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The MT Lowdown is a weekly digest that showcases a more personal side of Montana Free Press’ high-quality reporting while keeping you up to speed on the biggest news impacting Montanans. Want to see the MT Lowdown in your inbox every Friday? Sign up here.
We have an answer this week — well, a very partial one — to one of the most consistent reader questions we’ve seen in our inboxes here at MTFP: Just how much is the state spending to defend all those lawsuits?
All those lawsuits, of course, are the many high-profile legal challenges that have generated headlines from us and other news outlets since voters swept Gov. Greg Gianforte into the governor’s office in 2021, giving Montana Republicans — previously checked by the veto pens of Democratic governors — unified control of the legislative and executive branches of state government.
The result has been a full-throated conservative agenda from the state Capitol — laws that have, among other things, sought to allow permit-less concealed firearms nearly statewide, restrict abortion and block the social media platform TikTok. Opponents of those measures have responded by turning to the courts, where the third branch of government reviews their claims that the new laws infringe on constitutional rights.
The cost of the time-intensive legal work involved in that review adds up as state attorneys, most of them working for Attorney General Austin Knudsen’s Department of Justice, defend challenged laws in court — a dynamic that has been much remarked upon in legislative debates. Hence those reader questions, and various efforts by our newsroom to answer them. We’ve reported, for example, that the current two-year state budget includes an extra $1 million a year to support litigation efforts.
We found out where a chunk of the state’s litigation dollars are going this week when Knudsen’s office produced a partially redacted copy of an agreement with Virginia-based law firm Consovoy McCarthy PLLC. The firm has been hired to help state attorneys defend the TikTok ban, which was set to take effect on Jan. 1 until being blocked by a federal judge in November in the course of a legal challenge brought by the company and other plaintiffs.
The agency has insisted on keeping some “fees and costs” information in the agreement from the public — because, Knudsen spokesperson Kyler Nerison wrote in an email exchange, those details “may reflect case strategy.” However, the visible part of the agreement, dated to last June, notes that the firm planned to bill the state for $500,000 to retain its services.
Nerison wrote that the nature of a retainer agreement means that the firm could ultimately reimburse the state if it doesn’t end up doing $500,000 of legal work on the TikTok case. He also said via email that the firm is charging $525 an hour.
Knudsen’s office, which argues that the Chinese-owned social media platform poses a major privacy risk for Montana users and threatens national security, has appealed the November ruling to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Consovoy McCarthy has championed several conservative causes in recent years, winning victories before the U.S. Supreme Court in cases that struck down race-based affirmative-action college admission policies and blocked a student loan debt forgiveness plan advanced by President Joe Biden. The firm also represented former President Donald Trump in his unsuccessful efforts to shield financial records from an investigation by the U.S. House.
This arrangement isn’t necessarily typical of the myriad bill-challenge cases working their way through the courts, many of which are being partially or fully defended by significantly less-well-compensated staff attorneys, or contract attorneys from Montana firms. It does, however, provide important insight into how far Knudsen is willing to go to defend the TikTok ban — the first of its kind in the nation and, as such, a law that has brought him a measure of national prominence.
Montanans of different persuasions can certainly disagree about whether the TikTok ban and other bills coming out of the Legislature are good or bad public policy. It’s inarguable, though, that there’s a real cost involved in enacting controversial laws, whatever their merit. As Knudsen works to defend the Legislature’s agenda, his decisions about how to allocate his office’s resources — which, ultimately, are funded by your tax dollars — are worth noting.
—Eric Dietrich, Deputy Editor
The University of Montana Grizzlies capped a stellar football season by making their first trip to the FCS championship game since 2009, ultimately falling short with a lopsided 23-3 loss as the South Dakota State Jackrabbits defended their championship. Here, SDSU quarterback Mark Gronowski eludes Montana sophomore linebacker Riley Wilson during the game on Jan. 7 in Frisco, Texas.
ICYMI: Montana-based Skyline Sports shared their game coverage with MTFP this week.
