91ST Annual Conference
Montana Association of Counties
September 25 - 27, 2000
I
have enjoyed working with our Hill County Commissioners. When I first became mayor, Kathy Bessette
and I had a long talk because we knew that mayors and county commissioners were
notorious for not getting along. We
decided that if we didn’t agree, we would put that aside and move on to the
next project, without carrying any animosity over. That’s why it’s been wonderful working together and I really do
appreciate them.
Recently,
we had lions and tigers being abused and being hauled around town. We finally settled that and it happened to
be the wettest year we ever had. The
beavers were coming in and chewing down all the trees and making dams. Homeowners were complaining because they
were loosing the new saplings they had just planted. When fall came, in came the skunks. They started digging up lawns and there were comments about what
we would do about the skunks. One day I
answered the phone and this irate voice said, “What do you plan to do with the
bobcat that’s in my alley?” I said, “Is
he on a leash or under somebody’s control?”
He said, “Lady, I don’t know anything about that. All I know is he is hauling my gravel down
to his lane.“
I
hope you enjoy our community and that we see you back again soon.”
Roger Barber “In my title, “Provost”
means “protector of” the Chancellor.
Provosts work
MSU Northern most
closely with the faculty and also stand-in for the Chancellor. So, he asked
that I welcome you to Northern. Some of
you have been here before. As many as
eight commissioners are alums of this institution. It is a special pleasure to welcome you back. If this is your first visit here, I hope
that you have time to get to know our campus.
People who come here the first time often have had an image of one
building sitting on a hill, with maybe a tree.
They are surprised to see a complete campus with many buildings and
wonderful, wonderful programs. We are proud of this institution because it is vital
to the health of this State.
Our education and teacher
graduates are the most important source of teachers for small rural
schools. Our nursing graduates are
literally the heart and soul of most hospitals and nursing homes in Eastern
Montana. If we didn’t have a nursing
program, most of them say they would have to close up because they depend on
the students from Northern. Our
business students are an important source of new business start-ups in Eastern
Montana. Our special niche in the
University system is technology programs.
Our technology students actually are placed all over the United States
and the world. We find, though, that
they deeply miss Montana, this warm, friendly and caring place.”
RESPONSE ”On behalf of MACo, the County Commissioners and the MACo
staff, we
Gary Fjelstad thank
the City of Havre and the mayor. I am
sure you will find that this fine group
1st Vice President of people very seldom say a discouraging word; they
hardly say anything. Everything will be
so quiet all the people will hardly know that we are here. We also thank the University for working
with the Commissioners to allow us to have this conference here and we look
forward to a great time. Also, we
thank the Hill County Commissioners and the Blaine County Commissioners for
being the fine hosts for the convention.
With that, we will get started.”
ROLL CALL Fiscal Officer Allan Underdal conducted roll call and
announced quorum
was
present with 49 of 55 member counties answering the call.
WHEREAS, the members of the
Montana Association of Counties, with great sorrow and a deep sense of loss,
wish to remember and honor those members who have been taken by death since the
last annual convention of our Association; and
WHEREAS, each of these
county commissioners has rendered innumerable public services to his or her
respective county, to the State of Montana, and to the people thereof; and
WHEREAS, the absence of
these persons is keenly felt as a great personal loss to their families,
friends and colleagues;
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT
RESOLVED by the Montana Association of Counties in convention duly assembled in
Helena, Montana, this 25th day of September, 2000, that the
Association does hereby pay tribute to the memory of Commissioners:
Donald Gibson, Dawson County
Ezra Grover Rickman, Jr.,
Stillwater County
Vern Ballard, Golden Valley
County
Melvin Bakken, Richland County
and on behalf of its members and the citizens of the
State of Montana does hereby express gratitude for their achievements and
contributions to the public good of their counties and to Montana.
____________________________________
______________________________________
L. HAROLD BLATTIE, PRESIDENT GORDON MORRIS, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
CONGRESSIONAL Dwight
Mackay, representing Senator Conrad
Burns, presented a
PRESENTATIONS video
from the Senator, who discussed PILT, timber
county school bill,
Senator Conrad Burns CARA, economic development and transportation infrastructure, farm
Rep. Rick Hill income
protection and estate tax,
telecommunications, rural health care,
Senator Max Baucus and high
tech and biotech industry/jobs in Montana.
Dwight presented a United States flag which had flown over the nation’s
capitol.
