Month: May 2018

by William Skink

Hey Montana Democrats, I need help understanding why the politician near the top of your political food chain—Governor Steve Bullock—thinks the Medicaid cuts aren’t an unforeseen emergency warranting supplemental funding. Here is Travis Hoffman, Advocacy Coordinator with Summit Independent Living, in a column from today’s Missoulian:

Some legislators asked the governor for a supplemental to address at least some of the Medicaid community services cuts in March. This request was denied, as we understand that the Governor’s Office did not believe that they met the standard for a supplemental, which requires that the expense be due to an “unforeseen or unanticipated emergency.” However, for people who got their services from Helena Industries, which has filed for bankruptcy, or youth with mental illnesses who received services from the recently closed Sinopah in Kalispell or the Great Falls Youth Transition Center, and people who rely on personal care attendants to dress, bathe and eat, whose hours were significantly reduced, it really feels like an emergency.

Given that the record “unforeseen and unanticipated” 2017 fire season was the reason given for Montana’s financial state that brought about many of these cuts, they certainly appear to meet this test to me.

Is Governor Bullock correct in this assertion coming from his office? Or, does Travis Hoffman have a valid point, considering the 2017 fire season was the reason given for Montana’s dire financial situation and is the epitome of an unanticipated emergency?

Making this decision from the Governor’s office even more maddening, additional funds are being considered for the State Hospital in Warm Springs.  Here is Hoffman again making some great points:

Advocates all across Montana have spent the past year trying to prevent individuals with disabilities from being forced into institutions of all kinds — nursing facilities, the Montana State Hospital, jails and prisons. Bullock’s office and the Department of Public Health and Human Services have engaged the disability community on these issues, however, many of those engagements have turned out to be meaningless.

I say that not only because the administration has made certain decisions about where the cuts were made that disadvantage community services. I say that because now, when the governor requests a $20 million supplemental appropriation to provide DPHHS services, it includes money for the State Hospital but does not include any measure to reduce the Medicaid community services cuts.

For those of us in social services this is beyond frustrating. Does the Governor not understand that supportive services are CHEAPER than sending people to institutions like the State Hospital? Or does he just not give a shit, maybe too busy getting that presidential run ready?

Democrats in Montana have feigned helplessness regarding the budget, blaming the entire budget crisis on the Republican majority. Yet here is one of their top politicians denying a chance to mitigate the most harmful aspects of reducing community-based services, opting instead to throw more money at providing significantly more costly services in an institutional setting.

I know the elderly and disabled aren’t big time political donors (therefore can’t help fund Bullock’s presidential pipe dream) but straight up denying supplemental funding to help claw back some of the painful Medicaid cuts is not just stupid, it’s mean.

Please, Montana Democrats, help me understand why Governor Bullock would prefer to fund more costly services at places like Warm Springs while denying disabled people the dignity of keeping the community-based services that allowed them to live as independently as possible in the first place.

Or, better yet, stand up to the Governor and demand a better explanation for this political move.  Someone is benefiting, and it’s not the people your party claims to represent.

by William Skink

Missoula’s flood waters have swept away most of the trash generated by the Reserve Street homeless camps. When flood waters started coming up, tents popped up on the grassy mounds on the west side of the bridge. Those tents are still there, and one person is reported to have refused to leave.

On Saturday I went out there, pretty sure I knew who the article was referring to. He’s surrounded by water, but ok. The feral cat colony he adopted had scattered, but were watching me from a safe distance.

Getting to his spot got me a little wet, despite water proof pants, bog boots and duct tape. The water was over my knees. He doesn’t have similar gear, so his feet are probably constantly wet. Like Veterans of the Vietnam war know too well, wet feet can be a problem.

As I slogged up the embankment toward the bridge I noticed an old man, arms folded, looking out in the direction of the tents. I asked him if he was camping out there and he said no, not anymore, though his tent was still out there. He looked to be in his 70’s. He said his raft was still out there to. I asked him if he was the guy the authorities saved and he said he was.

Like many people, when I read about this incident in the paper, I was frustrated. I was frustrated that emergency resources had to be used to address such a reckless and stupid decision by someone who had been told to leave the area because the valley is experiencing a flood not seen in 100 years.

The resurgence of the camps in this area has also been a point of frustration for me, especially as the efforts I used to help coordinate seem to be waning. The people I see going and coming from the camps as I commute to work appear to be younger.

But that is me making assumptions. I don’t go out there regularly, like I used to, so I don’t actually know beyond a few people I still recognize who is actually living out there.

I asked the man how long he’s been in Missoula, expecting him to say a few weeks or a few months. He said he’s been in Missoula since ’63. I asked him how he lost his housing and he said he went to prison. I asked him if he’s trying to find housing and he said no, he gave up. He got a little generator and a tent and he hopes it doesn’t get stolen.

I think that may have been why he was on the bridge, not to marvel at the power of mother nature, but to keep an eye on his few material possessions.

