Government

It’s Really So — Shopping Small Supports Main Street

29 December 2023
Press Room
No comments

By Aikta Marcoulier, SBA Regional Administrator

The pandemic confirmed the essential role that small businesses play in our daily lives.  It sounds cliché, but locally owned small businesses truly are the heart and soul of our cities and towns. The holiday shopping season is a crucial time for small retailers and restaurants that depend upon the boost in sales earned between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Not so long ago, it was an annual holiday tradition to travel downtown and shop at one of the many locally owned main street businesses. Brick-and-mortar businesses would promote their best deals of the year in hopes of luring shoppers to make a purchase, or at least browse their shelves full of merchandise. Today, online shopping has quickly become the preferred way Americans buy their holiday gifts.  Recent estimates show that more than 80 percent of shoppers make regular online purchases throughout the year.  

Given the dramatic shifts in the retail environment over the last twenty years, those holiday scenes and traditions are in danger of passing into the realm of nostalgic folklore.

To better compete, small business owners have become very innovative in the way they sell and promote their products and services.  An encouraging transformation born out of the pandemic is that many entrepreneurs pivoted operating models to include e-commerce platforms, or changed product offerings, to meet the new demands of the online consumer. Some are even bringing back the retail traditions of the past by providing personalized one-on-one assistance to customers and the selling of locally produced niche items found nowhere else in town. Cottage businesses have started in record numbers as people realized their dream of small business ownership could begin in their basement or garage.

The success of this year’s holiday shopping season will have a huge impact here in Montana and across the nation. Montana’s 130,000 small businesses generate almost 50 percent of the jobs in our state, employing 253,000 Montanans.  As you shop locally at one of the 13,000 retail small businesses, you’re not only proving unique and memorable gifts, but you are also helping boost Montana’s economy and directly supporting local families. If you are leaning more towards creating memories verses traditional gift giving, consider one of the 7,000 small businesses that offer entertainment or recreational activities.

Small businesses are the backbone of our democracy, and the solution to our most challenging economic problems. If you’re an entrepreneur and need advice, please consider exploring the tools and resources of the U.S. Small Business Administration and its partners. SBA’s resource partners include the Montana Small Business Development Center (SBDC) network with 10 locations throughout the state, our statewide Procurement Technical Assistance Centers, the Women’s Business Centers in Bozeman and Missoula, and SCORE. Each of these partners can help identify strategies to become more competitive and viable in what will likely be an ever-shifting business landscape.

In addition to our formal partners, small business owners can get involved with local support organizations such as chambers of commerce, business districts, and neighborhood associations. These organizations are actively involved in coordinating events and promotions to attract foot traffic to their small business members including local bazaars and shop small/dine small/entertain small, focused festivals.

This holiday season, please join me in making at least one purchase from a locally owned small business in your city or town.  These business owners are the true heroes of our communities, and they deserve our support, thanks, and appreciation.

IRS Delays Reporting Rule

29 December 2023
Press Room
No comments

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) recently announced a delay to the reporting requirement threshold for transactions on payment platforms including Venmo, PayPal, and Airbnb. The delay will keep a $20,000 transaction threshold for 2023 and introduce a new significantly lower threshold phased-in starting in 2024. Despite the delay, this new rule will add to the harmful tax-related paperwork burden for small businesses and increase government overreach.

After the phase-in year, the mandate will require payment platforms to send a Form 1099-K to the IRS and users if their transactions total more than $600 for the year. The new requirement raises concerns that the IRS will not be able to differentiate between money received as payment for work and money that was received to split the costs of goods or services, creating confusion.

“For example, if you buy concert tickets and your friend sends you money electronically to pay for theirs, the IRS may treat this as income to you and tax it,” explained NFIB President Brad Close. “Multiply this by tens of millions of transactions, and you can see the magnitude of the problem facing small businesses. Small businesses expect the additional confusion and lower threshold will add to their already harmful paperwork burden and increase government overreach.”

