Month: April 2023

by Travis Mateer

During the recording of last week’s Week in Review, I had to hit pause to make sure I was really seeing what I thought I was seeing, and that’s a LONG list of downtown businesses signing on to a sternly-worded letter (PDF) telling the Mayor’s Office and the Missoula Redevelopment Agency to hit their own pause button on the “SAM” projects, which includes the lane reduction scheme for Higgins Avenue. From the link:

A coalition of more than 60 downtown business and property owners in Missoula sent a strongly worded letter to Mayor Jordan Hess late Wednesday night expressing concerns over plans to revamp street configurations and disappointment with Hess’ communication with them thus far.

At issue is the city’s Downtown Safety and Mobility (DowntownSAM) project. It consists of three separate endeavors: a plan to convert Front and Main streets to two-way traffic, the plan to redevelop Caras Park and a plan to redesign a portion of Higgins Avenue with different traffic configurations.

I read the entire letter on last week’s podcast episode, which I recommend checking out. For the purposes of this post, here’s the part that references climate change ideology (emphasis mine):

This rift, which has suddenly emerged between downtown businesses and Missoula’s one-party stranglehold on local politics, is kind of amazing, and could help out the one Mayoral candidate who is desperately trying to shed his liberal skin like a snake so he can pretend to be a conservative, and that’s former Sheriff, T.J. McDermott (if he’s actually running).

To give you a sense of the worry coming from Multi-Modal Zealots (MMZs), here’s one of ’em bitching and moaning on Facebook:

Parking psychosis? That’s cute. Has John Wolverton ever tried operating a business downtown? I doubt it. But I’m sure he’s good on a bicycle. Maybe he even has those FAT tires that allows the dozen or so bicyclists in this valley of 100,000 residents to act like it’s feasible to rely on bikes during the snow months in Montana, which can span from October to April.

This seasonal reality in Montana is something the signatories of the letter are finally starting to realize, and point out, to the MMZs driving policy in this town (pun intended). Here’s more from the letter (emphasis mine):

Just because a plan has been a plan for a long time, that doesn’t mean the public, once fully apprised of the plan, is going to be supportive. In this case, the origin of the Higgins lane reduction scheme goes back to 2009, but if supporters think that fact will insulate the plan from the pressures of 2023, they are grossly mistaken.

For example, there WAS a plan to use Tax Increment Financing like a private slush fund to “incentivize” development and address “blight”, but that plan is now facing serious legislative action in Helena, with SB 523 passing a second reading yesterday on a 30-19 vote.

Yesterday I provided some video updates about TIF (theirs and mine) which you can see in the video below.

https://vimeo.com/814460737

The article I reference in the video about Andy selling his new Missoula hotels to a Denver corporation should be read closely. Here’s an excerpt to show you what I’m so fucking enraged about with this announcement:

A Denver firm is the new owner of several Marriott properties in downtown Missoula, including the AC Hotel, the Residence Inn and the attached Mercantile retail center, the deal’s real estate broker said Monday.

Evermore Partners of Denver, in partnership with New Castle Hotels & Resorts, acquired the properties near the end of the first quarter of this year, according to CBRE Pacific Northwest.

“The redevelopment of The Mercantile and the development of the adjoining Marriott hotels has been a labor of love for HomeBase Partners, and we are thrilled to transfer the ownership to the next steward of such a remarkable project,” said Andy Holloran of Homebase Partners. “Missoula has been a great partner in supporting the redevelopment of the downtown core, especially the Mercantile and our hotels, and we look forward to our next chapter in Missoula.”

…

In the announcement, Holloran didn’t disclose his company’s next move in Missoula. But in the past, he said Homebase Partners has other projects in mind and has described Missoula as a good place to invest given its economy and vibrant downtown core.

Stockman Bank executed the sale.

If you aren’t pissed off at this, that’s because you’re probably benefitting from it in some way, so you don’t care that public money is picking winners and letting the losers deal with the increasing cost of living in this idyllic valley without a corporate welfare safety net.

Now that a downtown business revolt appears to be in full swing, let’s conclude this post by taking a look at the signatories of the letter. I hope my outreach to these businesses this week yields some financial support for Travis’ Impact Fund (TIF), or maybe some general donations, which ANYONE can make at my about page.

