Government

Bofto Enthused about Challenge; YSC Hopes for Grant to Help with Gangs

16 June 2024
Evelyn Pyburn
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Sam Bofto thought he had achieved all the goals of his 28 years in law enforcement, a couple months ago, when he retired from the Yellowstone County Sheriff’s office as undersheriff – but such appears not to be the case. Earlier this month he accepted a new position – a new challenge – as the Director of the Youth Services Center, filling the position of Val Weber, who recently retired after serving as director for 28 years.

Beaming happily, Bofto said in an interview with Yellowstone County News, that he is having a good time – and learning a lot. In fact, he is looking back, and thinking that maybe he missed his calling. While he always wanted to be in law enforcement, he is thinking this is the road he was meant to be on.

This is the first time in 28 years he doesn’t have to wear a uniform every day, beamed Bofto, attired in a casual sport jacket and shirt. He bemoaned, however, about now having to buy his own gas. Bofto said that he passed through “it all” in law enforcement. “I did the streets for five years,” and then was a detective and county corner.

But, now he is realizing “I still have a few years to give.”

The Ted Lechner Youth Services Center  (YSC), at 410 S. 26th Street in Billings, is a secure detention facility that holds minors, up to age 18, who have allegedly violated the law, while their cases go through the judicial system. YSC also operates a shelter care facility that provides a temporary safe and secure “home” for children, who through no fault of their own, have nowhere else to go.

It’s nothing like law enforcement, said Bofto, who also served five years as commander of the Yellowstone County Detention Facility, before being named undersheriff eleven years ago.

In talking about the new challenge before him, it became clear that Bofto appreciates the opportunity to help the young people who pass through the Youth Services Center. “There are a lot of them who really need some help,” he said.

YSC has “a lot of needs”, explained Bofto, not least of which is more space. With the detention facility having been booked to capacity for many months now, the need to expand it is looming large and it is an issue that the county commissioners are talking about, said Bofto.

YSC serves a multi-county area, with the respective counties paying the daily cost ($235 a day) of security, room and board – -and education. They employ 35 people. There are only two other similar facilities in the state, one in Missoula and another in Great Falls.

The detention portion of the center has a maximum capacity of 24, and is currently occupied with 21 youth offenders. The current population is posing a unique problem in that many of them are all part of the same gang and are being held on related charges so they cannot be allowed to communicate with one another. The shelter portion of the center currently has four residents.

Bofto joins a team of dedicated professionals , who he very much respects and appreciates. Two of those individuals accompanied him to a meeting with Yellowstone County Commissioners, last week, to discuss the prospect of getting a grant that would bring one or two professionals to assist YSC, perhaps in cooperation with Pine Hills Youth Correctional Facility, to help in redirecting the lives of “students” in the system.

Especially excited about the possibility of a multi –million dollar, 3 -year grant under the Project Encourage program from the University of Alabama, is Hank Richards, who has served as the counseling and education director at YSC for the past 18 years. He was joined by Terra French, who is Chief of Youth Court, which gives oversight to child protective services, monitoring  the well-being of children who come from conflicted homes, making sure they have a safe place to live and other treatments that may be needed.

Prior to the meeting Richards and French talked excitedly about news that two of their students had passed HiSet tests, achieving Montana High School Equivalency Diplomas.

The duo explained that Dr. Kristine Jolivette, at the College of Education at the University of Alabama strongly encouraged them to apply for the grant. They explained that they had worked with Jolivette previously, having received two past grants from university programs. This grant would provide the funding and oversight for one full time or two part time individuals, who would provide assistance in dealing with serious gang problems with juveniles. It would help determine if “our interventions are working,” said Richards.

French commented that the program is especially needed given the failure of School District 2’s mill levy that included the hiring of a gang specialist.

They explained to the county commissioners that while the University of Alabama would hire the educator(s), YSC and the county commissioners would vet the candidates and oversee the program locally. It would become effective this fall.

Bofto commented that there is a need to work with students to teach them about gangs — about how to get out of gangs – “how to keep from doing stupid stuff.”

Richards is cautiously optimistic about getting the grant – but all agreed that given the issue Billings is having with gangs it could be greatly beneficial.

“Super Pigs” Threaten to Invade Montana

16 June 2024
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Montana is among several states being threatened by an invasion of “super-pigs”, according to New Atlas.