I wished him luck and went back to a vehicle I don’t have to sleep in, in a town that makes it nearly impossible for a guy like this to have a roof over his head.

Happy Mother’s day, Missoula.

by William Skink

There are increasingly stories I read in local media that make me want to crawl through the words in the article to the people speaking them and shout loudly in their face, BUDGET CRISIS, BUDGET CRISIS, BUDGET CRISS!!!

That was my immediate reaction when reading that Mayor Gimme-Gimme Engen wants Max Wave so bad that he’s put the City of Missoula on the application, unbeknownst to City Council members. From the link:

The Max Wave is a proposed man-made wave, similar to Brennan’s Wave, that would be built near the Silver Park boat ramp. Included in the project would be fish screens, structures to help fish bypass the wave and improvements to river access and the natural area.

It needs an Army Corps of Engineers permit, along with permissions from the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation, and the Missoula City floodplain authority; consultations with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the state Department of Fish, Wildlife & Parks; and a lot of money. The group has already spent about $400,000 on the permitting and design process, and expects to need about $2.2 million for actual construction.

Engen said if the permits for the Max Wave are approved, he would recommend the city take ownership of the whitewater park, and ask the Missoula Redevelopment Agency for financing, and Parks and Recreation for oversight.

The first piece of confusion — the City of Missoula is listed as the applicant for Max Wave permits, which prompted members of the City Council to ask Wednesday: We are?

I guess Mayor Engen didn’t learn his lesson about keeping City Council in the dark about things he wants, like demolishing the Merc for a hotel. And to make things worse, Missoula doesn’t even have its shit together to provide ongoing management of the first play wave, Brennan’s wave. That point was brought up, thankfully:

John DeArment, the science director for Clark Fork Coalition, said the group sees the benefits of that section of the river becoming an “engineered whitewater play-park.”

“We’re looking at a badly degraded section of the river,” DeArment said. But he asked council to consider also the idea of trying to remake the river into its more natural state, as has been done around the Milltown Dam site in Bonner.

He also cautioned against adding another wave before figuring out ownership and management details, which have become confusing with Brennan’s Wave over the years.

“Until we have a way to guarantee long-term operation and maintenance of the first wave in downtown Missoula, is it wise to build a second one?” DeArment asked.

Brennan’s Wave board chairman Trent Baker told the council that they have taken care of the wave since its construction, and it is in fine condition.

Sure, Brennan’s Wave may be in fine condition now, but it wasn’t like that a few years ago. Here is some great reporting from the UM’s Kaiman about the six figure fix Brennan’s Wave need in 2015:

With Brennan’s Wave beginning to crack and fall apart, Missoula City Council met last week to discuss its maintenance and potential problems with the planned Max’s Wave.

Marilyn Marler, city council chairwoman, said that agencies involved in the waves were present during the discussions, including a representative from Brennan’s Wave, Max’s Wave, the Missoula Redevelopment Agency and members of the public.

Marler said Brennan’s Wave is in need of $200,000 in maintenance fees that the city doesn’t have, and he isn’t sure where the money will come from.

“We shouldn’t be building things and not maintaining them,” Marler said.

Trent Baker, president of the Brennan’s Wave nonprofit, the organization that raised money to build the wave, said the $200,000 is not an official estimate.

Unusual circumstances damaged the wave, and it only needs a one-time fix, Baker said. He added that the fix could be broken down into a yearly cost of about $20,000 per year over 10 years, making the amount comparable to maintaining a city park.

In the last few years, the Clark Fork River’s higher water line knocked supporting rocks off of the structure and cracked the grout holding it together. The city has already invested $240,000 into Brennan’s Wave in the last decade, Marler said.

“If we already have one, we should take care of it before we build a second one,” Marler said, referring to the planned Max Wave.

I hope City Council stands up to Engen on this. They are being blindsided by a secretive Mayor and a constrained timeline for a complicated permitting process. And they should not believe Trent Baker, who obviously is not going to bring up the problems with Brennan’s Wave that have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to address.

Mayor Engen’s priorities for his utopian fiefdom are ridiculous. Max’s Wave is not some great opportunity for Missoula, it’s a stupid waste of money at a time of painful budget cuts impacting the most vulnerable in Missoula and across Montana.

by William Skink

American soldiers, start preparing to die for Israel. The killing of unarmed protestors by IDF sharp-shooters is just the appetizer. The real prize is Iran, and soon we will see how effectively puppet-Trump plays his part by eviscerating one of the few foreign policy accomplishments Obama achieved.

On this front, Trump has nothing to worry about from the resistance. Israel can commit whatever atrocities they want and nary a peep escapes the lips of the (usually) perpetually offended. I’m beginning to think that maybe Palestinians aren’t actually human beings after all.