MACo President Blattie introduced a video from Representative Rick Hill, who discussed the recent summer’s fires, forest funds for schools, PILT, CARA, and other issues.
On Wednesday, Senator Max Baucus
outlined his work on behalf of counties and discussed Montana statewide
economic development, highway reconstruction funding, PILT and CARA, local
government funding for a variety of services provided to Federal lands, and
fire disaster funding. He invited
visitors to his weekly Wednesday breakfasts, when visiting Washington DC.
I
would like to say thank you to the Resolutions Committee: Gail Jones, Mike Murray, Carol Kienenberger,
Albert Brown, Al Ryan, Donna Sevalstad, and Tom Bennett.
You
are receiving right now the list of the resolutions that have been reviewed by
the Resolutions Committee. There were
27 new resolutions and 16 reaffirmed resolutions. You should have received a packet at your District meeting and a
packet of supplemental resolutions which was sent out about two weeks ago. Then, voting delegates can pick up the five
additional resolutions that were acted upon last night at the Board of
Directors meeting at the Registration Desk.
So, that’s 27 Resolutions, plus 5, plus 16 reaffirmed. All of those should be color coded except
the five which you will pick up today.
They are color coded according to the priority--high, medium or
low. You will also find in your
registration bag the Legislative Guidelines, a yellow-colored sheet, and the
Delegate Assembly Rules, salmon colored sheet.
Take
a look at these this evening and run through the resolutions. If there are any that you wish to debate,
the protocol is that those will be segregated out of the packet on
Wednesday.”
You
will notice the new 2001 budget is less than last year. Last year the budget was $1,107,908; this
budget is $909,816. That is a little
misleading, because there was $219,000 in last year’s budget to pay for the new
building. If you take that out, we did
have an increase of this year’s budget of 4.6%. We ended up the year with $172,415 and with the projected revenue
for this year, we would have $107,000 in cash reserve at the end of FY 2001.”
A
motion to adopt the report was seconded and passed unanimously.
Harold Blattie Second
Vice President Victor Miller,
Blaine County
Second Vice President Howard Gipe, Flathead County
President
Blattie called for further nominations from the floor. Hearing none, President Blattie invited the
candidates to speak.
CANDIDATE Howard Gipe, Flathead County
PRESENTATIONS “When I started at the Highway
Patrol, I spent eight years in Chinook.
I spent a lot of time on this campus working with the programs. I have to say no people are friendlier, nicer
and more pleasant to work with than here.
I
am in my fourteenth year as a County Commissioner. I have four years left before I retire. I represent various boards; I’ve worked with mental health; I’ve
spent time before the legislature. I’ll
continue that whether I’m elected or not.
I’m certainly a strong supporter of MACo. Since I’ve been here, the Worker’s Comp. program is certainly
something I’m very proud of. I am not
the Lone Ranger out there. We need to
work together. I would appreciate your
support.”
Victor
Miller, Blaine County
“I was seriously considering leaving
the County Commission to work for the Forest Service, but Blaine County also
had devastation this year. I am sorry
to announce that I will not be head ranger at Lone Pine. Two teenagers got drunk and cut the tree
down. So now I plan on serving for a
very long time.
I
often get in discussions with my oldest son.
I do not understand Generation X--no more than my Dad understands us
Baby Boomers. I asked the same
question of my son that my Dad asked of me, “What the hell’s wrong with
you?” Frankly, he came up with a better
answer than I ever did. His answer was
quite simple, “Our diversity is our unity.”
That’s my message.
County
Commissioners may argue back and forth, but that is the message I will
carry. Your second VP will go through
two legislative sessions. I look
forward to working with the team and doing what we can to make sure that
government is served best at the local level.
I would appreciate your support.
If you vote for Howard, that’s fine, too, because either way this
organization will be served well.”
President Blattie announced that the Urban
Counties would be meeting later in the day to make their selection for the
Executive Committee.
“Before
I introduce the two sales directors from our hotels interested in having you
come to Cascade County, we welcome you to Cascade County. We are in the midst of Lewis and Clark
heritage celebrations and this would be a very fitting place for you to place
your convention.”
Sales
Directors from Heritage Inn / Budget Inn and from Holiday Inn presented
advantages for their sites.
Ted
Coffman, Madison County
“On
behalf of Madison County and Gallatin County we invite you to come to Big Sky,
Montana. The Holiday Inn in Great Falls
says the “Best of Big Sky hospitality.”