The IRS does not have the authority to pick the threshold – only Congress has the authority to remove or change the 1099-K reporting threshold. While the ‘transition year’ $5,000 threshold temporarily relieves an unnecessary reporting burden and confusion for some, what small businesses need is for Congress to provide a complete fix by removing the new $600 threshold rule that will start in 2025.

In March 2021, the American Rescue Plan implemented this $600 threshold. For the 2023 tax year, the IRS will require payment platforms to generate 1099-K forms using the longstanding threshold of $20,000. Small businesses receiving 2023 1099-K forms from these platforms will see them in the mail or electronically in early 2024, similar to the tax-related forms received from banks regarding savings accounts.

For the 2024 tax year, the IRS will require these platforms to generate 1099-K forms at a threshold of $5,000 in transactions. Based on the November 2023 IRS announcement, in early 2025, every small business that has more than $5,000 in transactions on platforms like PayPal, Venmo, and others, will start receiving 1099-K tax forms for additional tax liabilities.

NFIB is calling on Congress to remove the new, lower threshold and return to the longstanding $20,000 threshold for 1099-K reporting and will continue to advocate for a repeal.

High Interest Rates Slow Residential, Commercial Construction

29 December 2023
Press Room
No comments

By Tu-Uyen Tran, Senior Writer, Federal Reserve Bank of  Minneapolis

Trends in the Ninth District’s construction industry are splitting along clear lines: For industrial and infrastructure projects, business is up. But the same can’t be said for residential and commercial construction, according to a recent Minneapolis Fed survey.

“There has been a real drop off in single family homes,” a concrete subcontractor in Greater Minnesota said. High interest rates have made homes much less affordable for many people, he said.

Yet, the same survey respondent expects work to pick up outside of housing. Federal and state governments are “dumping a lot of money” into public works projects, he said.

In the residential and commercial construction sectors, more survey respondents reported lower revenue than higher revenue. But the opposite was true in the industrial and infrastructure sectors.

The survey was conducted in partnership with dozens of construction and other trade organizations in early November. More than 300 respondents took part in the survey.

Compared with a year ago, revenue decreased for 61 percent of the residential sector and 41 percent of the commercial sector. Only about a third of the industrial and infrastructure sectors said the same.

The residential sector began to diverge from the other sectors in the middle of 2022, around the time interest rates began to soar, according to earlier Minneapolis Fed surveys. The commercial sector soon followed.

Survey responses suggest that homebuyers and commercial developers are more sensitive to interest rate hikes. One reason the infrastructure sector is less sensitive is that the clients are often governments.

A Twin Cities architect said most of the revenue growth her firm has enjoyed has been from out-of-state federal government contracts. “If it were not for those we would be sorely under sales and profits, and likely considering layoffs.”

In some areas, government spending incentivized private spending. A supplier of construction materials in western South Dakota said commercial buildings and hotels are being built in anticipation of growth at Ellsworth Air Force Base. The Air Force plans to house its new B-21 stealth bombers there in the next few years.

The challenge of labor

When survey respondents were asked to name their top challenges, 66 percent in the residential construction sector pointed to high interest rates.

Far fewer respondents in commercial, industrial, and infrastructure sectors considered interest rates to be so challenging. In those sectors, labor availability was the top challenge for the largest number of respondents. Even in the slower-growing commercial sector, 44 percent said labor availability is a top challenge while 42 percent identified rate hikes.

This difference likely stems from hiring challenges. A majority of respondents in all sectors except residential said their firm is still hiring (Figure 3). These positions include new permanent workers, seasonal workers, and replacements for workers who quit. Workers in skilled trades are more in demand than those without specialized skills; respondents said skilled workers received bigger pay hikes.

“This is the biggest challenge we have had for the last three years that I can remember,” said a South Dakota general contractor specializing in commercial construction. “Wages are going up and people’s skillsets are declining.”

In the residential sector, less than half of respondents said their firm is hiring. Despite some warnings of potential layoffs, the majority of those not hiring are hanging on to the workers they have.

Inflation was a top challenge a year ago for a majority of respondents in all sectors. In this survey, it was only a top challenge for a majority of the residential sector.

