My Page: Amy Linn

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Analysis: Asbestos Aid

Turns out, the federal health care package that won preliminary approval in the U.S. Senate has a bit of buried treasure.

According to Robert Pear of the New York Times, there’s “cryptic” language hidden deep in the 2,700-page health care bill that gives expanded Medicare coverage to a very specific group of Montanans. The group is so narrow, in fact, that it only includes “individuals exposed to environmental health hazards recognized as a public health emergency in a declaration issued by the federal government on June 17.”

There’s only one emergency that fits the category, of course: it’s the one declared in Libby, Montana, where widespread asbestos contamination from a former W.R. Grace & Co. vermiculite mine has sickened thousands of people and killed hundreds, including mineworkers, their families and everyday citizens.

Property Tax Turbulence

The property tax imbroglio in Montana just keeps on generating pain, wrath and finger-pointing, as residents protest the recent reappraisals that dramatically increased the value of their properties, raising their tax bills to similarly eye-popping levels.

Last week, more than 100 residents in Flathead County—home to some of the steepest property tax increases in the state—angrily confronted Republican lawmakers at a town hall meeting about the reappraisal process. As Jim Mann of the Daily Inter Lake reported, residents at the Kalispell event quizzed the panel about why and how the reappraisals—legally mandated to happen every six years—have created so much distress this time around.

Whitefish resident Bruce Tate said the appraised value on his property rose 350 percent this year, the Inter Lake reported. Somers resident Art Buckley said he’d have to pay “three times more in property tax in 2014 than he did in 2008.”

Fallout of Smurfit-Stone Closure

As news sinks in about the Dec. 31 closure of the Smurfit-Stone Container Corp. mill in Frenchtown, observers and experts are weighing in on possible outcomes for the region and the state. Among the various forecasts:

Patrick Barkey, director of the University of Montana Bureau of Business and Economic Research (BBER), predicts the shut-down will result in as many as 1,500 lost jobs, factoring in the lay-offs that could occur in businesses that depend on the plant or serve its employees. These include trucking, construction, the retail trade and health care services.

The closure will also “put additional stress on local and state governments dealing with declines in tax revenues,” Barkey stated in a press announcement. The 417 full-time jobs at the plant—all of which will be lost—involved “about $45 million in payroll and benefits,” the announcement said.

Grim Reapers

The nation’s farmers are in the grip of powerful corporations like Monsanto and find it increasingly difficult to plant seeds of their own choosing, giving Big Ag—and genetically engineered crops—a monopoly over the food Americans grow and eat.

That’s one of the many alarming conclusions reached in a comprehensive new report, “Out of Hand: Farmers Face the Consequences of a Consolidated Seed Industry.” The report comes from the Farmer to Farmer Campaign on Genetic Engineering, a project of the National Family Farm Coalition that includes 34 farm organizations working to address the impacts of biotechnology in the ever-narrowing marketplace.

The report concludes that farmers are losing access to conventional seeds, losing the freedom to grow conventional crops, and being forced to pay dramatically higher seed prices along the way.

Smurfit Stone Bankruptcy Fallout

Year after year, the employees said, they worried the rumors would come true: the Smurfit-Stone mill in Frenchtown—home to some of the best-paying manufacturing jobs in the region—would close down for good. But when it comes to losing a livelihood, not even years of preparation can make the shock go away.

“I thought it was only a matter of a time, but it hit us a little unexpectedly,” said soft-spoken mill worker Howard Cotten, describing how he felt when he heard the news this morning.

“My two bosses were both in tears,” said Connie Thompson, a lab worker who started at Smurfit-Stone in 1982. People spent the day in a daze, Thompson said at the end of her shift this afternoon. “It’s a family out here,” she added. “It was like, you just walked around and realized you won’t be working out here any more—a place you’ve worked for 27 years.”

Sen. Burns Hospitalized

Former Montana Senator Conrad Burns suffered a stroke Wednesday night at his home in Arlington, Virginia, according to reports from Montana Congressman Denny Rehberg. Rehberg’s office released the following statement from Burns’ son, Garrett Burns:

Some Justice After All These Years

Call her woman of the year.

Elouise Cobell, a Browning resident, banker, and member of the Blackfeet tribe, decided 13 years ago to take on the federal government, seeking to win back billions of dollars in royalties that were owed to tribal members for oil, gas and other leases on their properties, held in trust by the government. For generations, the 122-year-old trust program was in disarray, and payments were never made.

This week, the United States agreed to pay $3.4 billion to Native Americans to settle what Attorney General Eric Holder described as “the largest case of fiscal mismanagement on behalf of citizens in U.S. history.”

Montana's DUI Legacy Lives On

When it comes to drunken driving, maybe Montana should be called the “state of denial.” For most of the past decade, the state has ranked among the worst in the nation for its high percentage of alcohol-related traffic fatalities and injuries.

Now, a new report from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) declares that Montana in 2008 had the highest DUI-related death rate in the U.S.—for the second year running.

According to the NHTSA, Montana last year “had the highest alcohol-impaired fatality rate in the nation,” with 0.84 fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles traveled (a common measurement for comparing driver data). In 2007, Montana’s DUI death rate, again the highest in the country, was .93 per 100 million vehicle miles. (To read the full report, click here.)

Baucus News and Views

Update: Since this story was posted yesterday, Time magazine has added a fairly nasty article to the mix, entitled ”Max and his Women,” with what’s-this-got-to-do-with-it details about the ex-spouses of both Hanes and soon-to-be 68-year-old Baucus, who “has been involved with his share of feisty women,” Time declares. The Missoulian has followed up its able coverage with a story stating that former reporter Jodi Rave questioned Baucus about his relationship with Hanes, and the next day, Baucus sent an email statement saying her candidacy for U.S. attorney had been withdrawn.

On day four of the Max-and-Mel saga, news media and bloggers around the country continue to weigh in on whether Montana Sen. Max Baucus made a faux pas or a no pas when he recommended his girlfriend, attorney Melodee Hanes, for the job of U.S. attorney in his home state.

The news broke Friday that Baucus had been dating Hanes, an attorney and former staffer. Baucus said he and Hanes decided to withdraw her name from consideration after she moved to Washington and they began living together.

But today’s Wall Street Journal features the revelation that Baucus didn’t disclose his relationship with Hanes to White House officials, to fellow Montana Democrat Sen. Jon Tester, or to Montana attorney Dana Christensen, who was reviewing six candidates for the U.S. attorney post.

“I’ve known Max a long time. I’ve known Mel Hanes a long time. But I did not know that they had a relationship,” Christensen told the Journal reporters Brody Mullins and Julie Jargon.

No Tongues on the Metal, Please

“When your Jeep spins lazily off the mountain road and slams backward into a snowbank, you don’t worry immediately about the cold.”
-- Missoula author Peter Stark, in Outside magazine.

Freezing weather—the type of sub-zero temps slated to hit Montana over the next few days—can really take a person by surprise. Anyone who’s read writer Peter Stark’s magazine piece about nearly freezing to death, or read his fine book Last Breath, knows all about how the cold can sneak up on the clueless.

“The cold remains a mystery, more prone to fell men than women, more lethal to the thin and well muscled than to those with avoirdupois, and least forgiving to the arrogant and the unaware,” as Stark puts it. For more fodder, just browse Jack London’s To Build a Fire.

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