As the campaign season kicks off in earnest, members of the newly formed Montana Public Trust Coalition would like to remind you of the reckless efforts by extremists in the last Montana Legislature. You may not be aware of this, but our 1972 Constitution codified much of Montana’s historical success directly into our Constitution. These successes include the recovery of wild animals across our majestic landscape, the right of every day citizens to hunt and fish regardless of wealth or birthright, our right to a clean and healthful environment and even our first in the nation stream access law. Unfortunately, certain politicians in the last legislature sought to undo 100 years of our collective success.
These people blatantly ignored your will and a citizen’s initiative to ban guaranteed tags for wealthy outfitted clients, while those who couldn’t afford to hire a guide had their tags remain in a lottery without the extra points afforded the wealthy. Not content to ignore you once, a bill was proposed to award guaranteed tags to certain wealthy landowners, leaving less for the everyday citizen. Not to be outdone the two worst proposals of the session included an effort to prohibit private landowners from selling their land to buyers of their choice and finally an effort to eradicate Montana of prescriptive easements. The loss of those easements would remove access to literally millions of acres of public land and destined to pit neighbor vs neighbor in unlimited lawsuits. Most recently, two elected officials on the land board voted against the setting aside of a parcel of public land because they were more interested in subdividing this land rather than preserving it for you, the citizens of this state. Attorney General Austin Knudsen said in defense of his vote, “I don’t think people are moving here from California, Oregon, from Washington, to live in high-rise apartments. I think they’d like to have a piece of Montana and have a little acreage and a house.” Keep in mind there was no public opposition, so it begs the question, if they are not listening to you, to whom are they listening? It certainly seems like these folks are willing to take from you to provide for those wealthy folks moving here. Many of these efforts thankfully failed, but the extremists have promised their donors that they are bringing them back.
The Montana Public Trust Coalition formed in response to these assaults on the public trust. A grass-roots coalition from across Montana and across the political spectrum has asked all legislative candidates if they will promise to defend our constitution (as required by their oath of office), in particular our right to hunt and fish as well as a clean and healthful environment and to reject any effort to reduce or privatize items already in the public trust. Two years ago, these questions would have been unthinkable, however, Montana is facing the consequences of the growing national extremism and these actions are endangering the very things that make Montana, well, Montana.
Please join us in reaching out to all legislative candidates and asking them to defend our constitution, our right to hunt and fish, our right to a clean and healthful environment and to not devalue the public trust.
You can see the pledge, our story, our supporters and sign on to our efforts here: https://www.montanapublictrustcoalition.com/
Thanks for taking the time to defend Montana and her constitution.