Well, we’ll give you the best of Big Sky-Big Sky hospitality. The upper portion of Big Sky, the skiing
area, is in Madison County. The golf
course is in Gallatin County and the sewer runs downhill into Gallatin
County. We have a written confirmation
of $55 for the rates. We have been
working with the management for three years to get this and it came in on
Wednesday. Please consider it. Mike, over there, was talking about dancing
girls. We’ll take a past commissioner
from Madison County, Marie, she’s our dancing girl.”
Jennifer
Smith Mitchell, Gallatin County
“We have
spouses who want to go shopping in Bozeman.
We are going to see if we can get bus service so that they can go into
town. It may even be an alternative
vehicle. That’s something else to look forward to.”
A video of
the Big Sky facility was presented.
Harold Blattie fill it
out, especially the comments. When the
leadership is trying to determine the direction of the organization, the
comments are really valuable.
MACo currently provides an array of “administrative services” such as answering
questions on budget, personnel, procedures, and other general governmental
issues to assist member counties in dealing with the day-to-day operations of
County government.
I think
that this certainly tells the Executive Board that the administrative services
are something that the membership finds to be valuable and need to have some
focus.
MACo currently provides
legislative services for counties, such as lobbying, legislative alerts,
legislative impact analysis and interim committee monitoring and reporting for
MACo and local government program purposes.
49 27
1 1
From the
comments, one thing that really came through is that we need to have commissioners present at the
hearings and interacting with the legislators.
So, during this next session there will be more effort to let you know
when hearings are going to be, to afford you all an opportunity to get there.
MACo endeavors to provide
continuing liaison with the Executive Branch and various State Agencies and
provides Counties with status reports and periodic updates
37 38 1 2
This is
seen as important, but not as important as some other areas.
The MACo NEWSLETTER, which is
published monthly, is
36 32 1
The
Newsletter has grown a bit. Jane
Jelinski, the Assistant Director, has changed the format of it. There were some fine comments and Jane has
taken direction from them and really strives to provide the best publication
that she possibly can.
Counties have a need for uniform
accounting and taxation software and technical assistance when it comes to
acquiring hardware. Should MACo play a role in this area by providing this as a
service?
Yes 51 No 19
This leads
us to believe is that there certainly is a need for technology assistance to
the counties. It is difficult for many
of you to obtain information and technical expertise. Last year I appointed an ad hoc committee to study these issues,
and I’m hopeful of having a report done in the next few weeks. The Ad Hoc Committee met most of the time
with the IT Committee. There is no
proposal or any great solutions, but maybe ways of helping you get the services
you need.
·
County Employee Health Insurance
It comes
as no big surprise that Personnel Services ranked very high and is something
that you find to be very valuable. I
know those member counties which use Jack on a regular basis understand what an
asset he is. When you go out and
purchase insurance, you simply won’t get service like how Jack has saved a
number of counties from some employee lawsuits.
MACo hosts and organizes several meetings throughout
the year, they are:
• MID WINTER MEETING
Commissioner
Orientation was the highest ranked and appropriately so. When someone comes into the job for the
first time, they haven’t a clue. We
will be having another one in December after the election. All new commissioners will be invited. If you have a new commissioner in your
county, encourage them to attend and fund their way to do it.
Next,
to nobody’s surprise, you found the DES Governor’s Conference to be the least
valuable. It would be interesting to
ask the question again now, with all the calamities we’ve had in the State this
year.
DES
asked if we could hold a statewide meeting on basically about three days’
notice. All of you would have had to
travel to Helena, so we had the METNET Conference. The cost of $1,000 was funded by DES. I hope you found that a satisfactory way to get the information
to you, because it was very worth the effort to get the information out as soon
as possible.
The
Conference Planning Committee and the Executive Board appreciate your taking
the effort to fill the survey out. The
information which you provided will help in the direction of the Association in
the future.”
INTERIM LEGISLATIVE “This is a
draft proposal. I think
the Committee did a great job. If
you
COURT FUNDING have any of these people in your area, contact them and tell them what you
AND STRUCTURE think about this. Besides myself, the other members of the
Committee were:
COMMITTEE Senator
Walter McNutt, Chair
Mike Hutchin Senator
John Tester
Lake County
Representative Ron Erickson
Representative John Witt
Judge Kenneth Neil, Cascade
County
Judge Joe Hegel, Custer
County
Kevin Hart, Justice of
Peace
Jim Nugent, Missoula City
Attorney
Lori
Maloney, Clerk of Court from Butte Silver Bow
The
first unofficial draft copy got to me Saturday afternoon. The draft is about 56 pages. We can get this copied for you or you can
call Judy Paynter at Department of Revenue. .
