HELENA — Hundreds of people gathered in the Montana State Capitol Rotunda Wednesday to show their opposition to federal and state proposals that they say would threaten Montana’s public lands.
(Watch the video to hear more from the Rally for Public Lands)
The Rally for Public Lands happens during every state legislative session, but this year, much of the focus was on the federal government.
“There's a lot more at stake than political games playing in Washington, okay?” said Ryan Callaghan, director of conservation for the outdoor lifestyle company MeatEater. “This is about Montana. It's our future, it's our children's future. Let's get out there, make our voices loud.”
Many of those in attendance held signs criticizing the Trump administration for laying off workers who help manage public lands, at agencies like the U.S. Forest Service, National Park Service and Bureau of Land Management.
Hilary Hutcheson, a fly-fishing outfitter and fly shop owner in the Flathead, was the master of ceremonies for the rally. She said her oldest daughter has been one of those affected by federal job reductions.
“She got a job with the BLM that was quickly pulled,” Hutcheson said. “She didn't even get to start, she didn't even have a first day or an orientation – it was over before it started. And that was very, very jarring, because she worked so hard, because she had such passion for the work, because she was going to be a range scientist and her future was in front of her.”
On the state level, speakers at the rally were concerned about bills like Senate Bill 307, sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Sen. Tom McGillvray, R-Billings. It would redirect revenue from taxes on legal marijuana sales – which has been going toward several wildlife and recreation programs – to substance abuse and law enforcement measures.
Currently, the first $6 million of marijuana tax revenue goes to behavioral health services through the HEART Fund. 20% of the remainder – about $10 million a year – goes to the Habitat Montana program, which funds wildlife habitat improvement programs. Another 12% – around $6 million – is divided between state parks, trails and recreational programs and a program for non-game wildlife.
SB 307 would remove the Habitat Montana and other recreational allocations and send more money to the HEART Fund and to new state accounts to fund substance abuse prevention efforts and to law enforcement activities like investigating the marijuana black market.
The original ballot measure that legalized marijuana sales called for using some of the revenue for conservation. McGillvray says he objected to that because it’s the role of the Legislature, not a ballot measure, to appropriate money. He argued programs like Habitat Montana already have enough funding, and that money from the marijuana program should be used to address the harms he believes marijuana legalization has caused.
“If you have smoking revenue from taxes on cigarettes, you use it to deal with the harms and prevention to get people to quit smoking,” he said. “You don't use it to provide habitat for non-game animals like gophers. I mean, that is a disconnect.”
But opponents said redirecting a stable source of funding that supports Montana’s public lands is the wrong step.
“It’s amazing to hear people say, ‘This could be this, and this could be that,” when we have something that is already important, that people have already asked for, that people have voted on, that people have spoken up for,” Hutcheson said.
SB 307 is scheduled for an initial hearing next week.
Another piece of legislation speakers at the rally brought up was a proposed joint resolution, sponsored by Rep. Tom Millett, R-Marion. It expresses support for a possible lawsuit, backed by the state of Utah, that would question the federal government’s authority to hold onto “unappropriated public lands.”
Leaders in Utah have argued that the federal government shouldn’t be able to indefinitely keep control of lands that haven’t been designated as a national park, national forest or other specific type of use. That covers millions of acres currently overseen by the Bureau of Land Management – including about 8 million acres in Montana. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear Utah’s case earlier this year, but the state is considering launching a lawsuit in a lower court.
Opponents of Millett’s resolution said supporting Utah’s position and endorsing transfer of land management from the federal government to the states would be a “slippery slope” toward privatizing those lands. Millett told MTN that was not the goal of the legislation, though he said he does think Montana could benefit from managing those lands itself. He said he saw the issue as an important constitutional question that needed to be resolved one way or the other.
Millett’s resolution has not yet been officially introduced. Joint resolutions do not need to pass through their first chamber as early as other types of legislation.