Here are businesses who signed the letter. Thanks for reading!

by Travis Mateer

Before we get to the legal term in the title of this post, I want to take a look at the show Ozarks, specifically some dialogue in the first episode between the financial planner/cartel money launderer, Marty Byrd, and the Sheriff.

For context, Marty’s daughter, Charlotte, gets herself into trouble with some locals and a stolen boat. Here is how Marty assesses the situation as he verbally spars with The Law in this backwoods, tourist-dependent community:

[Marty] $1,575 for a propeller.

[sheriff] Stainless steel speed prop. Seems your daughter and her friends parked a little too close to shore.

They’re not her friends.

Yeah, and she didn’t know that this boat was stolen. She thought a teenager running
a leaf blower at a prom night motel lived in a $5 million home? Drove a $90,000 boat?

-Do you know who they are?

-Wyatt Langmore and his brother, Three. Now, joyriding’s not usually their MO, but trust me when I tell you they can’t afford to pay.

And you’re assuming we will? -Mm-hmm.

Charlotte painted a picture to my deputy of a girl of some privilege. Private school education. Suburban home. I’m guessing that your current choice in lodging is a reflection of frugality rather than necessity.

-A guessing game. That’s fun. Can I try?

-Marty…-Please.

-Um, I’m thinking that arresting the white trash that almost killed my daughter and extracting the truth is hard, time-consuming work. Work which, if given a choice, like us, you’d gladly forego.

-[Wendy] Marty… -[clears throat]

So, uh, my guess is that this all comes down to simple, run-of-the-mill laziness.

-Shut up, Marty.

-How’s that?

What happened there?

I have 1,150 miles of shoreline to patrol and eight boats. I care about the taxpaying citizens of this county, and the tourism dollar upon which they depend.

So…to those intent on leaving a light economic footprint, staying in the cheapest possible places, sucking the tit of this department, while criticizing me in the prosecution of my duties, I say, “Go… to fucking Branson.”

That’s great.

Now, let’s finish booking Charlotte, shall we?

Are you an appointed or an elected official, Sheriff?

Elected.

And do the… the Langmores vote?

Not historically. No, ma’am.

I would think that votes would be valuable around here. Do they pay taxes?

[clicks tongue]

We do. Both.

I like referencing fiction like this because it’s a common framework that people outside of places like Missoula and the surrounding area can relate to. Also, it bolsters one of my current contentions, which is that we, in Montana, are living out episodes of the Ozarks every day.

Money and water are the twin threads I see weaving between this work of fiction and the lives of three young women cut short in Montana, women who all died in, or around, water. In this post I’ll examine the connections and implications for tourist-dependent communities in Big Sky Country with what appears, on the surface, to be a lack of resources to do proper investigations.

Sheriff resources west of Missoula, in Mineral County, have caught some recent headlines after a shootout in St. Regis put half of the Sheriff’s Office on administrative leave. That’s why the Sheriff Facebook account put out the following notice to its citizens:

The connection between local resources and the deaths of Rebekah Barsotti, Linnea Mills and Courtney Klagues is the fact all three families had to hire private entities to do more comprehensive investigations than local authorities were either ABLE to do, or WILLING to do.

I don’t need to know what the investigative disconnect is in order to raise awareness on social media about the risk of letting your adult kids come to Big Sky Country. I just need a well-written article raising serious questions in ANOTHER case where serious questions are warranted, like this Kaimin piece, written by Griffen Smith.

When you click the link you will see that my warning is not just hyperbole. For the purposes of this post, here’s the part about Courtney’s family hiring an outside entity to do an outside investigation (emphasis mine):

The Klagues family also enlisted the opinion of a private accident reconstruction company out of California called OnPoint Forensics in 2021. That group went to the Forest Service road and created its own crash analysis, which yielded a different result than the highway patrol. 

“Our investigation determined the speed of the Jeep was likely in excess of 20 miles per hour,” wrote Michael Segura, a reconstruction specialist for OnPoint Forensics. Segura also disputed that the car hit a rock at all, based on the angle that the car went off the road. 

