I’ve been waiting for the right moment to write about the proposal to create a 57th County in Western Montana and I think that moment has finally come for reasons I’ll get into after this quote explaining the most obvious reason Seeley-Swan residents are considering a form of secession: taxes.
When I saw reports that a group of residents in the Seeley-Swan area is exploring the possibility of splitting from Missoula County, I was intrigued. The concept of creating a new county seems like a relic of the past, and indeed, Montana’s 56th county, Petroleum, was created in 1925.
This discussion among rural Missoula County residents isn’t new, but it’s gained momentum recently, with a new, growing Facebook group and a feasibility study digging into the details. This week, I called Swan Valley Community Council member and Condon resident Ted Morgan (on his landline) to talk about the study and why some residents are looking to break away from Missoula County.
“We just see a lot of tax dollars going to county initiatives closer to urban areas,” he said Wednesday. “We see our tax dollars going up every year, and there’s not a marked effect on rural people.”
Ted Morgan and his fellow Missoula County residents studying the feasibility of this move don’t like seeing their tax dollars going up, but they DO seem to appreciate the increasing tax base from second homes. In fact, according to Ted, it’s the luxury development that’s making the feasibility of secession seem, well, more feasible:
Morgan said the area has seen an increase in taxable values since 2020 and includes “massive” second homes and resorts. That increase makes the new county a more realistic proposition, he said.
“Our tax base, while small, is definitely enough to run its own government,” Morgan said.
According to the feasibility study, the 6,435 parcels located in the proposed new county have an assessed taxable value of $31.13 million. That’s higher than Mineral and Powell counties, the report said.
Operating a “lean governance model,” the new county could reduce the county-level property tax burden for residents while maintaining full service levels, according to the report. The proposal calls for a county government with 18 to 20 employees working in administration, public works, law enforcement and other positions. Morgan said the county would not build its own jail, but would contract with another county to use its facility.
One of the taxing schemes that I suspect is inspiring our northern neighbors in Seeley to consider leaving Missoula County to create a whole new County is the use of Tax Increment Financing through Targeted Economic Development Districts.
But don’t tell that to Cascade County.
Starting with the taxing jurisdiction of Great Falls, where Janicki Industries is making a massive investment, I discovered how the use of a bond will potentially extend the life of the taxing district just like in Missoula, where the Missoula Redevelopment Agency used the pedestrian bridge over Reserve Street to extend the life of THAT taxing district.
And I discovered this move because of how annoyed this X post made me:
A truth-seeking, pot-stirring, caller of bullshit should probably be less indignant when dealing with the public’s frustration over doling out financially short-sighted subsidies and repeating the stupid policies of Missoula by making sure those special taxing districts never die.
To see how this conversation is shaping up in a different western Montana location other than Missoula, here’s two screenshots from minutes taken from a May 19th, 2026 meeting in Great Falls (GFDA stands for Great Falls Development Authority):
While this conversation is happening, a different part of Cascade County is so unimpressed with Sheriff Slaughter’s Cascade County Sheriff’s Office services that they are considering starting a police force of their own. Hmmm.
The Town of Cascade is considering creating its own municipal police department, with residents and town leaders discussing the proposal during a public meeting Thursday night.
A proposed ordinance would establish the Cascade Police Department, outline its leadership and set requirements for officers. Under the proposal, the department would be led by a chief of police, with additional officers hired as authorized and funded through the town’s municipal budget.
Supporters of the proposal said they liked the idea of having local law enforcement and giving the town greater control over hiring, department operations and its budget.
Opponents, however, raised concerns about whether the town has accounted for all of the costs associated with operating an independent police department.
Why would a little township like Cascade want “greater control” over their lawmen? Sadly, we can’t expect local media to give us the full story about incompetent and/or corrupt law enforcement, so instead we have to rely on content creators like those involved with the “Peaceful Sea Network” to highlight how dangerously unaware of Constitutional protections the Cascade County Sheriff’s Office appears to be.
Here’s the first episode of the new season of “The Cascade Effect” showing what you can expect once you’re targeted by these types of “law enforcers”.
If you don’t see the connection between tax subsidies, first responder budgets, and the overall quality of life issues that arise when your local cops and Sheriff deputies don’t understand the basic protections of the CONSTITUTION, let’s return to Missoula, where the Downtown Business Partnership ensures they have a more consistent police presence downtown by literally funding cop salaries:
While the Missoula Downtown Partnership has reduced paying for this protection racket for downtown businesses–businesses that are ALREADY paying taxes for cops–the fact that “dedicated policing” requires additional expenditures should be getting more context from local media, and that context should include the economic suck of Urban Renewal Districts. Too bad STATE tax changes are getting all of the attention right now for being a total dumpster fire of confusion regarding the legislative changes ostensibly trying to shift some of the fiscal weight of the property tax burden to owners of second homes.
“The biggest change for most people are going to be whether they got their property enrolled as their homestead principal residence or a long-term rental or they didn’t,” Kaatz said. “If they did, they obviously get the benefit of those tiered tax rates.”
In cities like Missoula, the changes mean properties classified as second homes or short-term rentals will see property taxes more than double, while the owner-occupied home will see a slight reduction, the Missoulian reported.
About 42,000 residential properties in the state secured the long-term rental status, according to DOR data, but Kaatz said census data estimated there are approximately 55,000 long-term rentals in the state.
That means about 20% of the state’s long-term rentals could see a higher tax rate. Often, those higher costs get passed on to the renter of the home.
“We could effectively tell the taxpayer their taxes would be doubling in amount from 2025 to 2026,” State Sen. Greg Hertz, R-Polson, said at the meeting.
Hertz and other state legislators sued the state over the new law, arguing its creation in the 2025 was unconstitutional. No decision has been made in the case.
The pot-stirring shit-talker tried assuring me on X that no one in Great Falls wants to become Missoula, and I’m sure Rick Tryon believes what he says. But was he ever in attendance at the 2023 Legislature to see Great Falls TIF addicts coming to rescue Ellen Buchanan from the remnants of the Missoula Tax Insurrection?
Whether one is looking at city policies, county policies, or the crafting of state law, Montana appears to be a complete and total shit show incapable of following the simplest of open meeting laws, or even respecting the critical legal protections enshrined by the Constitution, which is how this country was built in the first place.
And to highlight the shit show of local media, last evening I tried giving a drunk reporter a tip, but learned instead you don’t interrupt Missoulian staffers talking about “post-journalism” when they’re at a boozy work meeting with their new editor, Cory Walsh, so I went to compose something trollish on X and got a surprise visit with an informant, which I recorded.
Maybe now I have something more concrete about the death of Sean Stevenson and the coverup by law enforcement to stop me from finding out why he had to die in a private hospital room at St. Pats on January 5th, 2020.
Stay tuned…
Caught some typos, though I kinda liked “shit-shot”.