Regular MTFP readers might recall our analysis finding that NorthWestern Energy’s 2023 property tax bill fell by about $36 million, a 20% decrease from the previous year. In the weeks since those figures came out, we’ve fielded questions from NorthWestern customers wondering how the utility’s diminished tax obligation squares with the Public Service Commission’s October decision to substantially increase residential electricity rates.
The good news for NorthWestern customers is that NorthWestern’s lower tax bill means your own power bill will be a little less. That’s due, in part, to a Montana law establishing that public utility property taxes are to be treated as a “flow-through” expense passed directly onto customers. The taxes NorthWestern pays on its considerable physical infrastructure — power plants, transmission lines, natural gas pipelines, etc. — are reflected on customer bills as a type of line-item expense.
While NorthWestern’s 380,000 electricity customers will undoubtedly welcome the development, it isn’t enough to offset the rate hike the PSC signed off on in October, which the company estimated at about a 24% increase. According to NorthWestern spokesperson Jo Dee Black, an average residential customer using 750 kilowatt-hours of electricity per month can expect the company’s lower property tax obligation to bring about a $6.95 decrease on their upcoming bill.
It’s worth noting that there are several dynamic factors that, like property taxes, are factored into the math NorthWestern uses to calculate customer bills every month. Some components, including the flat service charge automatically tacked onto customer bills and rates that allows the company to recoup money it has spent on building new power infrastructure, receive more oversight from the PSC than others.
If you delight in this type of weedy regulatory material, keep an eye on MTFP’s homepage — we’re working on a more comprehensive piece aiming to help customers of the state’s largest utility “decode” other components of their power bills.
—Amanda Eggert, Reporter
“This is for every little rez kid, every little urban kid, every little Native kid out there who has a dream, who is seeing themselves represented, and our stories, told by ourselves, in our own words, with tremendous allies and tremendous trust with and from each other.”
—University of Montana alum and Blackfeet actor Lily Gladstone, accepting the Golden Globe award for Best Performance by a Female Actor in a Motion Picture for her role in Martin Scorcese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon,” on Sunday, Jan. 7.
Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the state and federal holiday commemorating the noted Civil Rights leader, will be celebrated this year on Monday, Jan. 15. While King was assassinated in 1968, the holiday that today provides a designated time to reflect on America’s complex history around race and civil rights wasn’t put on the books nationally until 1983, when a bill designating a federal holiday around King’s birthday was signed into law by President Ronald Reagan.
Montana didn’t follow suit until eight years later in 1991 — when the Associated Press reported that a Montana bill signed by Gov. Stan Stephens left only three other states without some form of paid holiday honoring King.
According to minutes from a legislative committee where the bill, Senate Bill 78, was discussed that year, it replaced a “Heritage Day” holiday that had been enacted four years earlier. The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Harry Fritz of Missoula, argued, as the minutes summarized, that the general-purpose cultural diversity holiday had “become a holiday of convenience and has never recognized anyone’s heritage.”
Supporter Bob Gervais, a state representative whose district included the Blackfeet Reservation, argued that the national Civil Rights Movement had been an inspiration for Native Americans. As the minutes summarize his words, he argued that the “movement taught the Indians that they have a right to live free from discrimination because of their race in employment, housing, voting rights [and] government services.”
Another supporter, then-Little Big Horn College President Janine Windy Boy, noted that it had only been a matter of years since a federal court found in a 1984 ruling that there was substantial evidence Big Horn County officials had discriminated against Native voters with practices she compared the treatment of Black voters in the American South. Among other findings in that case, the court concluded there was credible evidence that election officials had prevented Native residents from voting in general elections by striking their names from voting rolls after primary votes, and that officials had discouraged Native voter registration by limiting access to registration cards.
Opponents, of whom three testified at the hearing, argued against recognizing King in part because they believed he had associated with communists. The bill ultimately passed the Montana Senate, 39-11, and the Montana House, 64-36.
The full committee minutes are available here through the Montana Law Library.