That would raise the question of how the car suddenly swerved. OnPoint Forensics doesn’t have any answers.

In an email to Bradshaw on May 13, 2021, Trooper Rhodes disputed many points of the OnPoint Forensics report, including that speed was a factor, but did think it’s possible that the steering piece originally listed in the report was not broken. 

The dispute has sparked a review of the case with the Montana Department of Justice. Emily Flower, the press secretary for Attorney General Austin Knudsen, said in a statement that when new evidence is presented to law enforcement, investigators must review the case. 

What kind of responsibility do authorities have when it comes to doing proper investigations? And, if they don’t have the resources, how can resources be brought in to ensure we honor those who have died in Big Sky Country under potentially criminal conditions?

I would think a state banking on the tourism dollar might want to get its shit together as different tragic scenarios keep turning up dead women in, and around, water. Instead, local authorities keep sending grieving families the message that their loved ones don’t matter.

One of the more recent articles about the death of Linnea Mills shows how possible negligence by a scuba-diving company was treated by investigating authorities. From the link (emphasis mine):

Colcannon said a GNP ranger handled the first part of the investigation but was replaced after about eight days by the National Park Service Investigative Services Bureau. That’s when things started to go wrong, Colcannon said.

Colcannon said the investigators didn’t follow up on what the ranger had found out and didn’t consult with NPS dive safety experts to find out what they needed to know. They didn’t gather information from the students’ and instructors’ dive computers, which would have shown what each was doing at the time of the accident.

And finally, they didn’t look for evidence as to whether Snow was mentally impaired at the time, Colcannon said. He compared it to a traffic fatality where investigators always test drivers for impairment.

“They didn’t do it. They should have. I did. The evidence as to whether or not she was impaired exists,” Colcannon said. “So, they stopped using the protocols for investigations by the Park Service, they don’t look at critical evidence, they ignore removal of evidence, they don’t talk to eyewitnesses who were present at the scene. Instead, they give information to the Assistant U.S. Attorney to prosecute under an intentional homicide standard, which means Debbie Snow intended to kill Linnea Mills, which was never the case. But they don’t look at a negligent homicide standard.”

There is a lot of bold in the above excerpt, but I want to draw attention to the last point of emphasis, and that’s the prosecutorial decision to go for a HIGHER standard than what the evidence supports. Is this intentional? I’m not sure, but it makes me think of the coroner’s inquest process in Montana. Here’s an article about that process, since TWO women recently died of overdoses INSIDE the Missoula Detention facility, which is run by the Missoula County Sheriff’s Office. From the link (emphasis mine):

Missoula jury on Friday cleared two drug-related deaths at the Missoula jail of being caused by any criminal means. 

The back-to-back coroner’s inquests led a nine-person jury through the deaths of Wendy L. Gottfried, 30, and Maryjane F. Galloway, 37. Both women died of drug overdoses at the Missoula jail in a two-month period in late 2022. Friday’s inquest tasked the jury with determining if either death happened by homicide.

Inquests take place whenever a person dies in custody, such as being shot by a law enforcement officer or dying in a detention facility. In a coroner’s inquest, the dead person is not represented in the same manner as a defendant is in court proceedings. However, members of the public can ask questions if they’re approved by the presiding coroner before the inquest.

This process of investigating suspicious deaths with a coroner’s inquest is a fucking sham providing zero chance of accountability by ONLY looking at criminal charges, like homicide, and that seems to be by design.

So, what are families supposed to do? I haven’t even touched on what Rebekah Barsotti’s mother, Angela Mastrovito, has dealt with by paying for private investigators and private search and rescue teams and a private medical examiner to do a second autopsy, because this post is already getting a little too long. I’ll conclude by restating the question posed in the title of the post: have we arrived at a “manifest abuse of discretion” yet? Here’s the quote from Smith’s article where the legal term is used:

There’s not much someone can do if a county attorney refuses to prosecute a case, unless that prosecutor acted with a “manifest abuse of discretion,” which is when someone acts without conscious judgment or exceeds the bounds of reason resulting in injustice, according to Montana law.

If you ask me, the answer is a resounding YES!