In
my eighteen years of being a commissioner I think this proposal is one of the
most important decisions for this session, if not the most important in the
last several years. As you all know, it
is always hard to go to the Legislature to figure out ways to fund the district
court system.
The
primary mission of this committee was to bring the responsibility for the
district courts into one government body--the State. We have a MACo resolution that supported that concept. So, as a representative of MACo I held that
position, even though I must tell you, I would not support part of it. The decision was made to have the district
court funding placed with and funded by the State, with one exception. It allows the clerks of court and employees
to remain as county employees and not bring them into the state system. The clerks, also, felt that they should be
left on the county system.
That’s
where I disagree. However, I
represented MACo in that effort. Early
on, the Committee, except those of us who voted opposite, voted to support the
concept that the clerks of court should be funded through the state. Lori Maloney, a clerk of court, and I made
the position very strong that there would be opposition from Montana
Association of Counties and the clerks of court to put the clerks into a
state-funding bill. As a result of
this, the clerks were left out of that draft.
We followed the MACo resolution.
The
Committee has recommended that this be accomplished immediately after the
session. Should this proposal pass,
effective July 1, 2001, the district courts would be with the State of Montana.
The
Committee also recommended that there be a judicial council to run this system,
made up of district court judges, an attorney and some other individuals. If you are interested, I would get this
information to you.
The
district court costs would be submitted as part of the judiciary budget
request. Counties would continue to
provide office space at no cost to the state.
Most of you I talked to agreed that we should continue to fund the space
in the courthouse. The committee wants
local governments to be able to supplement the state’s judiciary budget, of
course, if necessary. So this proposal
is intended to keep our ability to levy district court costs up to whatever
level you are--first class county, second class county and on down, six mills
per class. Revenue assumptions are that
there was $25 to $26 Million of district court costs around the state of which
counties bore about $5 Million directly.
In terms of the clerks of court, it was all the counties’. So the clerk of court dollars we are
spending we will continue to fund. The
balance of that $26 Million (about $20 Million) will be funded by the state
district court system. Some of that
will be through the current fees which will continue to go to the state and
transfer to that program. (Harold might
give a little more detail about that.)
In summary, the state general fund costs would be $23.3 Million in
Fiscal 2002, and $24.6 Million in 2003.
The funding transfers would take care of most of that. The net cost to the State general fund as
being considered by the Legislature, would be $1.7 Million in 2002 that they
would have to come up with and $2.4 Million in 2003.
We will have a public hearing on Thursday, November 16 in Helena at
Carroll College at the campus center, 9:00 am. to go through this unofficial
draft to come up with official draft legislation for the next session. If you
cannot make that meeting, you could submit something through MACo or myself or
submit it to Sandy Lang of the Court Funding and Structure Committee, Box 5805
in Helena.
Who would
be responsible for public defenders?
The State of Montana. That proposal clearly lines out that there
would be offices of public defenders with each district, funded by the State.
Did you
say that the counties would still be responsible for supplemental budgets?
Yes.
Missoula County is an example.
They were levying six mills and chose to provide more for the district
court system than any other county chose to do. So they supplemented district court costs with their own
funding. You can choose to do
that. If you feel that your district might
needs something for while or needs to do something different, you as a county
can choose to supplement the state funding of that court system. You are not obligated, but you can.
Do you
anticipate the state taxes to the local taxpayer be increased, decreased or
stay the same under the new system?
I really couldn’t answer that. It depends on whether the Legislature funds
this or not. We are assuming it will
come from the State general fund and each session would wrestle with those
numbers.
All tax dollars
come from some place and my question is how much is it going to cost to fund
the system under state guidance compared to local?
We tried to keep it revenue neutral. The local system would stay as we know it
today. There would still be 22 judicial
districts, except there would be 8.5 FTEs added to the state budget to
administer the program, instead of all the clerks and payroll clerks we have
throughout the state. It’s intended to
be close to revenue neutral, no increases, just coming from different pockets.
