Montana U.S. Sen. Jon Tester is asking President Joe Biden not to seek re-election.
Tester, who made the announcement in a press release Thursday evening, said it has become clear that Biden should end his campaign.
“Montanans have put their trust in me to do what is right and it is a responsibility I take seriously,” Tester said. “I have worked with President Biden when it has made Montana stronger, and I’ve never been afraid to stand up to him when he is wrong. And while I appreciate his commitment to public service and our country, I believe President Biden should not seek re-election to another term.”
Tester’s announcement comes on the night Donald Trump accepts the Republican nomination for president. Trump won 56.9% of the Montana vote in 2020, and 55.6% in 2016. To prevail in his race against Republican challenger Tim Sheehy, Tester is going to have to share tens of thousands of voters with the former president.
Tester is considered one of the most vulnerable Democratic senators seeking re-election this year, but today he became one of only two to publicly call on Biden to end his campaign. Sen. Peter Welch of Vermont did so July 10. Privately, Democratic congressional leaders have told Biden his candidacy could cost them a chance at a majority in both chambers, according to the Washington Post and several other media reports.
Top-ballot Democrats in Montana have long had to outperform their party’s presidential candidate to win. In 2012, Tester drew 34,000 more votes than incumbent Democratic President Barack Obama to prevail in a three-way race with Republican Denny Rehberg and Libertarian Dan Cox. Tester won 48.7% of the vote, outperforming Obama by 7 percentage points.
But voters who choose both Democrats and Republicans on a so-called split ticket are becoming increasingly rare, Carroll College political science professor Jeremy Johnson told Montana Free Press Last week.
“I have worked with President Biden when it has made Montana stronger, and I’ve never been afraid to stand up to him when he is wrong. And while I appreciate his commitment to public service and our country, I believe President Biden should not seek re-election to another term.”
Montana U.S. Sen. Jon Tester
After President Biden proved frail and slow to respond during a June 27 presidential debate with Trump, Tester began showing doubt that he thought Biden could win the race, initially saying that he would collaborate as a senator with whichever candidate won the presidency if and when it made sense for Montana.
Bill Clinton was the last Democratic presidential candidate to win Montana, in 1992, with less than 40% of the vote, a feat made possible by the popularity of third-party candidate H. Ross Perot.
Tester has a substantial fundraising advantage over Sheehy. Tester has raised $43.7 million to Sheehy’s $13.7 million. Sheehy’s total includes $2.6 million the candidate contributed to his own campaign.
Campaign cash doesn’t necessarily translate to votes. In Montana’s 2020 Senate race, Republican incumbent Steve Daines captured 61,000 more votes than Democratic challenger Steve Bullock, who had twice been elected Montana governor. Bullock not only outraised Daines by $16 million, but he also outspent the incumbent by $14.4 million. Daines won 55% of the vote to Bullock’s 45%.
Future in doubt for Kalispell shelter amid neighborhood complaints
The city of Kalispell is considering amending or revoking the permit for the area’s only low-barrier homeless shelter following a rash of complaints from area residents about how it has impacted their neighborhood.
The Kalispell City Council has been grappling with complaints about the Flathead Warming Center on North Meridian Road over the last few weeks, and shelter officials will have the chance to respond to those concerns next month. Opponents of the shelter in its current location point to an increase in crime in the area since it opened in 2020, as well as strewn trash, drug paraphernalia and more. But proponents say the warming center shouldn’t be blamed for the Flathead Valley’s homelessness crisis, which has grown amid a loss of services and a spike in home and rent prices.
The Flathead Warming Center opened in late 2019 as a low-barrier shelter near downtown Kalispell. (Many shelters require people staying there not to be using drugs or have a criminal background, but a low-barrier shelter does not have those requirements.) It is open nightly from October until April. When the shelter first opened it had 20 beds, but today it has 50. Executive director Tonya Horn said those beds are full almost every night, and the shelter often has to turn people away.
“This was supposed to be for Kalispell locals, but it’s grown into something very different.”
Kalispell City Council President Chad Graham
But since the shelter opened at its current location in 2020, there have been a number of complaints about the facility and its impact on the surrounding area. In recent months, Kalispell City Council President Chad Graham and others have raised those issues during meetings and have accused the warming center of not helping alleviate the impacts. Graham said he’s heard from constituents who have found human waste and drug paraphernalia in their neighborhood. He also said the warming center is attracting more homeless people to the area.
“This is not what I signed up for,” Graham said of his past support for the conditional use permit for the shelter during a recent meeting. “This was supposed to be for Kalispell locals, but it’s grown into something very different.”
It’s not the first time the warming center has been blamed for the area’s increasing homelessness. In 2023, the Flathead County Board of Commissioners wrote an open letter to the community encouraging it to stop enabling the “homeless lifestyle” and said that people from other communities were coming to Kalispell because of the center’s services. But Horn said there is simply no evidence that homeless people are coming to Kalispell from elsewhere because of the warming center. According to a survey of those who have stayed at the shelter, Horn said, 94% of people there have either lived in the Flathead Valley for a year or more or have some connection to the area (either a job or family who live in the area).