If you would like to help bolster MY investigative capacity, check out Travis’ Impact Fund (TIF), or consider making a donation at my about page.

Thanks for reading!

by Travis Mateer

April is going to be a BIG month for local and state-wide policy conversations, so in anticipation of a busy month I’m sharing my approach to preparing for the upcoming week with today’s Sunday bonus post. Hopefully this educational post will empower YOU to become more active in these critical policy conversations.

The first step is going to the city webpage for meeting video, agenda and minutes. After clicking the link you’ll need to click ANOTHER link, which says “click here”. This is what it looks like:

When you click the link you’ll see a calendar where further clicks will need to be made depending on what committee you might be interested in. Remember, if the Wednesday schedule is packed, you’ll need to extend the viewing window to see ALL the action happening on that particular day. Here is what the calendar looks like:

When I look at the weekly schedule I’m looking for relevant opportunities, and I found one with the Public Safety Committee meeting on Wednesday. After clicking on Public Safety bar on the calendar, I get to see the agenda and any additional links. That’s how I discovered the “Community Justice Department” will be giving an update.

What is the Community Justice Department, you ask? I wasn’t sure myself, so I looked it up and found that several key programs are housed under this department. Here they are:

So, what might be relevant for me to share with this Public Safety Committee? Maybe I can give them a description of the process for reporting false or misleading information in sponsored content put out by Lee Enterprises.

For example, in last month’s post about the danger of the Christian Savior Complex, I highlighted an article sponsored by Town Pump that falsely claimed the “safe” house, operated by the LifeGuard Group, has actually served a victim of human trafficking when, by their own admission, just two months later, this “non-profit” acknowledged THEY HAVE NOT yet served a victim of human trafficking.

After my initial complaint was filed with Lee Enterprises, I got a follow up phone call where the assessment done by the person at the other end of the line indicated my complaint should be “escalated”, which meant giving Town Pump a chance to address my claim before further action is taken. That is currently where it stands.

One of the entities under the umbrella of the Community Justice Department is already quite aware of my concerns regarding the LifeGuard Group because I told them, explicitly, what they were, kind of like my conversations with people at legitimate non-profits in Missoula, not to mention the University of Montana’s Social Work program.

Providing public comment to the Public Safety Committee will also give me the opportunity to let more people know about Travis’ Impact Fund (TIF). Unlike the LifeGuard Group, which has done hardly anything with their million dollar property secured with money from our Governor, Greg Gianforte, I am ALREADY off and running with TWO reports at a cost of less than a hundred bucks to my fund.

Here are the reports, labeled AA#1 and AA#2 (for Assess and Address), combining both qualitative and quantitative data for my donors to see. I have more to show in ONE WEEK with a hundred bucks than the LifeGuard Group has produced in TWO YEARS with a $500,000 dollar donation from the Gianforte Foundation.

Here are the springtime plans, as reported in 2022, about this alleged “safe” house:

The LifeGuard Group in Missoula works to combat human trafficking efforts around the state, and last weekend the group unveiled a new shelter for survivors. The property is officially called the LifeHouse at Crooked Tree Ranch and features a 9,000-square-foot residence on an expansive 40-acre parcel of outdoor land.

Founded by Lowell and Tami Hochhalter, LifeGuard Group is registered as a nonprofit in Missoula.

The group’s LifeHouse project has been in development for about a year, Tami said. It plans to open its door come springtime. 

The building hosts six rooms for survivors, which families, businesses and church groups have “adopted,” Tami explained. They donate time and money to remodel the rooms and get them ready for their guests. 

“From the very beginning, we knew that a safe house was something that had to happen and that we wanted to happen,” Tami said at last weekend’s event. “We had no idea how quickly that dream would become a reality.”

Quickly? That would be funny if the subject wasn’t human trafficking, something Montana has been FUCKING TERRIBLE at addressing. Maybe one reason for that is THIS group and their ability to fleece donors with NO discernible results, or consequences.

Here’s more from the link:

Security will also be a component of the house, and the group is in contact with local law enforcement for coordination, Tami said.