The pigs have wreaked havoc in Canada and are on the verge of crossing the border into Montana, North and South Dakota and Minnesota. They have been seen 18 miles from the North Dakota border.

“The growing wild pig population is not an ecological disaster waiting to happen – it is already happening,” said University of Saskatchewan’s Ryan Brook, professor and lead researcher for the Canadian Wild Pig Project.

The US has been home to ‘normal’ wild pigs for decades, but super-pigs are bigger, faster and more destructive, although less aggressive.

Disease is also a big concern.

Saskatchewan scientists have found that super-pigs are expanding their territory by 9% each year, leaving a path of ecological and agricultural destruction in their wake, having spread rapidly across the country, from British Columbia to Ontario and Quebec, in just a few years.

The hybrid animals are more mobile than other breeds, and there’s not much to stop them. Most of the US-Canadian boundaries are continuous farmland or forested landscapes, which can be easily crossed.

 In the late 1980s, Eurasian wild boar was introduced for game farming  and fenced-in hunting, but when market demand for hunting changed, some were released into the wild. They bred with domestic pigs, evolving an ecological superpower to tolerate supreme cold and a high rate of reproduction, as well as an increase in size. They easily adapt to new environments, free of the habitat constraints and migration challenges that most animals face.

Their prolific breeding and destructive foraging is considered a potential catastrophe for agriculture and the environment.

“Wild pigs can cause soil erosion, degrade water quality, destroy crops, and prey on small mammals, amphibians and birds,” said Ruth Aschim, a PhD student who led the 2019 study. “One of the main problems is the rooting behavior; they upturn the soil because they like to eat the roots and tubers of vegetation. It’s essentially like a rototiller went through an area.”

What’s more, the super-pigs can breed in any season, and sows will have a litter of around six piglets annually. The young are sexually mature in four-to-eight months, and not even a harsh winter can slow them down, as they thrive in the snow, living in ‘pigloos’ underground. They’re also not fussy eaters, and will demolish crops such as corn, wheat, sugar cane and canola, as well as native insects, birds, reptiles and other, smaller, mammals. This is on top of the destructive ‘renovating’ they do by rooting around in the soil.

While it is believed the pigs typically weigh about 250 pounds, a team captured and weighed a pregnant sow to discover she weighed 683 pounds.

And while the super-pigs aren’t aggressive unless threatened, they do bring with them a sizeable pathogenic risk. Disease is a huge concern with wild pigs. They’re reservoirs of not only African Swine Fever, but 39 other viral and bacterial diseases, as well as parasites. They can be transmitted to domestic livestock, wildlife, and humans.

Wildlife Groups Threaten Feds with Lawsuit over Wolf Protections

21 May 2024
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By Chris Woodward, The Center Square

A coalition of animal welfare and wildlife advocacy groups plans to file a lawsuit against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service over gray wolf protections, pointing to the killing of a wolf in Wyoming as an example of why the species needs more protection.

In 2021, the USFWS said relisting “may be warranted,” but a final decision in February declined to relist gray wolves under the Endangered Species Act in the northern Rocky Mountain states, where they are regulated at the state level.

Animal Wellness Action, Center for a Humane Economy, Footloose Montana, and other groups pointed to an incident in Wyoming where a man captured and tortured a gray wolf before killing it, as reported by Cowboy State Daily.

Gray wolves are currently listed under the ESA as endangered in 44 states, while states maintain jurisdiction in Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, as well as parts of Oregon, Washington and Utah.

“With its latest Finding, the FWS is repeating many of the same mistakes it has made in its many prior attempts to delist the gray wolf from ESA protection and the action is likely to face the same outcome as these earlier efforts,” the groups’ intent to sue letter said.

In a statement, Footloose Montana’s Jessica Karjala says states have proven they “cannot be trusted” to sustain the wolf species.

“They not only allow but endorse bounties on wolves,” she said. “They have encouraged increased hunting and quotas on wolves, spotlighting, baiting, trapping, snaring, hound hunting.”

The Center Square previously reported on a lawsuit against USFWS challenging the agency’s February decision by The Center for Biological Diversity, the Humane Society of the United States, Humane Society Legislative Fund, and Sierra Club.