Horn said she believes the increase in homelessness in the area can be directly attributed to the loss of mental health services and skyrocketing home and rent prices.
“The idea that if you don’t serve the homeless population they’ll just go away is based on the false premise that these people are not from here,” she told Montana Free Press.
Regardless of where the people are coming from, some members of the city council have said it needs to address the neighbors’ complaints, which is why it’s considering changes to the warming center’s permit.
“The idea that if you don’t serve the homeless population they’ll just go away is based on the false premise that these people are not from here.”
Warming center executive director Tonya Horn
During a council meeting in May, City Manager Doug Russell presented stats showing that the number of calls for service in the warming center area (a half-mile radius of the address) to deal with anything from trespassing to criminal mischief has increased by 90.5% between the three years the facility has been open and the three years before it was open; citywide calls during that time have increased 51%.
But City Councilor Ryan Hunter said it was inappropriate to blame the warming center for all of the increase in crime in the area and that closing the facility would only make the issue worse. He encouraged city officials to work with the warming center and other area non-profits to address the root causes of homelessness.
“The problems we have are much bigger than the warming center,” he said during a recent city council meeting. “It’s unrealistic to think they can solve this all by themselves.”
Warming center officials will have a chance to defend the shelter during a hearing on July 15, after which the city council will consider its next steps.
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Like a lot of journalists, I’ve been using the Associated Press Stylebook as a reference, if not necessarily a dictate, for almost as many years as I’ve known how to type. Whether we’ve ever worked for AP or not, the news agency of record’s standard-setting ubiquity has made the Stylebook the go-to for guidance on everything from hyphenation to media law to the validity (and otherwise) of public opinion polling for multiple generations of reporters.
So I feel a special sense of personal satisfaction at the news, announced this week, of MTFP’s new story-sharing partnership with the Associated Press.
What will Montana Free Press readers get out of the deal? Free access to Associated Press stories covering news made in Washington, D.C., by Montana’s elected and appointed federal officials. Montana’s federal delegation regularly throws its weight around, and AP reporters on the ground in the nation’s capital are well-positioned to report on what Montanans’ representatives are doing in the halls of federal power. The AP stories we publish will be individually selected by our Montana-based team of editors.
What does AP get out of the deal? The ability to share Montana Free Press stories with AP member papers locally, regionally and nationally. That means more readers for our reporters’ best work. MTFP is built on the premise that accurate information is power — and that the more people it reaches, the more powerful people become.
We pride ourselves here at MTFP not just on the quality of reporting that our readers’ support makes possible, but also on our staff’s relentless focus on finding new and often collaborative ways to produce and provide news. That focus is a necessity for organizations that want to survive and thrive in the ever-changing journalism business. MTFP is proud to be one of those organizations, and we’re excited to partner with another one to bring you even more comprehensive coverage of news that matters to you.
Montana’s primary election wraps up this coming Tuesday, June 4. The primary, where voters select party nominees to advance to the November general election, isn’t the final step in this year’s political process, but it is an essential decision point, especially in political districts that tilt strongly toward a particular party. The primary winners in those districts on Tuesday will cruise into November with strong if not overwhelming winds at their backs.
Once polls close at 8 p.m. Tuesday, we’ll cover results as they’re available from county election offices. Our homepage will also feature an interactive dashboard with live results courtesy of the Associated Press. Readers who want to follow that coverage throughout the evening should keep a tab open to our homepage at montanafreepress.org.
Depending on how fast county election administrators can complete their ballot counts, outcomes in close races may not be clear until late Tuesday night or Wednesday — or even later in cases where a recount becomes necessary.
We’ll continue to cover election results over the week as necessary, sharing the stories via our website, email newsletters and our usual social media accounts. If you’re interested in hearing our newsroom staff discuss Tuesday night’s results, we’ll also be holding a live online event Wednesday evening from 7 to 8 p.m. (you can sign up for that here).
If you’re an eligible Montana voter who hasn’t yet cast a ballot, you can do that in person at most polling places between 7 a.m. and 8 p.m. on Election Day. If you’re voting via an absentee ballot, you should now physically deliver it to your county election office or another ballot collection site instead of putting it in the mail. You can also register to vote or update your registration status with your county election office through the close of polls on Election Day.
Number of absentee ballots submitted to county election offices statewide for the June 4 primary as of May 30, according to the Montana Secretary of State’s website. That’s out of a total 448,689 sent to voters, for a statewide return rate of 38% so far.
Last week, the secretary of state’s office launched a new interactive map with daily updates on absentee ballot counts per county. As of the latest update Thursday night, Yellowstone County saw the largest number of ballots returned — 27,996 — while Liberty County reported the highest rate of return — 51%, or 364 ballots received out of 716 sent to registered voters.
