A small, locally owned ski area west of the Rocky Mountain Front community of Choteau announced Thursday that it’s closing for the remainder of the 2023-2024 season, citing dismal snowfall, warm temperatures and the financial repercussions of holding out for more wintery weather.

In a six-page letter posted to the Teton Pass Ski Area Instagram account, area owner Charles Hlavac said the ski area has been running in the red to cover early season payroll, insurance premiums, property tax and start-up costs such as food, fuel and explosives for avalanche mitigation. Continuing to do so, the letter continued, could jeopardize the ski area’s ability to operate in the future.

“The financial hole we have dug is large, and we don’t think we could operate our way out of it even if the snow showed up,” Hlavac wrote. “The correct decision from a truly non-emotional business perspective is to ‘cut off the limb to save the life,’ or in other words end this season now, so we can ensure more seasons in the future.”

Hlavac wrote that the decision was not made lightly but the one he felt compelled to make when considering variables under his control.

“If the issue was simply a matter of needing to put in the time and the hard work, my crew and I would gladly do any amount of difficult work,” he wrote. “We hope that we have proven over time that we are not afraid of the incredibly hard work that goes into operating a uniquely challenging business in a sometimes-hostile environment. We don’t see ourselves as quitters, and we recognize that this decision might be viewed that way by some now, or in the future. This decision will linger, but we have weighed the alternatives.” 

Hlavac detailed weather trends in the post, noting that the 8 inches of snow that fell at the area last weekend failed to reverse the ski area’s fortunes since precipitation wrought by the storm started out as rain and fell on unfrozen ground — a bad combination for maintaining a base. He also noted that Teton Pass happens to be located in a region of Montana hurting for snow.

The Sun-Teton-Marias basin, which is located just east of the Continental Divide, currently has 42% of the typical snowpack for this time of year, a record low. Teton Pass was able to operate just four days this season, according to Hlavac’s letter.

Tom Frownfelder, a former Choteau Chamber of Commerce board member and current finance officer for the city, said the ski area provides a winter boost to the area economy during a time of year when traffic from other recreational draws like hunting and wildlife watching tend to fall off.

“It does hinder our winter push,” Frownfelder said, adding that the dismal snowpack also has repercussions for agricultural producers and other businesses reliant on the Teton River. 

Hlavac wrote that Teton Pass “absolutely [intends] to take care of” its skiers. Customers who purchased a season pass or lift ticket voucher will be able to carry those over to the 2024-2025 season, he wrote.

Teton Pass normally receives 300 inches of snow annually, and the uppermost of its three lifts tops out at about 7,200 feet. Hlavac wrote that this is the ski area’s worst season for precipitation totals based on 55 years of records.

Turner Mountain, another small northern Montana ski area, is currently closed while it waits for more snow. According to On the Snow, which compiles information about ski area conditions around the state, base depths for open ski areas in Montana range from a minimum of 6 inches at Great Divide to 67 inches at Whitefish Mountain Resort.

The post Citing an ‘insurmountable’ lack of snow, Montana ski area closes for the season appeared first on Montana Free Press.

” width=”224″ height=”168″ align=”right” hspace=”10″ alt=”Wolverines were listed as “threatened” last November. Now, Montana plans to sue.” title=”Wolverines were listed as “threatened” last November. Now, Montana plans to sue.” />The 15-page letter of intent to sue US Fish
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This story is excerpted from the MT Lowdown, a weekly newsletter digest containing original reporting and analysis published every Friday.

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Montanans are increasingly tolerant of wolves, according to newly released research from the University of Montana’s Human Dimensions Lab and Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks.

The study, first conducted in 2012 and repeated in 2017 and 2023, was designed to gauge Montana residents’ attitudes toward wolves and various aspects of wolf management. To conduct it, researchers sent a survey to 10,000 Montana residents who were separated into four categories: the general population, landowners with more than 160 acres of land, wolf hunting license holders, and deer and elk license holders.

A few takeaways from the 2023 survey:

• In 2023, 74% of the general population said they were “tolerant” or “very tolerant” of wolves, up from 50% in 2017 and 41% in 2012.
• A vast majority of deer and elk hunters (82%), landowners (86%) and wolf hunters and trappers (100%) report being “tolerant” or “very tolerant” of wolf hunting. That figure for the general population is 50%, down from 71% in 2012.
• More than two-thirds of landowners and hunters report being “very tolerant” or “tolerant” of trapping. Among the general population, that figure is 36%, a decline from 2017.