Venture Competition Names Prize Winners

21 May 2024
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The finals of the fifth annual $100K Venture Competition, hosted by Montana State University’s Jake Jabs College of Business and Entrepreneurship and the MSU Blackstone LaunchPad, were held April 24 in Inspiration Hall at MSU.

During the competition, the finalists pitched their innovative business ideas to a panel of five judges and answered questions to vie for a portion of the $100,000 prize money.

The entrepreneurial event included eight ventures, many from current students. The competition was open to all students, faculty, staff and recent graduates in the Montana University System. The eight finalists were selected from a pool of more than 40 applicants.

The winners are listed below.

* First place, $30,000: Airspace: Modular Vehicle Rack System, a modular rack platform that doesn’t compromise truck bed space and utility, presented by Miles Hogger and Daniel Sierra, both students in the business college’s Master of Science in Innovation and Management program.

* Second place, $20,000: Bridger Bionics, which creates affordable prosthetic adaptations for action sports, presented by Brianna Daniels, an MSU alumna, and Calvin Servheen, a directed interdisciplinary studies and industrial engineering student at MSU.

* Third place, $15,000: Smart Dorm Company, which creates cost-effective, sustainable technology for large-scale residential facilities, presented by Elliot Harrison, an MSU alumnus, and Kolter Stevenson and Trevor Wilson, both University of Montana students.

* Fourth place, $10,000: BioCap Solutions, which sustainably manages algae by cleaning harmful algae blooms and capturing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, presented by Will Christian, a Ph.D. student in biochemistry. BioCap Solutions also nabbed the coveted People’s Choice Award, which came with a $6,000 award.

* Social Impact Award, $6,000: English Para Todos, which provides holistic, affordable and accessible English language education, presented by Vanessa Zamora Moreno, an MSU alumna, and Kass Thompson, an MSU student studying cell biology and neuroscience.

* Health Impact Award, $3,000: Neurofluidic Diagnostics, which offers precise drug testing environments to detect and monitor the hallmarks of neurodegeneration linked to Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia, presented by chemical engineering doctoral students Zeynep Malkoc and Esther Stopps.

* Additionally, the finalists that did not place in the top four each earned a $2,500 award.

“The $100K Venture Competition was an amazing opportunity,” said Hogger, a member of the winning venture. “There are some truly amazing ideas being developed in Montana and by MSU alums. I am excited to see future innovations that will come out of this campus. The resources at MSU provide amazing opportunities to learn and implement to allow anyone to start a business.” 

The judges were Stacie Bruno, MSU class of ’08 and vice president of finance for the Outdoor Performance Group of Vista Outdoors; Magali Eaton, Technology Transfer Office associate director and technology translation lead at MSU; Otto Pohl, startup communications strategist and founder of Core Communications; Mitch Violett, MSU class of ’08 and vice president of product management, data science and business development at Outpost; and Chris Walch, CEO and co-founder of LifeScore.

Supreme Court Validates Supremacy of Individual Property Rights

21 May 2024
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There’s a big property rights victory from the Supreme Court that is being little talked about and somewhat shunned as being as significant as it is by much of media.

The Supreme Court has ruled that home equity theft qualifies as a taking, and that state law is not the sole source for the definition of property rights. The ruling sets an important and valuable precedent.

In a unanimous Supreme Court decision local governments seizing the entire value of a property in order to pay off a smaller delinquent property tax debt has been declared as a takings or “home equity theft.” The case, Tyler v. Hennepin County, addressed the case of Geraldine Tyler. The plaintiff in the case was a 94-year-old widow whose home, valued at $40,000, was seized by Hennepin County  after she was unable to pay off $15,000 in property taxes, penalties, interest, and fees. The County then kept the entire $40,000 for itself, as Minnesota law allows.

The Supreme Court unanimously ruled that such practices qualify as takings requiring the payment of “just compensation” under the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment. Importantly, it also concluded that state law is not the sole source of the definition of property rights under the Takings Clause, and therefore state governments cannot seize private property without compensation simply by redefining it as the state’s property.

Besides the clear merits of the case, property rights advocates noted that the case set a significant precedent in declaring that states cannot just redefine property rights at will, which has important implications for other property rights issues.