—Alex Sakariassen
Glad you Answered 🙋🏻
“In our region of the Hi-Line, we have discovered that in the five counties we serve, there is only enough certified child care slots to accommodate about 15% of the working families that need it.”
The event focused on MTFP’s recent in-depth coverage of the state’s childcare crisis, which last year prevented an estimated 66,000 Montana parents from fully engaging in the workforce. The article, a collaboration with national education news nonprofit Open Campus, included a survey soliciting reader feedback on their own experiences with childcare access, affordability and quality challenges. Responses so far have further confirmed the severity of the struggles Montana working families and childcare providers are facing, with respondents indicating that provider wages don’t appear to be high enough and in some cases saying childcare issues have made them anxious about starting families of their own.
It remains unclear who’s going to cover the costs of major law enforcement efforts on the Flathead Indian Reservation. As MTFP contributor Justin Franz reports, Lake County historically provided felony law enforcement on most of the reservation through its sheriff’s office under an agreement that avoided the situation faced by most other reservations, where felony law enforcement is handled by federal authorities or simply falls through the cracks. Lake County commissioners have recently balked at the estimated $4 million annual cost of those efforts, however, arguing the bill should be covered by the state of Montana.
A group in Great Falls is fundraising in an effort to preserve a parcel of state-owned open space just outside city limits along the Missouri River. As MTFP Local reporter Matt Hudson writes, backers hope to secure an easement that shields the 79-acre parcel, which is state trust land set aside to generate revenue for public schools, from development.
Signature gathering is ongoing for an initiative that could see a constitutional abortion rights question placed on the November ballot.As Mara Silvers reports, both proponents and opponents are ramping up organizing tactics as a June 21 deadline looms.
And, as we assume you’ve already heard, a New York jury found former president and presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump guilty of 34 felony charges stemming from his efforts to keep an extramarital affair with a porn star from becoming public knowledge during his 2016 presidential campaign. We reported on how Montana’s majority-Republican congressional delegation reacted to the verdict here.
Alex — The Hechinger Report this week penned a fascinating dispatch from a four-year-old publicly authorized charter school dedicated to giving expecting and parenting teenagers a viable path to completing their secondary education. According to the story, Lumen High School now enrolls roughly 60 teenage mothers and fathers and offers full-day childcare for their children.
Arren — Basketball legend Bill Walton passed away this week. While I could share any of the many beautiful recent obituaries that describe his storied career, Grateful Dead fandom, arrest for protesting Vietnam as a player at UCLA and more, I think I’d rather highlight a piece written from when he was alive: this New York Times Magazine profile that sees Walton sitting down with the writer at the San Diego Natural History Museum.
JoVonne — Glacier County residents have seen a big increase in property taxes over the last year with little explanation from state revenue officials about why. Lee Newspaper’s Nora Mabie reported on residents’ concerns.
Matt — Published prior to the Minnesota Timberwolves’ final NBA playoffs defeat, this Star Tribune piece is a glimpse into the Wolves fandom of poet and author Hanif Abdurraqib. It captures the intersection of hopefulness and the ability to overlook tough odds that all sports fans demonstrate from time to time.
Mara — The Flathead Beacon had a striking piece this week about how local mobile home park residents are grappling with eviction notices after properties change hands — and what housing organizations are trying to do to help.
Eric — This column from City Bureau, a Chicago-based news nonprofit, got my thinking gears spinning this week about what journalism is and isn’t useful for (and what sorts of readers it does and doesn’t tend to serve effectively). But then again, I’m a sucker for a fresh Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs analogy.
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This Montana school solved its teacher shortage by opening a day care
This school year, Montana, a state with fewer than 8,000 teachers, had 1,000 unfilled teaching positions. Meanwhile, Dutton-Brady Public Schools, a rural district about an hour from the Canadian border, easily filled its three vacancies.
Administrators credit a blue-hued room strewn with toys and highchairs: Little Diamondbacks Daycare, which is located inside the district’s K-12 school, steps from the cafeteria and the library. On a chilly Monday morning, children were trying on costumes, riding rocking horses and enjoying a rowdy game of musical chairs.
Children play musical chairs at the Little Diamondbacks Daycare with director Ashli Weekes. Credit:Rebecca Stumpf/High Country News
Eight-month-old Rowan watched the action from the arms of a staffer. Rowan’s mother, Jessica Toner, is a rookie teacher who heads the third-fourth grade classroom down the hall. Though Toner was offered four higher-paying positions in Great Falls, where she lives, she could neither find nor afford decent child care. “I called probably 15 different day cares,” she said, but they either didn’t have openings or were too expensive. “It was a nightmare.”