In a release about the study, FWP Chief of Conservation Policy Quentin Kujala referenced the “complicated views and values” people have toward wolves. 

“It’s important for us and our partners at the University to continue research like this because how stakeholders feel about wildlife and its management is a critical awareness for FWP to have,” Kujala said.

The post Study finds Montanans are increasingly OK with wolves appeared first on Montana Free Press.

Backers of a constitutional initiative to legally protect abortion access have petitioned the Montana Supreme Court to allow their proposal on the 2024 ballot after Montana’s attorney general labeled the measure “legally insufficient.” 

Montanans Securing Reproductive Rights, the political committee supporting the constitutional abortion amendment drafted by Planned Parenthood Advocates of Montana, filed its legal challenge Friday, 10 days after Attorney General Austin Knudsen shot down the measure in his required legal sufficiency review. 

In the lawsuit, attorneys for the group refuted Knudsen’s findings that their proposal “logrolls multiple distinct political choices into a single initiative” and “limits the ability of the state to provide for public health and safety.” Rather, attorneys for the amendment argued, Constitutional Initiative 14, or CI-14, “plainly affects one topic and does so in a single, comprehensive way: establishing and outlining the right, then securing it from government interference.”

“It is no secret that CI-14 is, in part, a response to the sustained attack on abortion rights in Montana by the government, under laws that purport to do exactly what Subsection (3) prohibits: penalize, prosecute, and adversely affect those who exercise their rights or those, like healthcare providers, who assist,” the lawsuit states.

If approved by voters in November, the language of the constitutional initiative would add the express right in the Montana Constitution to “make and carry out decisions about one’s own pregnancy, including the right to abortion.” The amendment would allow the government to regulate abortion after the point of fetal viability unless a treating medical provider determines that terminating a pregnancy “​​is medically indicated to protect the life or health of the pregnant patient.” 

The proposal would also prohibit the government from penalizing or prosecuting a person for the outcome of their pregnancy, and similarly protect any person from adverse government action “for aiding or assisting another person in exercising their right to make and carry out decisions about their pregnancy with their voluntary consent.”

In the Jan. 16 finding, authored by Deputy Solicitor General Brent Mead, the attorney general’s office said that the ballot proposal distills many complexities of abortion policy, effectively creating “an express right to abortion but [denying] voters the ability to express their views on the nuance of the right.”

The lawsuit on Friday says that reasoning “stretches the bounds of credulity,” and, if allowed to stand by the state Supreme Court, could allow the attorney general to “adopt a new, lawless standard that permits the A.G. to block virtually any constitutional amendment that, in his own subjective determination, could benefit from more ‘nuance.’”

In the legal review, the attorney general’s office also pointed out that the proposed ballot language doesn’t match the parameters of Montana’s longstanding legal precedence allowing people to seek an abortion under the existing constitutional right to privacy. That 1999 court decision in Armstrong v. State, Knudsen’s office said, allows regulations of abortion when they serve “a compelling state interest and are narrowly tailored.” But by giving deference to a medical provider’s determination of what is “medically necessary,” the attorney general continued, those reasonable regulations cannot survive. 

Attorneys for Montanans Securing Reproductive Rights asked the court Friday to bypass considering “unripe theories” about how the proposed amendment does or does not square with the Armstrong ruling.

“The A.G.’s arguments on this score are not a basis to keep CI-14 from Montana voters, and the court should decline the A.G.’s implicit invitation to weigh in on whether and how CI-14 would interact with the Armstrong decision or the pending cases in Montana that rely on it,” the lawsuit states.

The legal filing also challenged Knudsen’s comments attached to a $0 fiscal note prepared by the governor’s Office of Budget and Program Planning. While the attorney general concluded that the ballot proposal’s resulting cost to the state cannot be determined, he also opined on possible future costs to Montana’s state health care plan, Montana Medicaid and costs from increased future litigation if the constitution was amended.

Attorneys for the constitutional initiative asked the Supreme Court to strike those arguments entirely, saying the attorney general’s comments amounted to “advocacy” and exceeded his authority. 

If the court rules in its favor, ballot issue supporters asked the court to direct the attorney general to send the proposed ballot statements to the Montana secretary of state within five business days. If allowed to advance to the next stage, the ballot committee must collect signatures of at least 10% of the qualified electors in the state, based on the last general election, in order to qualify for the November ballot.