Are public defenders included in this assumption?
They are.
The public defenders would be employees of the State.
What
about, then, their services to justice courts?
I just got this on Saturday
afternoon. I don’t if they would be
responsible to JP courts or not. I will
have to look that up.
It’s an
interesting question, because in our JP system, those PD services always go to
district court and the justice court.
If it’s still the case? I can’t tell you if that’s in this draft.
In the
various places where the district court judges have apparently ordered
commissioners to do A-B-C or D, does that mean that we deal simultaneously with
the state assumption and those rules?
No.
I doubt that. I assume that
ability exists with the judges; if they can’t fund it through the state system,
they may go after the state for that--to have a court order for the state to
have additional funding. I’m not sure
that the proposal clearly defines that.
The
district court funding sources on page 12 are based on the FY 98 values.
That’s correct. That’s the most current data that they had available.
I’m
looking particularly at local option tax.
If we change this significantly, will we take those local option taxes
out of the court system?
I don’t know that we have the answer to
that. Harold’s committee may have a
little more details in terms of the funding and where it’s going to come from,
the impacts and how to apply to the votes this fall.
In the
draft, what was the impact and reaction from the judges?
There was a rumor floating around that the
district judges had opposed, based on court reporter positions. The court reporters can be in three
categories right now--employees, independent contractors or a combination. That was in the proposal because each
district was quite unique. Judge Joe
Hegel, Miles City, has seven counties in his judicial district. That makes a difference in how he runs the
court system and how he uses court reporters.
In the discussions with the committee, we wanted to leave all three
options available to each judicial district for court reporters.
Judge Larson had a draft bill that wasn’t
anywhere close to this. There were 26
pages. This proposal is the only one I
know of in this area that you can get a copy of. It’s 56 pages. This is
the unofficial draft copy. As of
Thursday this should turn into the official draft.
You
indicated that clerks would be the responsibility of local government. Would the clerk of courts be elected
officials still?
Yes. The district clerks of
court remain exactly as they are today.
The keeper of the records within
courthouses would be a local function and a local expense.
What will
happen with juvenile detention? Will
the state take over all juvenile detention?
All of the duties and responsibilities of
the chief probation officer and staff would be under the state.
As you all know, there will be companion
legislation. The juvenile probation
officers have a bill to go into a different category of pay. It would hurt all of us locally to be able
to fund it, because the pay matrix would go up substantially. The court reporters also have legislative
proposals. So this bill can be tugged
every which way in terms of interests.
I think we can probably eliminate at least two of the political problems
with state assumption of this cost--the counties and the clerks of courts. I’m not sure we can do that with the
judges. Judge John Larson out of Missoula
has had a problem with this. So we will
see this pulled apart and that’s what we want.
We want to come out with the best thing possible and hopefully it will
pass. MACo has been working on district
court funding for many years.”
INTERIM LEGISLATIVE “Both of
these committees were created as a result of SB 184. The court
LOCAL GOVERNMENT committee
looked at the court structure issue but
really didn’t delve into the
FUNDING AND finance
part of it. It
deferred that to the Local
Government Funding and
STRUCTURE Structure Committee. The Committee started
meeting over a year ago but
COMMITTEE bogged down during the special legislative session because it relied heavily
Harold Blattie on
Department of Revenue
staff to provide the numbers. We ended a couple
of months
behind. The amount of information that
this committee has had to digest is absolutely enormous.
The committee members were:
Representative
Robert Story Rep. Maryanne Guggenheim
Senator
Linda Nelson Senator Lorentz Grosfield
Susan
Nicosia, city council person Patricia Cook, Lake County
Treasurer
John
Lawton, city manager, Great Falls County Commissioner Sue Olson
Mary
Bryson, Director of Department of Revenue and myself.
Sue Olson “It was a
privilege to serve on this committee,
even though we got brain-
Musselshell County
overload most of the time. In answer to the
question on district courts, the
county
will keep the property tax mill and the local vehicle option tax. The basic question is why the State needs
8.5 FTEs for the administration of this.
We talked about changing the
fiscal year and decided to leave it as it is.
We talked about auditing some of our
smaller districts that are less than the $200,000. We need to have some kind of audit but we need a good idea on how
they can afford to do that. We did
think that the tax commissions could do it and it could be placed under the
budgetary process of the commissioners so that everyone would know what was
going on.
The Committee wants to improve relations between t