Toner hadn’t considered Dutton-Brady, which is a 32-minute drive from her house. But when she heard it had an opening — one that came with subsidized day care — she applied. “That’s what drew me,” she said. “And then I came to find that I love it out here.”
In-school day care can be found across the U.S., from Maine to Oklahoma and Colorado. It’s one way to tackle two crises: a shortage of qualified teachers and a shortage of quality child care. Recent data suggests that 79% of U.S. schools with teacher vacancies had difficulty filling them, while half of Americans live in “child care deserts” — communities that have at least three times as many children as licensed child-care slots. In many places, including Montana, both issues are moreacute in rural areas. And of the 10 states with the highest rates of residents living in child-care deserts, seven are in the West.
Ask anyone involved with school-run day care, whether staff, clients or administrators, and they’ll probably say they’re delighted to have it. Experts, however, warn that it’s not a panacea. “All of this is well-intended,” said Chris Herbst, a professor who studies child care at Arizona State University. “But none of this is a sustainable, broad-based, fully funded solution to a long-standing problem.”
Third and fourth grade teacher, Jessica Toner, holds her son, Rowan, outside of her classroom. Credit:Rebecca Stumpf/High Country News
IN THE SPRING OF 2022, Dutton-Brady faced several teacher retirements. Superintendent Jeremy Locke knew it would be hard to replace them; it always was.
The Dutton-Brady School District is deeply rural, serving 131 students in a 625-square-mile region, an area larger than Grand Teton National Park. Its main school is in Dutton, and two others are located on colonies of Hutterites, an isolated Anabaptist religious sect. Dutton, which is the only town for miles, is home to two taverns, a water tower, a bank and a gas station that also sells fertilizer and livestock feed. There’s not a single stoplight.
Recruiting teachers has long been difficult; at times, the district has had to lure teachers from as far away as the Philippines. And veteran teachers rarely apply. Most recruits are like Toner: recent graduates who are just starting out, and perhaps starting families.
So, at a meeting that spring, Locke and the Board of Trustees seized upon the idea of opening a day care center to boost recruitment and retention. They scrambled to get the paperwork, financing and staffing in order before the 2022-’23 school year began. “We had to make it work,” Locke said. “Or else we knew that we were going to be dead in the water as far as staffing goes.”
Little Diamondbacks now serves 21 children, ranging from a few months to 5 years old. Dutton-Brady teachers pay up to $270 per child, per month for full-time, year-round care, a rate that is subsidized by state grants and by non-staffers who pay full tuition, up to $540 a month.
Staffing the facility has been a constant headache — it’s tough to find child-care workers anywhere, let alone in such a rural county — but Locke said it’s been worth it. “If we didn’t start this day care last year, we would not have filled our three openings,” he said. “We have no teacher shortages right now.”
In-school day cares exist elsewhere in rural Montana, too. Ekalaka, a town of 399 people on the eastern edge of the state, opened its center in August 2022. Browning, located on the Blackfeet Reservation in northwest Montana, started its facility in 1985; it was initially meant to serve teen mothers but now serves mostly staff members.
Browning’s superintendent, Corrina L. Guardipee-Hall (Blackfeet-Cree), used the day care when her children were small. “It really helped me be able to be a teacher and eventually administrator and now a superintendent,” she said. “It did help retain not only me as an employee, but also other people around the district.” It’s also a recruitment incentive: Guardipee-Hall noted that two new teacher assistants submitted day care applications for their children immediately after being hired.
“If we didn’t start this day care last year, we would not have filled our three openings.”
Montana’s school-based day care centers would seem an ideal way to attract and keep teachers. But Matthew Kraft, an associate professor of education and economics at Brown University, said they don’t address the root causes of shortages: low wages and decreased public perceptions about the profession’s prestige. Plus, day care centers support teachers for only a short time during their career, if at all.
“There are a lot of initiatives to compensate teachers in ways other than actual wages,” Kraft said, referring to efforts to subsidize student loans, housing or child care. “All of those have potential, although I would argue that it may be more effective to simply take the cost of those programs and fold them into higher teacher pay.”
In that regard, Montana has a long way to go: Its starting teacher salaries rank 51st in the nation. When the Learning Policy Institute, a national nonprofit, adjusted for cost-of-living differences, it found that the average starting salary for a Montana teacher was only $36,480 — far behind neighboring Idaho ($44,150) and Wyoming ($51,530).
As for why school districts might provide housing or child care before increasing wages, Kraft explained they might be “hesitant to commit to permanent and substantial pay raises with some uncertainty about the fiscal climate.” Besides, he noted, compensation must be negotiated with teachers’ unions — “often a time-intensive and slow process” — whereas a district can unilaterally decide to open a day care.
Ultimately, Kraft said, solving the teacher shortage will require major policy changes, as well as “generational shifts in how we perceive the profession.”