Pessimism in the residential sector

Looking ahead over the next six months, optimism outweighs pessimism in all but the residential sector, where 46 percent don’t expect business to improve. The infrastructure sector reported the best outlook, with 48 percent expressing optimism. In the commercial sector, optimism narrowly beat pessimism 39 percent to 35 percent; the remaining responses were neutral.

The outlook is gloomy for homebuilders, because many may soon run out of work and new contracts are scarce. Sixty-seven percent of the sector said their project backlog had decreased. Sixty percent reported fewer requests for proposal (RFP) from private clients, who dominate the sector.

“We have no backlog currently,” said a Montana homebuilder. “In years back we had 10 to 20 houses in our backlog, which makes up about 10 to 20 percent of our yearly sales.”

Other sectors also reported decreased prospects for future work, but not to the same extent. In the commercial sector, for example, 44 percent said backlogs decreased and 51 percent said RFPs for private projects are fewer. The bulk of projects in the commercial sector are funded by private developers.

Public projects are much more stable. A majority of respondents in all sectors reported the same or greater number of public RFPs. That’s a boon to the infrastructure sector, where a large amount of public funding goes.

In North Dakota, a general contractor specializing in infrastructure said, “We can pick and choose our projects.”

Government Seeks Power to Invalidate Patents

29 December 2023
Press Room
No comments

Will the federal government open the gateway to confiscating the property of inventors and innovators in the US by giving itself the power to invalidate federally-funded patents upon a whim?

Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council (SBE Council) president & CEO Karen Kerrigan, commented, “President Biden’s proposed framework for march-in use under the Bayh-Dole Act amounts to an announcement that the U.S. government can invalidate patents and other intellectual property whenever it pleases. Make no mistake, the framework is not just about drugs, which is bad enough. It will chill innovation across the economy, dealing a major blow to small businesses and startups in particular, and across sectors.”

 “The 1980 Bayh-Dole Act was designed to ensure that federally-backed basic research wouldn’t just languish in laboratory archives, as much of it did before 1980. Thanks to the bipartisan law, businesses can license promising early-stage discoveries and develop them into revolutionary commercial products. Since Bayh-Dole’s passage, around 68% of licenses have gone to small businesses or start-ups.

 “The system created by Bayh-Dole has worked exactly as planned. The law has supported the creation of more than 15,000 new start-ups – many of them small businesses – while contributing an estimated $1.3 trillion to the US economy.

 “Until yesterday, the so-called march-in rights created under Bayh-Dole were conceived as an emergency provision. In cases where a company was either unable or unwilling to turn a licensed patent into a practical product, the government could revoke that license and reissue it to another firm better equipped to do the job. The circumstances justifying march-in are so limited that the government has never exercised the power in the more than 40 years Bayh-Dole has been on the books.

“Yesterday’s announcement is a sharp departure from decades of precedent businesses have come to rely on.

“If the Biden Administration finalizes this ill-conceived plan, the economic incentive to translate federally-funded science into commercial technologies will evaporate. Start-ups and investors won’t waste their time and money developing state-of-the-art products if federal officials can cancel their IP rights at will and without legal justification.

 “This proposal must be scrapped.”

Federal Program Aims to Expand Montana Ag in Food Production

29 December 2023
Dennis Pyburn
No comments

In order to increase production and add new agriculture products, the  U.S. Department of Agriculture is providing $3 million to the State of Montana. The funds are to support technology that will “place products in consumer markets” throughout the state.

A press release claims the state’s investments through Resilient Food Systems Infrastructure (RFSI) Program will create a food systems infrastructure to support competitive and profitable market access for farm products.

Montana’s Department of Agriculture is accepting pre-applications for this Infrastructure Grant funding through Jan. 8, 2024.

In May 2023, USDA announced the availability of up to $420 million through RFSI to strengthen local and regional food systems. Through this program, AMS has entered into cooperative agreements with state agencies, commissions, or departments responsible for agriculture, commercial food processing, seafood, or food system and distribution activities or commerce activities in states or U.S. territories. RFSI is authorized by the American Rescue Plan.

