Schweitzer: Montana needs leaders who will stand with rural communities — Is that you?

Montana’s elected officials have failed Montana citizens. It’s time for answers – and change.    

Instead of investing in public institutions and infrastructure, creating fair tax codes, and supporting ag producers by incentivizing Montana food on local grocery store shelves and ensuring right to repair equipment, current lawmakers have sided again and again with big business and out-of-state corporations over their rural constituents’ best interests.  

The last three legislative sessions combined started with several billion dollars of surpluses because of one-time income created by the sugar rush of COVID dollars and infrastructure dollars. Instead of investing this one-time money into our schools, nursing homes, hospitals, and low-income housing, legislators gave a billion dollars of permanent tax breaks to out-of-state corporations, big businesses, and the wealthiest. When the sugar rush subsides, it will leave a billion-dollar hole in our budget, which is almost a third of our total budget. That means future legislative sessions will have a billion-dollar deficit to fix.    

During the COVID pandemic, people rushed to Montana to avoid large urban areas. This caused a huge increase in residential property values. When home values increased in the past, then governors/legislators passed laws to keep residential property revenue neutral. Not this governor and Legislature. They could have done this in 2023 or 2025 sessions, but instead, they gave huge tax breaks to the Top 1 percenters and corporations. This has created a tax shift from the wealthiest to residential property. Instead of a simple fix of adjusting the high appraisals to be revenue neutral, they chose a very complicated residential property tax system that creates temporary winners and losers who will all be losers in the future.  

When the Legislature faces the billion dollars deficits in future sessions, you can count on sales tax raising its regressive head. Instead of reinstating taxes on pipelines, transmissions lines, refineries, cell towers, Walmart, Sams Club, Verizon, NorthWestern Energy, and numerous other out-of-state corporations, the debate will turn to sales tax because the working class can’t afford expensive lobbyists to advocate on their behalf.  

State lawmakers aren’t the only ones failing Montanans. In the last year, Congress has failed to pass the 12 appropriations bills that they are constitutionally required to and have yet to pass a farm bill. Instead, they spent months debating and passing a continuing resolution they call the One Big Beautiful Bill. Others call it a Budget Busting Bill. This bill will add $4 trillion dollars of debt, over 11 million people will lose healthcare because of changes to Medicaid and health insurance. It cut more than $300 billion dollars from food nutrition that helps feed 42 million people, mostly children, while they cut $5 trillion dollars in taxes for the wealthiest Americans. This resulted in the closures of rural hospitals and nursing homes and increased hunger. Take home income for the wealthiest increased to nearly $100,000 per year and the take home income for the working class decreased by nearly $10,000. Because those who crafted and voted for this bill knew it would have a negative impact on their re-election, they delayed the implementation of some of its provisions until after the election.  

All these issues and more make it imperative that Montana leaders stand with rural Montanans.  

Is that leader you? Is that leader your neighbor who needs your support? 

If you are intent on championing rural communities, the answer is yes. 

Several upcoming Legislative Advocacy sessions around the state offer opportunities for MFU members, community members, candidates, and lawmakers to learn from and share with each other. The sessions also offer tools for community members to use to hold legislators accountable for their votes, including MFU’s Legislative Scorecard on MFU’s website. Attendees also can learn more about filing for office themselves.  

To learn more about how current lawmakers voted in the 2025 Legislative Session, find a Legislative Advocacy session near you, or learn how to file for office, go to www.montanafarmersunion.com or call 406-452-6406.