Children play during the school day at the Little Diamondbacks Daycare. Credit:Rebecca Stumpf
IN RURAL AREAS, in-school day care centers aren’t merely useful to the school; they also serve the community. About half of Little Diamondbacks’ regular attendees are the children of non-staffers, some of whom drive from nearly 40 miles away. Ekalaka’s facility, which is also open to community members, is the only licensed one in the county.
In rural Colorado, the West Grand School District, between Steamboat Springs and Breckenridge, has had an early childhood center since 2018. West Grand opened its facility after several teachers quit because they couldn’t find child care, but administrators soon realized it would address a greater need: The town has just one other licensed day care, and it’s often full.
The school’s day care center now serves roughly 22 children, only seven of whom are the offspring of teachers. “We knew we needed to (open it),” said Superintendent Elizabeth Bauer. “Not just for our teachers, but for our community.”
Hannah Wynd, who works for the local health department, said she might have had to move if she hadn’t gotten a spot at West Grand. “I, quite frankly, would not have a job if it wasn’t open and it didn’t have room for my children,” she said. “It’s super important, what it’s provided for my family.”
Experts don’t dispute the critical role these facilities play in families’ lives. In-school day care centers have been “introduced or enacted by well-meaning people who are probably frustrated that nothing is happening federally and are taking it upon themselves to try to better their community,” said Herbst, the Arizona State University professor.
“I, quite frankly, would not have a job if it wasn’t open and it didn’t have room for my children.”
Yet ultimately, Herbst believes such changes are “piecemeal,” and that true change must happen on a national scale. He wants Congress to support child-care subsidies, like those that were initially included in President Biden’s Build Back Better plan.
In the meantime, rural administrators, teachers and parents plan to keep doing what they can to keep their jobs local, their schools open and their kids cared for. (That includes obtaining additional sources of funding for their day cares: Dutton-Brady’s largest grant recently ran out, and West Grand is seeking new community funding partners.)
They don’t have the luxury of waiting for policymakers to decide their fates.
Because here’s the picture Locke painted: If Dutton-Brady loses a single teacher, it may not be able to replace them. If the school loses a second teacher, and a third, it could end up being assimilated into a bigger district. And then the community hub, the heart of the tiny town of Dutton, would be gone.
“We don’t have an option to not figure it out, because when we don’t, everything dries up,” Locke said. “It’s really an existential threat.”
Susan Shain reports for High Country News through The New York Times’ Headway Initiative, which is funded through grants from the Ford Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF), with Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors serving as fiscal sponsor. All editorial decisions are made independently. She was a member of the 2022-’23 New York Times Fellowship class and reports from Montana. @susan_shain
Seventh tribe bans South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem
A seventh tribe in South Dakota, the Crow Creek Sioux Tribe, banned Gov. Kristi Noem on May 14.
During a Tuesday meeting, the Crow Creek Tribal Council voted unanimously to ban Noem from entering its central South Dakota reservation.
The decision comes on the heels of the Yankton Sioux Tribe’s decision to ban Noem on May 10 and the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate’s banishment on May 7.
These bans have been made following the governor’s accusations that Mexican drug cartels are operating on tribal land in South Dakota. Noem also accused tribal governments of benefiting off of the alleged cartel presence and of failing their people, particularly youth.
Tribes are now exercising their sovereignty by indefinitely banning the governor from tribal lands in the state.
As sovereign nations, tribal governments are allowed to ban anyone from their lands. According to the Bureau of Indian Affairs, tribes possess the right to regulate activities within their jurisdiction, which includes the banishment of persons, Native or non-Native.
Previously when questioned about being banished from the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe in early April, Noem’s Communication Director Ian Fury said Noem encourages tribes to banish cartels from tribal lands.
The Crow Creek Sioux Tribe’s decision leaves the governor only able to enter two of the nine reservations in the state, the Lower Brule Reservation in central South Dakota and the Flandreau Santee Reservation in eastern South Dakota.
The governor’s communications director did not respond to a request for comment about her recent banishments.
The Crow Creek banishment came moments after Noem announced the creation and appointment of a tribal law enforcement liaison.
Algin Young, the former police chief of the Oglala Department of Public Safety, was announced as the tribal law enforcement liaison on May 14. Young left his position on April 21 after his contract with the Oglala Sioux Tribe expired, interim police chief John Pettigrew said in an interview with ICT and the Rapid City Journal.
” width=”224″ height=”168″ align=”right” hspace=”10″ alt=”Yellowstone National Park visitors emit more than a megaton of CO2 each year” title=”Yellowstone National Park visitors emit more than a megaton of CO2 each year” />Striking new study quantifies Yellowstone tourism
emissions. TLDR: it’s a lot of CO2.
Mill closures ‘shock’ industry, but officials say demand for wood remains
Five days a week, a short train rolls out of the rail yard in Whitefish with empty freight cars destined for the Flathead Valley’s three surviving wood products mills in Columbia Falls and Evergreen. At one time, short trains like this could be found all over western Montana, serving mills in places like Libby, St. Regis, Darby and Pablo. But today, this is one of the few “local” freights left in the region.