—Eric Dietrich, Deputy Editor
Helena Mayor Wilmot Collins was called for jury duty this week, serving on a jury for a DUI case in Helena Municipal Court. Collins, who came to Helena after emigrating to the U.S. as a refugee from Liberia’s civil war in the 1990s, was first elected the city’s mayor in 2017. He spoke with MTFP about his experience with the civic duty and how it compared to his home country’s legal system. His comments have been edited for length and clarity.
MTFP: Was this your first time doing jury duty?
Collins: As a matter of fact I was on the jury and I was the juror foreman for I think one of the longest trials in Montana’s history. It was a murder out of Augusta. In fact, Dateline made a movie out of it called “The Feud.”
MTFP: What did the legal system look like in Liberia, and did it have jury trials?
Collins: They, we do have trials, you know, but it’s a bit corrupt. In my opinion, it’s a bit corrupted because the rich will always win, which is sad. But I thought this system was fair. This trial was pretty fair. We had evidence that we could not refute. They had blood alcohol level, we saw the gentleman getting out of his car and they tested his blood and it was way above the limit.
MTFP: Were you surprised they selected the mayor for jury duty?
Collins: You know, I hoped they’d give me a break, but it’s not like they were singling me out. It’s just that’s the nature of the beast. They look for people within the city limits and I happened to be on and received it and I tried to plan things around it, but I just didn’t think I was going to get selected, to be honest with you. I thought I’d be kicked off, but I was the second person selected.
—JoVonne Wagner, Reporter
A federal judge in Missoula this week approved a $350,000 settlement between the University of Montana and more than a dozen former female employees, bringing to a close more than two years of litigation over alleged sex-based discrimination on the campus.
The lawsuit, initially filed in August 2021, claimed the university had fostered a culture that “denied female employees the benefits of their long dedication to UM’s educational programs” and “created a brick wall for these women’s careers.” That atmosphere, the plaintiffs argued, constituted a violation of federal anti-discrimination protections under Title IX. UM repeatedly denied the allegations, even as the number of plaintiffs grew from four to 18.
Under the terms of the settlement, which was approved by the court Jan. 9, UM is ordered to pay each plaintiff $19,444.45. The per-plaintiff total includes litigation costs and attorneys fees. According to the Missoulian, the university is also ordered to have its procedures and trainings reviewed by a third party for compliance with Title IX within one year, but the settlement does not constitute an admission of guilt.
In an email statement, UM Director of Strategic Communications Dave Kuntz said the university remains “confident” it would have prevailed in a trial, but that “continuing with litigation would have taken the precious time of state employees and of state resources that are better spent supporting students, faculty, and staff.”
—Alex Sakariassen, Reporter
Amanda — I recently found my way to Bad Education, a 2019 movie based on a multi-million-dollar embezzlement scandal that was unearthed by a student at the Long Island, New York, high school where it occurred. I highly recommend it.
Alex — One of my favorite podcast discoveries of late is Where Should We Begin?, hosted by the world-renowned psychologist Esther Perel. If you’re fascinated by the intricacies of human relationships (or just looking for affirmation that you’re not the only one trying to preserve some shred of sanity), this should be required listening.
Arren — I’ve been telling anyone who will listen about my recent (to me) discovery that former Montana Gov. Tim Babcock, a personal friend of Richard Nixon, pleaded guilty to illegally facilitating campaign donations from industrialist Armand Hammer to then-President Nixon as part of the Watergate scandal.
Mara — After seeing both “Barbie” and “Poor Things,” I’ve been on the lookout for some smart analysis of the movies’ dueling messages about feminism and gender. This New York Times piece, “A Crybaby Year for Men in the Movies,” didn’t quite scratch that itch but was fun reading nonetheless. This piece in The Cut, however, titled “Playing With Dolls,” absolutely nailed it. Happy reading (and watching).
Eric — Legendary political journalist (and private pilot) James Fallows is almost always worth reading for a sharp take on aviation news. Here he discusses that Alaska Airlines flight where a door plug blew off in midair.
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