In another recent case over a constitutional amendment to change the state’s political primary process, Knudsen’s office also accused drafters of logrolling multiple provisions into one proposal. The Montana Supreme Court ultimately ruled against that interpretation, allowing backers of the top-four primary measure to gather signatures to put the issue before voters. 

The attorney general’s office has not yet filed a legal response to Friday’s lawsuit.

The post Constitutional abortion backers file lawsuit to get on November’s ballot appeared first on Montana Free Press.

This story is excerpted from the MT Lowdown, a weekly newsletter digest containing original reporting and analysis published every Friday.

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The record-breaking cold snap Montana saw this month brought days of below-zero temperatures across the state — and with them what major Montana utility NorthWestern Energy said was record-high electric demand from its customers.

The arctic blast, and how the state’s energy system responded, triggered a wave of analysis from folks engaged in Montana’s running debate over renewable energy, coal generation and the future of the state’s electric grid.

The Montana Environmental Information Center, for example, posted a video to Instagram on Jan. 12 citing data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration to push back on NorthWestern’s longtime assertion that it can’t reliably supply Montanans with winter power without maintaining coal-powered generation.

The data, noted MEIC co-director Anne Hedges, showed that coal generation had dropped by about half on Jan. 7, a shift she interpreted as a sign of trouble at the Colstrip power plant. Wind generation, she noted, surged over much of the subsequent three days.

“During the coldest part of the year, half of the largest plant in the western United States is not working — but yet the grid hasn’t collapsed, our lights turn on, so perhaps we need to start rethinking our connection to coal,” Hedges said.

For its part, NorthWestern pointed in a Jan. 17 press release to a later, colder stretch of the cold snap, stressing that it had relied heavily on Colstrip, natural gas plants and hydroelectric dam generation to keep electricity flowing to Montana customers. “Wind and solar generation could not produce much, if any, power during the extreme cold,” wrote NorthWestern spokesperson Jo Dee Black.

In a follow-up email, Black said the decline Hedges noted was the result of Colstrip’s operators bumping up planned maintenance in one of the power plant’s two operational units so both units could operate through the most extreme stretch of cold.

Black also wrote in her initial release that additional generating capacity, like the natural-gas generation plant the company is building near Laurel or the expanded Colstrip stake the company plans to acquire in 2026, would have allowed the company to avoid spending $18 million on energy from other utilities during the cold snap.

Travis Kavulla, a former Republican member of Montana’s utility regulation board who now works as the vice president of regulatory affairs for Houston-based energy company NRG, took to Twitter to critique that latter argument, saying that it’s not necessarily a bad thing for Northwestern to be partially reliant on power purchases — provided the company is smart about how it manages that trading.

“It cannot be expected that Montana would have every single megawatt of capacity it needs to supply the state during the absolute worst hour of the decade. If Montana did, that would mean customers would be paying an absolute fortune,” Kavulla said in a subsequent interview.

Kavulla and other energy analysts routinely note that regulated utilities like NorthWestern have a financial incentive to own and operate as much generating capacity as possible since they typically earn a profit on the infrastructure they own. That dynamic is often criticized as promoting the over-construction of expensive generating plants while discouraging utilities from finding cheaper ways to serve their customers.

The post Cold snap fuels Montana’s coal power debate appeared first on Montana Free Press.

” width=”224″ height=”168″ align=”right” hspace=”10″ alt=”In October 2023, Grizzly Bear 566 weighed in at a whopping 716 pounds, three shy of the Greater Yellowstone record” title=”In October 2023, Grizzly Bear 566 weighed in at a whopping 716 pounds, three shy of the Greater Yellowstone record” />Last fall, Grizzly 566
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The City of Martin, South Dakota and the Oglala Sioux Tribe are at odds over a public records request sent by the tribe.

The City of Martin has asked that the Oglala Sioux Tribe waive its sovereign immunity or pre-pay an undetermined amount of attorney fees and administrative fees for the records it requested. The South Dakota American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is challenging this through the South Dakota Office of Hearing Examiners.

On August 25, under the South Dakota Sunshine Act, the tribe requested records relating to potential violations of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, according to the South Dakota ACLU.

The initial request from the tribe asked for an extensive list of documents, each of which span a time range of 20 years, including election results, redistricting maps (boundary changes and reorganization plans), agendas from meetings where redistricting was discussed, any and all analysis of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act or Gingles factors and more.