“It was a shock,” said Julia Altemus, executive director of the Montana Wood Products Association, who has tracked mill closures over the decades.
In a press release on March 14, Pyramid’s owners stated that the family-owned mill had faced tough times before, specifically in the early 2000s when mills across the Pacific Northwest were closing. Perennial issues like an inconsistent timber supply and constantly fluctuating lumber prices contributed to those challenges. But this time, new issues — including a housing shortage impacting many communities in western Montana — led to Pyramid’s decision to call it quits.
Paul McKenzie, vice president and general manager of F.H. Stoltze Land & Lumber Co., said he remains hopeful for the future of the timber industry but challenges remain. Credit: Justin Franz / MTFP
“Today’s crisis is much worse than what was experienced in 2000, 2007, and 2015,” Pyramid officials wrote. “There is simply no better solution for the owners than to shut the mill down permanently.”
Five days later, Roseburg’s announcement cited many of the same reasons for closing. The back-to-back closures leave western Montana with just a half dozen major mills: Sun Mountain Lumber in Deer Lodge and Livingston; Thompson River Lumber in Thompson Falls; Stoltze Land & Lumber Co. in Columbia Falls; and Weyerhaeuser’s medium-density fiberboard and plywood mills in Columbia Falls and Evergreen.
Altemus said the timber industry is a tough one and lumber prices fluctuate constantly. But she believes mills like Pyramid in Seeley Lake could have survived had they been able to secure a consistent supply of timber — especially when prices for lumber jumped a few years ago. Altemus put much of the blame for that on the U.S. Forest Service and lawsuits over concerns about wildlife habitat, water quality and other environmental issues that often tie up lumber sales in court.
Paul McKenzie, vice president and general manager of F.H. Stoltze Land & Lumber Co. in Columbia Falls, echoed that frustration. In 2023, the company got about 70% of its wood from national forest land — the most it had gotten from that source in years — but that amount was going to be significantly less this year. That’s a problem for the industry, McKenzie said, when the federal government is the largest landowner in the region. While Stoltze can cut timber on state land, its own land and other privately held tracks of forest, it’s hard to make up what could come from the government-owned land.
But that isn’t the only challenge Stoltze is facing, McKenzie said, adding that the pressures that put Pyramid out of business and forced Roseburg to shut down are also impacting his company. Years ago, mills provided some of the best-paying jobs in places like the Flathead Valley, but with the cost of housing skyrocketing there, those wages just don’t go as far as they once did, making it hard to attract workers. Lumber prices are also down significantly. A few years ago, the mill could get about $800 for every 1,000 board feet produced; now it’s about $500 for every 1,000 board feet, McKenzie said.
“We’re losing money on every stick of lumber that goes out the door,” McKenzie said. “That’s just a fact of this market.”
“We’re losing money on every stick of lumber that goes out the door. That’s just a fact of this market.”
Paul McKenzie, F.H. Stoltze Land & Lumber Co.
However, McKenzie said he hasn’t lost hope about the timber industry. While prices are down now, there’s no doubt that there is a demand for lumber and other wood products, especially as the nation tries to close its housing supply gap (by some estimates, the U.S. needs about 7.2 million more homes).
Stoltze is also looking for ways to expand its business. A few years ago, the company established a new branch called Stoltze Timber Systems, which produces pre-fabricated structures using cross-laminated timber. Such construction is appealing to a lumber mill like Stoltze because it allows it to use smaller trees that in the past had little use.
“The long-term outlook for the wood products industry is strong. It’s just a matter of surviving the tight times so we’re here when people need us,” McKenzie said. “We want to be here 100 years from now.”
Sherm Anderson, owner of Sun Mountain Lumber in Deer Lodge, is also looking to the future. Like McKenzie, he said timber supply issues are the biggest challenge for his business, but he’s confident his grandson will someday be able to take over the company.
A load of lumber is wrapped and ready for shipment at F.H. Stoltze Land & Lumber Co. in Columbia Falls. Credit: Justin Franz / MTFP
“I’m confident that there’s a future in this for him and for generations to come,” he said. “The outlook for the wood products industry right now isn’t great, but I still think it has a future.”
Anderson is so confident, in fact, that Sun Mountain expanded in 2023 when it purchased R-Y Timber in Livingston. That mill had closed after a fire in February 2023.
Altemus, the executive director of the Montana Wood Products Association, said she was still hopeful that a similar situation could develop in Seeley Lake and that someone would purchase and reopen the Pyramid mill. She said anytime a mill closes it has rippled effects throughout the entire industry, from loggers to truckers. Right now, western Montana still has the infrastructure to support the industry, but that might not be the case if more mills close, she said.
Regardless of what happens in the coming months, McKenzie said it’s hard to see not one but two mills call it quits so quickly.