USDA Marketing and Regulatory Programs, Under Secretary Jenny Lester Moffitt said, “The projects funded through this program will create new opportunities for the region’s small and midsize producers to thrive, expand access to nutritious food options, and increase supply chain resiliency.”

According to the federal government’s press release the program will fund projects that support the addition of new technology to increase production and add product lines for agriculture products, invest in business capacity to place products in consumer markets, build cold storage capacity throughout the state, and expand food distribution lines. “The state’s priorities are informed by stakeholder engagement and outreach to underserved producers to better understand their needs,” it claims.

Montana’s Department of Agriculture Director Christy Clark said in accepting the federal funding, “These grants support infrastructure to invest in capacity and the expansion of food distribution lines,” that will improve “Montana’s producers’ ability to innovate and grow their operations.”

CSLB Expands Nationwide as Momentum Builds to Overturn Job-Killing Rule

29 December 2023
Press Room
No comments

Michael Layman, senior advisor to the Coalition to Save Local Businesses (CSLB), issued the following statement highlighting CSLB’s rapid nationwide growth. Since its November relaunch, CSLB has driven almost 60 groups across 10 states to call on their state congressional delegations to support a bipartisan resolution to overturn the job-killing joint employer rule.

“Momentum is building to stop the job-killing joint employer rule,” said Layman. “Small and local business owners across America know this overreaching and unworkable regulation will kill jobs, shutter storefronts, increase litigation and make an already uncertain economic outlook that much worse. It’s encouraging to see the widespread support in communities across the country for overturning this disastrous rule.”

The NLRB’s final joint employer rule would expand 6he definition of joint employer, stripping small business owners of authority over their employees. This new joint employer rule expands on an old joint employer rule that destroyed an estimated 376,000 jobs, cost small businesses an estimated $33 billion, and led to a 93% spike in lawsuits in the franchise sector alone.  Proposed in Sept. 2022, the expanded joint employer rule was finalized on Oct. 26, 2023, was scheduled to take effect on Dec. 26, 2023 and has now been postponed until February 26, 2024.

Brad Griffin, CEO of the Montana Equipment Dealers Association said, “Agriculture is the lifeblood of Montana’s economy and supplying this vital industry with proper equipment is fundamental to its success. We oppose the joint employer rule, because it will negatively impact our dealer-member’s relationships with their agriculture partners. The Montana congressional delegation should absolutely support the effort to overturn this harmful rule.”

Earlier this year, a group of 72 organizations sent a letter urging Congress to use the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to overturn the NLRB’s final joint employer rule. Following the initial letter, organizations in Arizona, California, Maine, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New York, North Carolina, and North Dakota sent similar letters to their state congressional delegations.

U.S. Senators Bill Cassidy, M.D. (R-LA), ranking member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, and Joe Manchin (D-WV), Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Representative Virginia Foxx (R-NC), chairwoman of the House Education and Workforce Committee, Representative John James (R-MI) and Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) introduced resolutions of disapproval under the CRA to overturn this new job-killing rule.

The Coalition to Save Local Businesses represents hundreds of thousands of local businesses and millions of American jobs through its membership and partner organizations.  The coalition’s goal is to raise the voices of everyday Americans who own, operate, work for and depend on local businesses for their livelihoods.

The Poor are Getting Richer Under Current Tax System

26 December 2023
Press Room
No comments

By Scott Hodge, Tax Foundation

Underlying every fiscal policy discussion in Washington is the question of progressivity: how much should tax and spending policy redistribute from high-income households to low-income households?

This debate is often more rhetorical than substantive, but a recent study by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) fills this void by presenting data showing that the current fiscal system—both taxes and direct federal benefits—is very progressive and very redistributive.