In the decision, Chief Justice John Roberts pointed out that the Fourteenth Amendment, provides that “private property [shall not] be taken for public use, without just compensation…. States have long imposed taxes on property. Such taxes are not themselves a taking, but are a mandated ‘contribution from individuals . . . for the support of the government . . . for which they receive compensation in the protection which government affords.’”

The Takings Clause does not itself define property. For that, the Court draws on “existing rules or understandings” about property rights. Phillips v. Washington Legal Foundation, 524 U. S. 156, 164 (1998). State law is one important source…. But state law cannot be the only source. Otherwise, a State could “sidestep the Takings Clause by disavowing traditional property interests” in assets it wishes to appropriate. Phillips, 524 U. S., at 167; see also… Hall v. Meisner, 51 F. 4th 185, 190 (CA6 2022) (Kethledge, J., for the Court) (“[T]he Takings Clause would be a dead letter if a state could simply exclude from its definition of property any interest that the state wished to take.”). So we also look to “traditional property law principles,” plus historical practice and this Court’s precedents….

SEC Voluntarily Puts on Hold Climate Change Rule

21 May 2024
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By Steve Wilson, Center Square

Requiring publicly traded companies to make climate-related disclosures has voluntarily been put on hold by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The SEC’s move came before a decision was reached by the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. John Rady, counsel for the SEC in the case, notified the court in a letter.

The commission’s decision was made, Rady wrote in part, because of “procedural complexities of this litigation” and avoiding “potential regulatory uncertainty” if the rule went into place during the legal challenge.

This means until legal challenges at the 8th Circuit are resolved, registrants are not subject to the newly adopted SEC climate disclosure rules. The phase-in period doesn’t begin until 2025 at the earliest; it is unclear if that will be delayed.

The new rule was to be fully in effect in 2026.

West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, in a release, said, “The Biden administration wants to radically transform the SEC run by unelected bureaucrats and make them champions of climate change, regardless of what the agency’s functions are – Biden is creating a federal bureaucracy to suit his agenda. The rule would provide for coordinated discrimination against areas of the country like West Virginia that depend most heavily on fossil fuels for energy.”

Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird, in a statement, said, “Today’s victory shuts down the most outrageous climate mandate for businesses since Biden took office. The SEC’s job is to protect people from fraud. It has no business slapping companies with extremist climate mandates. We are making it clear that Biden has to follow the law like everyone else.

“By halting this mandate, we are protecting businesses from costly red tape, securing our supply chain, and defending family farms. Next, we are going to make this win permanent!”

In the order, the SEC says it “will continue vigorously defending the final rules’ validity in court and looks forward to expeditious resolution of the litigation.”

The SEC rule was adopted in early March and was to have required publicly-traded companies to inform investors of the climate change-related financial risks of that company’s operations. Those include greenhouse gas emissions, severe weather events, and “other natural conditions” such as rising sea levels.

The SEC says most companies are already providing this information, with 90% of Russell 1000 Index (the top 1,000 stocks traded in the U.S.) already providing information related to climate change and 60% of those on the index issuing data on greenhouse gas emissions such as carbon dioxide. 

Following the SEC’s adoption of the new rules, challenges were made at six different federal appellate courts.

On March 21, the federal Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation combined the litigation into one complaint at the 8th Circuit.

Permit to Make Snow at Big Sky

21 May 2024
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The Montana Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) published a draft permit and environmental assessment for a proposed discharge at Spanish Peaks Mountain Club associated with their Snowmaking Project to be located in Madison and Gallatin Counties, near Big Sky.  

Cross Harbor Spanish Peaks Acquisitions (CHSP), LLC, applied to DEQ for a Montana Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (MPDES) permit to discharge treated domestic wastewater as artificial snow on ski runs of the Spanish Peaks Mountain Club on Spirit Mountain, Andesite Mountain, and the Spanish Peaks base area. The source of the treated wastewater is the Big Sky County Water and Sewer District wastewater treatment facility.  

The reuse of wastewater provides environmental benefits by reducing the demand for freshwater to create snow. In its review, DEQ considered whether the wastewater reuse would contribute to nutrient pollution in the watershed. Excessive nutrients in streams can lead to algae growth and water quality issues. DEQ is currently studying excessive algae growth in parts of the Gallatin River Watershed. The applicant submitted a multi-year study that analyzed data on nutrients from the proposed snowmaking based on a pilot project. DEQ carefully reviewed this information in preparing the draft permit and proposed stringent nutrient monitoring. 