“It’s heartbreaking,” McKenzie said. “These people are our friends and colleagues, and I know they must have agonized over these decisions.”
In-depth, independent reporting on the stories impacting your community from reporters who know your town.
Five takeaways from our reporting on Montana State Hospital
As Montana Free Press recently reported, medical practitioners and other staff at the state psychiatric hospital in Warm Springs are raising alarms about new leadership and policy changes at the public facility — with one employee describing current working conditions as “like being stuck in a recurring bad dream.”
The complaints come nearly two years after federal regulators pulled certification from the Montana State Hospital as a result of patient deaths and safety concerns. The administration of Gov. Greg Gianforte has pledged to regain that certification from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, calling the current reforms at the hospital part of a “significant cultural, clinical, and operational transformation” in a Wednesday statement to MTFP.
Here are five key takeaways from our reporting.
#1 The state has parted ways with the hospital’s longtime chief medical officer
The same day MTFP published its article about staff turnover and other issues at the hospital, the state health department confirmed that Dr. Thomas Gray, a forensic psychiatrist and the facility’s longtime chief medical officer, is no longer a hospital employee.
Gray, whom many clinicians regarded as a cornerstone of the institution, was placed on paid administrative leave in December, according to multiple current and former staff who said they were never given a reason for his departure. The state on Wednesday declined to provide further information about the end of Gray’s employment by the state, citing the confidentiality of personnel matters.
Gray could not be reached for comment Thursday.
#2 Montana State Hospital’s current top doctor lives in Wyoming and works other jobs
In December, the state health department contracted with Traditions Behavioral Health, a California-based staffing company, to hire Dr. Micah Hoffman as its new chief medical officer. Hoffman lives in Wyoming and concurrently works other jobs in addition to being the top doctor for Montana’s roughly 260-bed campus in Warm Springs.
The health department on Wednesday clarified that Hoffman, unlike other recent administrators at the facility, is not considered an interim contractor. Rather, the state said, Traditions Behavioral Health is providing “permanent physician leadership” for the hospital.
In response to a question about Hoffman working from Wyoming, the department said the new chief medical officer “is onsite every other week, and when not onsite is directly engaged with the day-to-day operations at MSH remotely. This model is not uncommon and [is] used by other states.”
#3 Advanced Practice Registered Nurses at the hospital are unionizing
In emails obtained by MTFP, labor leaders with the Montana Nurses Association in March congratulated a group of advanced practice registered nurses (APRNs) on the recent filing of a petition to pursue unionization.
The hospital administration in Warm Springs had been notified, organizers said, but still had time to file a response to the petition through the Board of Personnel Appeals within the state labor department. Additional hearings on the unionization effort could take place in April.
The state health department did not respond to a specific question from MTFP this week about the nurses’ decision to unionize.
#4 Medical staff are pushing back against new rules they say undermine patient care
In two April staff meetings with hospital medical practitioners and administrators, recordings of which were obtained by MTFP, doctors and APRNs raised multiple concerns about new rules handed down by state health department leaders and consultants.
Providers said they were being strongly dissuaded from ordering direct supervision of patients, a protocol known as 1:1 staffing. If a patient is on 1:1 staffing, clinicians have to justify continuing that arrangement to hospital administrators for longer than a day.
Medical staff said 1:1 staffing is an essential tool to help protect patients who pose a risk to themselves or others, forecasting that patients could die as a result of the new deterrence. Administrators countered that the new rules are designed to reduce staffing costs and help find better long-term alternatives for patient care.
Medical practitioners also raised concerns about having to submit daily and weekly documentation of patient treatment, often without the assistance of dictation or transcription services, and a new restriction on reviewing security video footage after safety incidents involving patients.
#5 State health department is mum on concerns about privatization or closure
Current and former hospital staff told MTFP they fear that policy changes are meant to drive out long-time health care providers and destabilize the institution enough to justify its closure or privatization.
“The only way people can make sense of the actions of these quote-unquote leaders is to say that the whole purpose is to scuttle the place. Is to destroy it,” said one medical provider who requested anonymity out of fear of professional retaliation. “I don’t buy that, but that’s what people are saying.”
In its responses to MTFP’s questions, the state health department did not directly comment on that fear. MTFP’s question referenced policy changes, such as those regarding 1:1 staffing, that employees described as creating instability that could lead to closure or privatization. The state’s response justified the changes as being “based on state and federal rules and regulations,” but did not reference employee speculation about the prospect of privatization.
Questions, comments or feedback about MTFP’s reporting on the Montana State Hospital? Reach out to tips@montanafreepress.org.
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Montana group launches coverage campaign after Medicaid unwinding
Late Thursday morning, representatives from Missoula community organizations packed into a conference room at Partnership Health Center to coordinate solutions to a collective problem: How to help thousands of people removed from state Medicaid programs in the last year regain health care coverage as quickly as possible.