The CBO study estimates the impact of federal fiscal policy on household incomes in 2019 (the most recent data). It does this by contrasting how much households benefited from social insurance programs (e.g., Social Security and Medicare) and means-tested transfer programs (e.g., Medicaid, SNAP, and Supplemental Security Income) with how much they paid in total federal taxes—including individual income taxes, payroll taxes, corporate income taxes, estate taxes, and various excise taxes.

These policies lift the incomes of many households (who receive more in federal benefits than they pay in total federal taxes) while reducing the income of others (who pay more in federal taxes than they receive in direct federal benefits). CBO’s data allows us to measure the impact of these policies on the average household within various income groups and then aggregate the results to measure how these policies redistribute income between groups of households.

To be sure, households do benefit from other federal programs such as national defense, highway spending, and public education, but CBO does not include the benefits of such programs in this exercise. The study is solely focused on fiscal policy that directly impacts household incomes.

Federal benefit programs and taxes can either raise market incomes or reduce them. For example, in 2019, households in the lowest quintile paid almost no federal income taxes but received nearly $22,000 in transfer benefits. As a result, these policies more than doubled their household incomes, an increase of 126 percent.

The story is very similar for households in the second and middle quintiles, although not as extreme. After netting their federal taxes paid, direct federal benefit policies raised the incomes of households in the second quintile by 39 percent and the incomes of households in the middle quintile by 11 percent.

The story changes completely for average households in the top two quintiles. On average, they paid more in taxes in 2019 than they received in direct federal benefits. Households in the fourth quintile, for example, saw their incomes fall by 4 percent, while households in the highest quintile saw their incomes fall by 21 percent.

At the very top of the income scale, the story is even more dramatic. Households in the top 1 percent paid an average of roughly $600,000 in federal taxes and received about $15,000 in federal benefits. As a result, federal tax and spending policies reduced the incomes of households in the top 1 percent by nearly one-third (30 percent).

It is interesting to note that federal benefit programs are distributed relatively evenly across the income scale, while federal taxes skew very heavily to higher-income earners.

Federal fiscal policy increased the overall income for households in the lowest quintile by $566 billion in 2019. Households in the second quintile gained $390 billion in income while households in the middle quintile gained $187 billion in income.

Combined, the first three quintiles gained more than $1.1 trillion in income thanks to federal benefit policies, even after netting out their federal taxes paid.

On the other end of the income scale, progressive fiscal policy reduced the incomes of households in the fourth quintile by $109 billion in 2019. However, this is a fraction of the nearly $1.7 trillion that households in the highest quintile saw their incomes fall due to federal fiscal policy. Of this amount, some $702 billion came from households in the top 1 percent alone.

Overall, federal fiscal policy lowered the incomes of the top 40 percent of American households by roughly $1.8 trillion in 2019. Of this, more than $1.1 trillion was redistributed to lift the incomes of households in the bottom 60 percent of the population, while the remaining $656 billion went to pay for other federal spending.

Retired Americans Likely to See Higher Prescription Drug Costs

26 December 2023
Press Room
No comments

The cost of prescription drugs will likely increase 42-57 percent for retired Americans enrolled in Medicare’s Part D prescription coverage in 2024. The reason is the manipulation of the market by government which encourages insurers to shift costs from one group of users to be borne by another.

A change in the Inflation Reduction Act, which reduces co-pays for some, especially those with chronic conditions, shifts that cost to about a fourth of Medicare recipients who exceed the threshold of the new $2000 cap and will be expected to cover 60-80 percent of their prescription costs.

Earlier reports projected slight premium declines across Part D plans next year, but the HealthView report, published in November 2023, contrasts sharply with a July projection by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), the federal agency that administers the Medicare program, 

CMS said there would be a 1.8 percent decline in Part D premiums for 2024, because of “reforms” in the Inflation Reduction Act. However, HealthView forecasts major hikes for retirees in states with large senior populations. They projected average increases ranging from $269 in Texas to $510 in New York.

The Inflation Reduction Act lowered the maximum out-of-pocket spending cap for Medicare Part D prescription drugs from $7,050 in 2023, to $2,000 in 2025, reducing co-pays for some, especially those with chronic conditions. However, financial liability will shift to insurers expected to cover 60-80 percent of costs once patients hit the new $2,000 cap.