Except some of them do civilized things, like write poetry. But when a Palestinian writes poetry, their terrorist DNA makes it a dangerous incitement to violence. Luckily for real civilized people, Israel convicted Palestinian poet Dareen Tatour:

Tatour, 36, a resident of the Galilee village of Reineh near Nazareth, was arrested in October 2015 after publishing, among others, a poem titled “Resist, my people, resist them.” The indictment against her includes a translation of the poem, which includes the lines: “I will not succumb to the ‘peaceful solution’ / Never lower my flags / Until I evict them from my land.”

“My trial ripped off the masks,” Tatour stated. “The whole world will hear my story. The whole world will hear what Israel’s democracy is. A democracy for Jews only. Only Arabs go to jail The court said I am convicted of terrorism. If that’s my terrorism, I give the world a terrorism of love.”

Do you see how clever these animals are? Don’t be fooled, monkeys can learn sign language to.

To save Israel and western civilization, Israel is just doing what it needs to do to survive. If that means more settlements, more assassinations, more institutionalized racist apartheid policies, and WWIII, so be it.

American soldiers, start preparing to die for Israel. Anything less would be anti-semetic.

by William Skink

As residents in Missoula’s largest homeless camp (there are several) move to higher ground to avoid the flood waters sweeping away the heaping trash accumulated after last summer’s cleanup, a new gentrification tool is being trotted out as an enticing new incentive aimed at luring private sector investment in low-income “opportunity zones”. From the link:

Tucked away in the federal tax overhaul legislation last year was a provision that could allow investors to receive a tax break in exchange for spending money in low-income areas. Missoula officials have nominated an area that includes most of the West Broadway corridor and the Northside neighborhood.

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act included a program called “Opportunity Zones” that provides an incentive for people to reinvest capital gains into low-income areas and thereby avoid the capital gains tax.

The tax benefits include a temporary deferral of inclusion in the taxable income for capital gains reinvested. There is also a permanent exclusion from taxable income of capital gains from the sale or exchange of an investment in an Opportunity Fund if the investment is held for at least 10 years, along with other benefits.

Sounds great, right? I’m sure this little nugget in the tax cut bill won’t be criticized by Missoula’s liberal political leadership because it provides another “opportunity” to cloak gentrification with euphemistic language about helping low-income neighborhoods.

Maybe the recent sell-out of Southgate Mall by the Lambros clan for a cool 58 million is coloring my perspective. They received millions in tax increment financing, then flipped it, making bank. Despite how badly the optics are, the head of the Missoula Redevelopment Agency is not worried at all about using public financing to sweeten a real estate deal for Lambros:

The Missoula Redevelopment Agency ultimately awarded the project nearly $7 million in TIF financing. Little did MRA director Ellen Buchanan know that the project, leveraged with public support, would be used to help sell the mall before the paint on renovations is even dry. A new dine-in theater opened at Southgate two weeks ago, and a Lucky’s Market grocery store will open later this year.

But Buchanan isn’t concerned that the city helped flip a mall. She’s excited. “I think it’s a win-win,” she says. 

So, with this attitude from a leading city agency directing public funds for redevelopment, I’m not very confident that anything will be put in place to ensure development using this tax incentive won’t result in gentrification, displacing the low-income people who make designating opportunity zones possible.

Here’s more from the first link:

“Opportunity Zones offer favorable capital gains treatment for taxpayers who invest in designated high-poverty neighborhoods,” said Adam Looney, a senior fellow of economic studies at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center in a report on the new legislation.

“Invest in real estate or businesses located in a qualified zone, hold it for 10 years, and not only can you sell your investments free of capital gains tax, but you also get a tax break on un-taxed capital gains rolled into an Opportunity Zone investment.”

He said that individuals in a high-tax state and with short-term capital gains can avoid $7.50 in taxes for each $100 they invest, even before considering any return on their Zone investments.
“It’s very favorable treatment,” he said.

But Looney also warned that the program could amount to a “tax cut for gentrification” by providing benefits to developers investing in already-gentrifying areas, thereby displacing residents of poor neighborhoods.

West Broadway features some of the only housing that people with significant barriers to conventional rentals can access. The Sleepy Inn and Colonial apartments, specifically, are last-ditch housing options for violent and sexual offenders. They also look nasty and run down, so I bet those prime pieces of property will be some of the first to be targeted for redevelopment. With the constant uncertainty of the Russell Bridge project finally alleviated, the time for investment is quickly approaching.

Where will these people go? If they are on probation or parole, they can’t leave the city. And trailer parks are also being shuttered. And these people aren’t sexy to advocate for like foreign refugees are.

If there are not clear conditions placed on what it means to develop a low-income neighborhood in a manner that will actually benefit the people living there, and not displace them, then these “opportunity zones” will simply be another euphemism for gentrification.

And if past behavior is a good predictor of future behavior, people like Ellen Buchanan and agencies like MRA won’t give two shits if the development they promote (and prime with public money) transforms this area into another gentrified zone that will ultimately exclude the very people whose poverty made the investment possible in the first place.