On September 11, the City of Martin denied the tribe’s request unless the tribe waived its sovereign immunity and paid upfront for time spent gathering records and attorney fees for 20 years’ worth of records. City representatives said the requested attorney’s fees were included as many of the records required an attorney’s assistance to locate.

After the denial, the tribe got in touch with the South Dakota ACLU. Working with the ACLU, the tribe narrowed the requested records down to a 10-year time frame from 20.

The tribe, represented by the ACLU, Native American Rights Fund and Public Council, is appealing the City of Martin’s stipulations before the South Dakota Office of Hearing Examiners.

The ACLU said the charging of attorney fees and request to waive tribal sovereignty are unreasonable.

“Why do they not want to produce these records without imposing these very stiff, punitive demands on the tribe like making them pay agreed to prepay attorneys fees in an unknown amount and also waive their tribal sovereign immunity,” said Stephanie Amiotte, legal director of the ACLU of South Dakota and a citizen of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, in a phone call. “It certainly begs the question, why aren’t they just producing these records as they would to any other requester if, in fact, everything is in accordance with the Voting Rights Act or the law.”

The City of Martin said it’s asking for attorney’s fees to be charged due to the nature of the documents requested.

“The requests are vague and broad, leaving it difficult for a layperson to determine whether a statutory exception applies,” said Sara Frankenstein, an attorney representing the City of Martin. “Many of the requests require legal analysis as to whether the documents sought are excluded from public disclosure pursuant to South Dakota law. Additionally, the request sought documents spanning over twenty years. Such a huge and broad request is taxing on the City of Martin’s resources and its citizenry. The City of Martin is small, and resources are thin.”

Generally, tribal sovereignty allows tribes to be free from lawsuits whether private or commercial, much like any other nation. The tribe is choosing to pursue action through the Office of Hearing Examiners because it says the conditions sought by the City of Martin are unreasonable or sought in bad faith.

The City of Martin’s legal counsel said the city requested that the tribe waive its sovereign immunity to ensure the request would be paid should it be fulfilled.

“Due to sovereign immunity, the City does not have legal recourse for collecting the applicable fee should the Tribe not pay, and the amount may be substantial if the ACLU continues to demand 20 years’ worth of broad-ranging documents,” Frankenstein said.

Frankenstein also said if the Oglala Sioux Tribe or ACLU refuses to pay for the records request or sovereign immunity is not waived, Martin taxpayers will have to foot the bill.

The ACLU said a request to waive sovereign immunity reflects a larger problem facing Indian Country.

“It really carries bigger implications than that because it amounts to a gradual erosion of the constitutionally protected status as a sovereign nation,” Amiotte said. “We see that every day in attempts by states to take that sovereign status away through encroachment on jurisdictional issues, and just other areas that tribes really do enjoy that status as a sovereign nation to govern in a manner that other governments are allowed to govern.”

Records shared with the Rapid City Journal and ICT suggest the City of Martin did share a January 2022 redistricting map with the tribe; however, no other records will be shared without pre-payment.

“The ACLU’s press release is wildly inaccurate,” Frankenstein said in an email to the Journal and ICT. “First, the City has yet to deny any document requested, other than broadly asserting a general denial that protected or privileged documents will not be disclosed, if the ACLU truly seeks them. The ACLU is not contesting the withholding of protected or privileged documents, so no denial of records is at issue here. In other words, there has been no ‘denial’ to trigger any judicial review.”

The City of Martin and Bennett County are within the exterior boundaries of the Pine Ridge Reservation and are considered by the Department of the Interior to be reservation land. State agencies, however, such as the South Dakota Department of Transportation, generally list Bennett County as not being within the reservation. Census records indicate roughly half of Martin’s population is non-Native.

In 2005, the South Dakota ACLU attempted to sue the City of Martin for Voting Rights Act Violations. After an 11-day bench trial, the claim was dismissed.

The post Voting rights at center of tribal dispute with city appeared first on Buffalo’s Fire.

” width=”224″ height=”168″ align=”right” hspace=”10″ alt=”A barren wheatfield in Malta, Montana, after it was raided by migratory grasshoppers that thrive in drought conditions” title=”A barren wheatfield in Malta, Montana, after it was raided by migratory grasshoppers that thrive in drought conditions” />Following a three-year
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