The property cost just over $1,000,000, Tami said, half of which was paid for via a donation from the Gianforte Family Foundation. She also mentioned the Dennis and Phyllis Washington Foundation along with the Gallagher Foundation and Montana Beer and Wine Distributors Association as donors.

How embarrassing to be so thoroughly shown up and exposed by a lowly blogger who can do more with $100 bucks than these grifters can do with a million dollar property. Maybe someday someone in a position to do something about this will, you know, ACTUALLY DO SOMETHING about this.

Until then I suggest helping MY efforts, which can be done by supporting my TIF, or providing a general donation with the donation button at my about page.

Thanks for reading!

by Travis Mateer

The week began and ended with posts about Tax Increment Financing because there is FINALLY action happening at the state level to put handcuffs on the hands using this “tool” like a toddler wielding a butcher knife, which is the imagery I used in my comment to state legislators last Monday after waiting over two hours for the chance to speak.

Back in Missoula, before recording this week’s podcast episode reviewing local headlines, I read about the shocking possibility that those same state legislators considering TIF handcuffs might DELAY Missoula’s Mayoral race this year, pushing the chance for voters to, you know, actually VOTE for their Mayor, until the end of 2024. Are you fucking kidding me? From the link (emphasis mine):

While the filing period for municipal races doesn’t open for several more weeks, six candidates thus far have declared their intention to run for Missoula mayor, and an equal number have an eye on City Council.

But a number of bills before the Legislature could impact this year’s municipal races, including Senate Bill 420, which would move such elections to even-numbered years.

Further down in the article we get a list of those candidates for the first time from a media source that isn’t a wily blogger showing up conventional media with better local information than they could possibly muster.

Former Mayor John Engen won his 2021 reelection bid, granting him a new four-year term. However, he passed away the following year.

Jordan Hess was appointed to fill Engen’s post until the next election, which is 2023. The winner of that election would then finish the last two years of Engen’s term, which expires in 2025.

But if the Legislature moves municipal elections to even-numbered years, everything gets extended, meaning the next mayoral election won’t happen until 2024. It’s unknown if Engen’s term would also be extended to 2026 or shortened to 2024, meaning the winner of that race would be granted a full four-year term.

Hess has announced his candidacy for mayor as has City Council member Mike Nugent and Andrea Davis, the executive director of the nonprofit Homeward.

According to the Montana Secretary of State’s Office, three other candidates have also announced their intention to run including Jacob Elder, Sean McCoy and former Missoula County Sheriff TJ McDermott.

If the legislature does this to Missoula voters it will mean an entire additional year of transformative development happening in this town with a Mayor literally picked in an alleyway at 2am. If this farce is extended for another year, will there be hell to pay?

I hope the answer to that question is YES if legislators in Helena decide to do what Francis Fidler did, which was to find out by means of fucking around.

If you would like to support my work as an independent journalist, there’s Travis’ Impact Fund (TIF) and the donation button at my about page. I’ll be promoting both, along with an upcoming Patreon page, in the weeks and months to come.

So stay tuned, and thank you for listening/reading!

by Travis Mateer

your politic and game-board mind
is not a thing I seek to play
no peek-a-boo you motherfuckers 
will soften up your death-door days

let's take Francis in his jeep
Cherokees, they are not cheap
neither is cop 1,2,3 and
4,5,6 for disorderly!

Francis Fidler, what's that sound?
it's what happens when you fuck around
your eyes all crazed with booze and meth
smile, Francis, your mugshot best

finding out is so much fun!
like the badges who play with guns
politics, it ain't the same
with Sheriffs playing voter games 

sit back, kids, let's watch a show
Ozarks if you're in the know
redneck shorelines a risky sell
when you're pitching to cartels 

Christian warriors on your rump
fitting white hats onto Trump 
stop proselytizing Q, the kids
are hiding under pews, or

running to the peacock flair
of pecking birds with feather hair
story time is now a war
with Saturn closely keeping score

electric ether, Tesla knew
no more time break--rabbits chew
through each other when skies collapse
fuck this program, our power naps

will charge intention to respond 
Diana laughs then kills the swans 
carefully placed and colored black
to keep her breath from coming back 

sorry, necromancing rats
love is soul and heart has won
we are simply down here waiting
for you to realize

you're done