a nonpartisan election — even though some politicians question that. 'We have nonpartisan races in Montana in name only,' Gianforte said during an April 17 press conference. 'We should call a spade a spade, and attribute them to the party from which they come.' The last-minute attempt to implement changes to the judicial system was 'super irritating' to Sullivan. 'How many times do we have to vote on the same bill?' she said. 'It was a fitting end for a session of playing whack-a-mole with partisan judges and it was my last whack-a-mole moment that was about to come in at the last minute.' During the interim, the Senate Special Select Committee on Judicial Oversight and Reform requested nearly 30 bill drafts related to changing the judicial branch, including one, Senate Bill 42, which would have required judges at every level to run with partisan affiliation. During the session's 85 days, an additional four bills hit the floor with various versions of partisan elections, along with adjacent bills allowing political parties to fund judicial candidates and allow candidates to take part in political events. But among the 150 lawmakers, the appetite for injecting additional politics into the court system wasn't there — at least not for a majority of legislators. Lawmakers voted against all five bills directly changing how judges are elected — some voted down in the House, others by the Senate. In fact, from the original 27 bills that came from the interim committee, only a handful were sent to the governor's desk. 'I'll say this, what we do have is a great foundation for reform,' Senate Majority Leader Tom McGillvray, R-Billings, who served on the committee, told reporters after the session adjourned. 'I think that judicial reform is critical, continuously. It's important for our judges to have accountability. It's important for preventative transparency, and what we did this session helps start that process.' Among the bills that passed was Senate Bill 40, which requires that any closed meetings involving judicial deliberations be recorded and made public once a case is finalized; Senate Bill 41, which ensures that when a district court judge is substituted from a case, the process for replacing them is randomized; and Senate Bill 45, which establishes a judicial performance commission that will evaluate justices and give the public more insight into their effectiveness. 'You all know, when it comes to voting for judges, it is very difficult to know who they are, what their track record is, and how they rule on the bench. This bill will give greater transparency to that,' McGillvray said. Another win for the GOP majority was passage of House Bill 39, which allows political parties to donate to judicial candidates, offering at least a little bit of partisanship into elections. 'I think we had a good session on judicial reform,' McGillvray said. 'We're undaunted in our efforts to continue that, and we will do so next session.'