The campaign, titled “Get Covered Again,” is spearheaded by Cover Montana, a federally supported arm of the Montana Primary Care Association that helps Montanans find and access health insurance. The group’s director, Olivia Riutta, told attendees Thursday that 1 in 10 Montanans have lost coverage since the state’s mass-eligibility review began last April, a statistic she described as a “pretty staggering coverage loss.”
“We are really interested in what we can do, across the state, to get folks covered again,” Riutta told the full room. The sooner someone can find stable coverage, she continued, the less likely they will be to have their health care interrupted or be hit with expensive medical bills.
Over the last year, Cover Montana helped many of the more than 300,000 Montanans on Medicaid navigate the redetermination process, a multi-month whirlwind during which states began vetting eligibility for the public health program for the first time since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services’ March data update, more than 132,000 people lost coverage between April 2023 and January 2024, 64% of whom were disenrolled for procedural reasons or due to “failure to provide requested information.” Comparatively, 30% of people who lost coverage were deemed ineligible because of changes in income, household composition or other factors.
Public health advocates, medical providers and community groups have recounted widespread anecdotes of Montanans struggling to navigate the state’s online application portal, clogged phone lines and mail notifications, or turning in their enrollment packets only to be disenrolled weeks later regardless.
The administration of Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte, often through its appointed health department Director Charlie Brereton, has repeatedly defended the state’s federally approved redetermination plan, despite receiving federal notices in recent months about long call center wait times and high rates of childhood disenrollment.
In response to a Democratic press event with health providers and Medicaid applicants this week, the governor’s office told KTVH News that Medicaid enrollment in Montana has returned to pre-pandemic levels and dismissed critiques it attributed to “far-left activists” who “want to overburden the system by keeping folks who are ineligible on the rolls and having Montana taxpayers foot the bill.”
“Redetermination is working as intended: people who are ineligible for Medicaid are no longer on it,” the statement said.
One by one, attendees of the Thursday meeting in Missoula shared stories about clients, patients and families who are floundering after losing Medicaid coverage for procedural reasons.
“Sometimes they don’t realize until they’re in a crisis,” said Jill Bonny, executive director of the Poverello Center, an emergency shelter in Missoula. “They go to the Partnership [Health] Clinic that we have at the main shelter, or somewhere else, and they find out they don’t have coverage, which just adds to their crisis.”
A representative from Mountain Home Montana, a mental health center in Missoula that houses young mothers and pregnant women, said roughly half of the organization’s 70 active clients lost coverage during the unwinding period.
“From our perspective, there’s a lot of work to be done to make sure that those 125,000 folks don’t kind of join the long-term ranks of the uninsured.”
Cover Montana Director Olivia Riutta
“So much of the reason that our clients are still able to be covered is because they have case management and care teams that keep them enrolled when they are disenrolled,” said Development Director Kelsie Severson.
Riutta said the scale of the disenrollment calls for an all-hands-on-deck approach, in which community groups can be trained on how to help work through the state’s Medicaid application process or connect people with affordable options through the federal marketplace or their employer.
In an interview after the meeting, Riutta said Cover Montana did not invite representatives from the state health department to participate in Thursday’s discussion, emphasizing the role that front-line groups and service providers will play in re-enrollment efforts.
“I think that the lion’s share of the enrollment work that’s going to happen is really within communities,” Riutta said. “DPHHS does enrollment work all day, every day. People know to call the [Office of Public Assistance]. But I think people need to know that there are hopefully more access points to get information.”
Campaign members at the table Thursday, including Missoula Mayor Andrea Davis, swapped ideas about pop-up enrollment assistance at schools, libraries and social service organizations. Representatives of mobile crisis support teams, housing support programs and emergency shelters discussed bringing in Cover Montana to train staff on state and federal health care sign-ups and referring clients to one-on-one enrollment counseling.
“How can we all help with a guerilla marketing campaign in ways that really try to get the message out to folks where they are?” Davis said. “I’m thinking, like grocery stores, are there pop-up tables? Are there ways for community members to help volunteer in that?”
Riutta seemed enthusiastic about the brainstorming, saying the group is willing to try “anything and everything” to amplify the message about new enrollment opportunities.
“If what we need to do is print more posters everywhere, we’ll print more posters,” she said.
Riutta said the group is trying to determine where else in the state to schedule roundtable discussions with community groups, or to deploy navigators to convene smaller groups. She estimated as many as 125,000 Montanans will need help reapplying for Medicaid or finding other insurance.
“We want to make sure we’re having a conversation with them in the event that they do qualify, that they’re getting re-enrolled. But in the event that they don’t qualify, that they’re also getting re-enrolled in the marketplace or employer coverage,” Riutta said. “From our perspective, there’s a lot of work to be done to make sure that those 125,000 folks don’t kind of join the long-term ranks of the uninsured.”