According to the applicant, snowmaking would occur primarily during the early portion of the ski season, as a base layer. During the season, natural snow would accumulate on top of and mix with the artificial snow. DEQ reviewed the application, and the draft permit proposed limitations to ensure protection of human health and the environment as well as the beneficial uses of identified nearby waterbodies. The wastewater would be treated and disinfected to standards required for wastewater reuse prior to snowmaking.  CHSP would also be required to conduct significant surface water and snowmelt monitoring during the spring snowmelt and runoff season. The monitoring must be conducted, and the results reported to DEQ every year of the permit term.  

DEQ prepared a draft environmental assessment (EA) in compliance with the Montana Environmental Policy Act to analyze potential impacts of the proposal. The agency is now accepting public comment on the draft permit and EA, after which DEQ will review comments and make a final decision on permit issuance. Public comment closes June 6, 2024, and comments can be submitted electronically or by mail.

Labor Force Grows

21 May 2024
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The size of Billings’ labor force grew by 2000 over the first quarter of this year.

For the last quarter the size of Billings’ labor force – those employed and those seeking employment  —  has grown about two percent, and stands at 94,800. The labor force – people actually working — has also been growing over the past quarter … Billings has the largest labor force in the state more than double that of Great Falls and a quarter more than Missoula.

Statewide, the number of employed is about 578,000,

Both of these economic indicators probably reflect the increase in population in Billings but most interesting it says that the people who are coming here aren’t just retired people as has sometimes been claimed. The reality is Billings is growing the size of its labor force and therefore the size of its  economy.

 The only economic sector in Billings that declined slightly, over the past year, in the number employed was “business services.” Education and health services increased the most. Statewide construction is the sector that increased the most at 4.3 percent – and a category called “information” which is information technology and media types of businesses  was the only sector in the state to decline and it declined 6.9 percent.

The unemployment rate for Billings has been hovering right around 3.5 percent, which is extremely low compared to the nation and also compared to the rest of the state.

Another factor reported is that about ten percent of the workers in the US belong to unions and that amounts to about 14.5 million people. Since COVID, wages for non- union jobs have been escalating at a much higher rate than union jobs.

The consumer price index rose The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that 12-month price growth accelerated from 3.2% in February to 3.5% in March.

Over the past five years, Americans have seen average prices increase more than 20% overall.

KC Fed: Manufacturing Activity Down, Services Up

21 May 2024
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By Derek Draplin, The Center Square

Manufacturing activity declined last month in the Federal Reserve’s 10th District, while services activity increased, according to surveys from the bank’s Kansas City branch.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City’s 10th District covers Kansas, Colorado, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Wyoming, and parts of New Mexico and Missouri.

The bank’s composite index for manufacturing in March was -7. The index for February was -4 and -9 in January. The composite index measures several other indexes such as production, employment, and raw materials inventory.

“Regional factory activity fell further in March, and expectations for future activity were again steady,” Chad Wilkerson, senior vice president at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, said in a statement. “Employment levels expanded modestly even as production and new orders contracted, and over half of firms have given mid-year wage increases recently but fewer plan to this year.”

Despite the drop in activity, “expectations for future activity were again steady,” according to the KC Fed. The future composite index in March was 1, which is down from 2 in February.

In service-related industries, activity grew in the district last month, but “expectations for future activity were flat.”

Governor on BLM Rule

21 May 2024
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Governor Greg Gianforte issued the following statement in response to the Bureau of Land Management’s new “Waste Prevention, Production Subject to Royalties, and Resource Conservation” rule, which will take effect on June 10.

“Today’s announcement from the Bureau of Land Management is the latest attack in President Biden’s war on energy. By issuing this rule, the Bureau is undermining Congress by acting outside of its statutory authority,” Gov. Gianforte said. “This regulatory overreach will undoubtedly raise the cost of reliable energy for Montanans. Instead of promoting his radical green agenda, President Biden should be expanding natural gas production and prioritizing policies that provide affordable and reliable energy for American consumers.”

The recent rule follows one of several actions from the Biden administration that threaten American energy independence and businesses.