Before adding a black for better optics it was just the Higgins brothers hanging out in Wyoming and getting sad that their home state wouldn’t give them the tax breaks their little hearts desired. Without a specific tax break, we are told, film studio creators with dreams of selling houses and apartment units on the land near their new film studio just can’t operate. Thankfully, a Republican legislator by the name of Greg Hertz helped save the day for this struggling, Yale-educated “actor” and his brother with the cool neck tattoos.
Sean Higgins, who was part of a task force that tried unsuccessfully to revive Wyoming’s tax incentive programfor the film industry, is now looking just up the road from Sheridan to Montana for future productions.
On Tuesday, Higgins and his brother Danny joined about 80 Montana filmmakers in Helena for a meet-and-greet informational session at the Holter Art Museum.
The event was sponsored by the Montana Media Coalition, and for the last few years Sean Higgins, a University of Wyoming theater grad, has served on the Coalition’s board.
After the task force in Wyoming failed in 2023 to convince the Wyoming Legislature to pass House Bill 92, Higgins focused on getting tax incentive legislation passed in Montana, and he is now lobbying lawmakers in Helena.
The above excerpt from January, 2025, explains how the Higgins brothers targeted Montana and why someone who doesn’t like tax breaks gave these industry policy panhandlers the foothold in Montana they were looking for.
At the Tuesday night event in Helena, state Sen. Greg Hertz, R-Polson, took the stage and asked the crowd, “How did we get ‘Yellowstone?’ Utah dropped their tax credit and they came to Montana.”
As a general rule, said Hertz, “I don’t like tax credits.”
But over time, other legislators, “Educated me about movie manufacturing and as I looked at it, what you needed to do to be competitive in the movie making business, you need to have a tax credit because that’s what everybody else does across the United States,” Hertz said. “So without that, we can’t move forward.”
When I read that Greg Hertz enabled this legislation last session with the rationale that Montana should act because “everybody else does” I was very disappointed. Greg Hertz was the legislator in 2023 who tried helping tax reformers like me put policy handcuffs on Ellen Buchanan, the Missoula Redevelopment Agency, and this retarded town’s favorite tax giveaway–Tax Increment Financing–but that effort failed.
Now, thanks to Greg Hertz, the film industry is ALSO getting into the real estate game, and they’re doing it with help from the same tax giveaway the tax-addicts at the Missoula Redevelopment Agency use to run their shadow government. For a Yale-educated actor, like Sean Higgins, the path is simple: add a token black, speak magical phrases like WORKFORCE HOUSING, then watch the fawning media lapdogs, like Martin Kidston, “report” on the results.
The city in 2016 adopted the original master plan for the North Reserve/Scott Street district. That initial plan divided the area into sectors with residential to the east and commercial to the west. At the time, the Roseburg property split the two sectors and created challenges to long-term planning.
But the plant closed in 2024 and Roseburg took the first step in seeking annexation. StoryHouse – a film and television production company – also purchased 47 acres, which are included in the 93 acres annexed on Monday.
The plant’s closure and Roseburg’s partnership now create new opportunities to reinvent the entire district. The new master plan is anticipated for completion by fall.
For what the future of this area might look like I reviewed the documents given the official nod by Missoula’s City Council on Monday. I also checked out the real estate listing for what is being called “Redtail Ridge”.
Here’s the plan for the vast swath of land in Missoula where actors will be making bank selling off pieces of Big Sky Country:
And here’s the language that allows Council members and the unelected cogs of Missoula’s gentrification dream team the ability to throw public money at housing developers:
Having done more than most people to raise the alarm about the role of specific tax policies making the cost of living MORE unaffordable, I’m getting pretty fucking tired of being cast as the bad guy for calling out the people and policies leading to the outcomes everyone says is bad, and should be addressed, but then turn around and do the SAME FUCKING THING that got us here in the first place.
Instead of dwelling on those actual crazy people expecting different results from the same policy actions, I’m going to celebrate the successful cleanup of Missoula’s largest and nastiest homeless encampment on this cloudy Earth Day in Missoula. It’s nice that I can point to a piece of geography in this town where sanity won against loser narrative controllers, like Susan Hay Patrick, and all the bullshit she brought to our little mountain town.
Thanks for reading!
LLC perpetuity payments need to be exposed benefits paid out without any accountability unless people show their tax return so if you’re involved with our city government there should be a stipulation you need to produce tax returns and show that you’ve not paid out perpetuity payments to other people’s degrees the wheels of progress
Just look at our mayor she’s a master of doing this there’s a $40,000 a month ski area as well as the half of what I can tell I was 2.9 and rentals there’s more out there but they’re hitting in LLCs
And yet she doesn’t want to show her tax return because it might reveal that she has perpetuity payments from some of these big out-of-state developers that take away 10 million a year in rental income it’s a great plan for her not for our valley