With roughly a quarter of Medicare recipients exceeding this threshold, HealthView analysis suggests carriers will raise premiums to account for their increased coverage requirements. The higher premiums are a way for insurance companies to cover the expected increase in costs.

So, while the Inflation Reduction Act aims to lower overall healthcare costs for retirees, it may actually increase 2024-2025 Part D premiums for 75 percent of enrollees seeing no co-pay relief.

Epoch Times reports, “Americans pay for prescription drugs over 2.5 times more than other high-income nations. One in five seniors alter medication use due to high prescription costs, a May 2023 national survey found. They either skipped, delayed, took less medication, or took someone else’s medications.”

HealthView analysis shows 2024 increases could outpace the average retiree’s Social Security cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) by 70 percent – posing real financial challenges.

Local Taxes – $5,148 Per Person

22 December 2023
Press Room
No comments

In Montana the State and Local Governments collected $5,148 per person in 2021. The collections were 30th highest – in other words, 30 states collected more in tax revenues per person in 30 other states.

New York collected the most at $10,266. New York was, however, exceeded by Washington DC where collections were $13,278. California collects $9,175 per person.

State and local government in Alaska collect the least at $4,192 per person. Alabama was second to the last collecting $4,245 per person. Tennessee ranked 48th pulling in $4,272 in revenues for each citizen, followed by Florida at $4,405 in state and local government revenue collected per person.

Among Montana neighbors, North Dakota ranks the highest collecting $7,005 per person in state and local government taxes. Idaho ranks 41st, collecting $4,650 per person. Wyoming collects $5,213 per person, ranking it 28 and South Dakota ranks 38th, collecting $4,677 per person.

The Tax Foundation explained some of the figures stating, “Alaska is an anomaly here: while the state imposes incredibly low tax burdens on residents, its severance taxes generate substantial revenue that often yield relatively high collections per capita. FY 2021, however, captured a period of significant fluctuations in oil markets, from which the industry—and Alaska’s revenues—have since recovered. Similar effects are evident in other resource-dependent states, like North Dakota and Wyoming, which had markedly lower per capita collections in FY 2021 than in years prior, or (based on their own revenue data) since. These states export much of their tax burden, and there was simply less to export that year.”

The Tax Foundation further commented, “It’s worth noting that severance taxes are only one of many examples of the “tax exporting” that states engage in. Travel taxes—such as hotel, car rental, and meal taxes—also disproportionately impact nonvoting nonresidents who have few means of redress. As a result, states that generate substantial amounts of tax revenue from tourism may also show tax collections per capita that are higher than the actual tax burden that falls on the in-state population. Taxes on businesses may also be exported, at least in part, to investors across the country, and to employees wherever they are located. It is important to keep both legal incidence and economic incidence in mind when evaluating the true costs of any tax.

State and local governments fared well in FY 2021, but with all the ways our world has changed since the start of the pandemic, that feels like eons ago. Even though these maps are always limited by the timing of Census data releases, it’s fair to ask where things stand now. And fortunately, while we can’t go state by state, we do have quarterly data for the national aggregate of state and local tax collections through FY 2023.

Since FY 2019, the last full fiscal year before the pandemic, state and local tax collections have risen more than 27 percent. Much of that gain is subsumed by inflation, but even after adjusting for inflation, state and local tax revenues are more than 7 percent higher than they were pre-pandemic.

Revenues soared in FY 2021, jumping a full 10 percent (inflation-adjusted) higher than pre-pandemic figures, edging up even higher in FY 2022 (to 12 points up) before coming down to earth a bit in FY 2023. But this should not be alarming. Partly, it is a reversion to the mean: state revenues skyrocketed, and it’s okay for them to level off or even decline a little, as long as the new totals remain higher (in real terms) than before. Additionally, almost every state has adopted tax cuts since the start of 2021, including 25 that have cut individual income tax rates since then. Legislators wanted to return some of the revenue growth to the taxpayers—and even with that, revenues remain up in real terms.

Recent revenue declines, moreover, are concentrated in California and New York, high-tax states with intense reliance on high marginal income tax rates. Not only are these states more vulnerable to income fluctuations among high earners—an important source of volatility—but in an increasingly mobile environment, they’re driving some of those high earners to other states as well. While only state (not local) tax revenue data are available at a state-by-state level for more recent fiscal years, New York and California’s combined state tax revenue is up 2.9 percent in real terms since FY 2019, compared to 11.3 percent growth in the rest of the country.

To the Editor and Governor Gianforte:

22 December 2023
Press Room
No comments

I appreciated my time spent on this 95 mill property tax issue with you , the Dept. of Revenue and the Lobbyist for the School Organizations.  I am dis-appointed with the Supreme Court ruling but will abide with it.  The educational value  of researching and understanding how the school, local government and state school funding is calculated on a tax bill was worth the effort.

But Governor, Your press release on this ruling you stated that you are committed to long-term reform “including holding the line on local spending that drives property tax increases.”

You and the ruling just ordered the Commissioners of Beaverhead County to levy an ADDITIONAL  $602,677 on the taxpayers of Beaverhead County.  49 of the 56 Counties across Montana fought hard to control property tax increases this year only to be challenged by You and your Dept. of Revenue to levy an additional $78,774,449 on a statewide level.  So much for driving property tax increases.

Beaverhead County taxpayers need to know that

Beaverhead Co. Accessed  19.65 mills LESS than last year.

City of Dillon  Accessed 24.14  mills LESS than last year.

School Dist. #10  Accessed  29.67 mills LESS than last year.

BCHS Accessed  17.10  mills LESS than last year.

This was all done by local government trying to control the increase of property taxes by following state law.  MCA 15-10-420

In addition, the Agencies  in Beaverhead County that have VOTED MILL ATHORITY, the Boards of those agencies decided NOT TO LEVY the full amount this year because of the extreme increases that we are seeing now.  These decisions kept $348,355 off of the current year tax bills.  Check your tax bills and you will see all levied mills are  less than last year.  Now, the only line on your tax that will remain the same is the first line called State School Levy.

This is where $600,000 of your property tax dollars will go.   This will increase revenue to the State by 34% over last year, almost $99,000,000 State wide.

One final question that needs to be researched,  “Did the local school districts just receive a $99 million windfall statewide???”  When your local school board reply’s NO, does that mean the $99 million really goes into  the State General Fund????

Thanks for allowing me to serve.

Mike McGinley

Beaverhead County Commissioner

Dear Editor:

I would like to thank our Montana Public Service Commissioners Brown, Fielder, Pinocci, O’Donnell, and Bukacek for their diligence in serving and protecting the rights and safety of Montanans.

They have recently ruled that NorthWestern Energy (NWE) is to provide a free, no cost Opt-Out for their installation of Smart/Advanced Meters, including no fees for keeping our old meters or monthly charges. 

Unfortunately, NWE has not given customers proper informed consent with which to make informed decisions.  Smart Meters have never been proven to be safe for human use and exposure. Thousands of research studies indicate harm from long term exposure to this type of constant high pulsed microwave radiation coming out of Smart Meters. These meters will also catch on fire and explode more easily and emit higher levels of dirty electricity.  Smart Meters are contraindicated for those with chronic health conditions and certain medical implants. You can research these negative health and safety effects at https:// www. takebackyourpower.net/ research/

In August 2021, in a historic ruling, a Circuit Court of Appeals in D.C. has ruled that the FCC’s safety guidelines for microwave radiation was inadequate to protect human health.  Yet, Utilities are still continuing to install Smart Meters which violate not only our health and safety, but also constitutional rights to privacy with 24/7 collection of private utility data.  Eventually Smart Meters can be used to track and control your carbon footprints.

Fortunately, we can Opt-Out of these risks by contacting NorthWestern Energy 1-800-486-4280 for an Opt-Out Application.

Mae Woo

Billings, MT