Russ Bache Interview

Challenger Russ Bache is running for Lincoln County Commissioner.

Bache, 63, is a Navy veteran of 28 years. After retiring from the military, Bache worked as a golf professional for six years. He then returned home to Lincoln County to retire.

Bache is married to his wife, Rhonda, who is also a Lincoln County native.

Why are you running?

Basically I felt that there are some things that could have been done better, more efficiently. I didn’t think that the citizens were being involved enough or listened to. I would like to change that.

Can you give me an example?

I didn’t want to get into all of that, but like getting rid of the FSA (fire service area). I don’t think the people out there were listened to at all. The other one would be the justice of the peace in Eureka. The people of Eureka did not want to lose that position and neither did the commissioner from Eureka. I think that is the wrong way to go. I think the commissioner of the north county should be listened to more than he was.

When you say the FSA, are you talking about the fire service?

Cabinet View.

How do you think the county should have handled that situation with the fire service areas? What would you do?

Lock them in a room and tell them. I am being facetious a little bit, but in a way that is what needs to be done to get together and work things out. Instead of all the ‘he said, she said.’ To work as a community instead of the way it is now. They are not working together, the rural fire departments. I know that Lincoln County Rural Fire works with Libby but Libby, Troy and Eureka don’t work with the rural fire departments. It would only benefit all of the departments if they worked together. Each one of them has a little bit different skill set.

Tell me about your background.

Twenty years in the military. During that time I couldn’t tell you how many leadership and management classes I have been to. Numerous. I had my wall full of them and then I decided that I didn’t want to look at them anymore so I put them away. When I was in the military I did field medical service school. Which all the dental technicians have to go to in order to go with the Marines. I think there were like 75 people in the class and I was the honor graduate.

How long have you lived in Libby?

I grew up here and then I left, but I always come back. Almost every year I come back to visit for like 30 days to visit with my relatives, which there is a lot of. Some of them I haven’t even seen since I have been back yet. Need some kind of reunion.

I know that this is a non-partisan race, but is there a party you affiliate with?

I am conservative. I am Republican. I am not ashamed of it.

What kind of criticisms do you have of the current commissioners?

I don’t like to criticize, to be honest with you. I like to just go on my, I mean could I, yes. I don’t care to criticize people in an open forum. I prefer not to.

What do you think is the top priority facing the county? How do you plan to address it?

Jobs. Jobs are number one. It is huge. If we had jobs here, we wouldn’t be having the budget problem that we have now. We still might have the $2 million problem, which I think should not have happened.

Do you have plans on how you want to address that and bring in jobs?

I would like to set up a — this is a firefighter, military term — a task force of interested people. They don’t have to be business people, but I would like to find somebody that has a marketing degree or highly experienced marketing person. Preferably local and preferably who would like to volunteer their time because of the county budget.

The first step would be to find out why the companies that wanted to come here decided not to, and the companies that are here find out why they decided to be here. I think that is huge to get a demographic on why they didn’t. Why they went to Spokane or Kalispell or Texas, wherever they went to. What was the deciding factor? I know it is not scenery. We have that. I don’t believe it would be schools because we have a pretty good school system here. It has to be something else.

Is there a type of industry you think the county should try to attract? What do you see as the backbone of the economy?

My mind is completely open. You could go back to logging and that depends on the forest plan that we just had a meeting on. I don’t know if that is going to help unless they listen to us. My fear is they won’t.

I am interested in any, especially manufacturing jobs. This is countywide, not just Libby, we were losing approximately 76 people a year. That is not older people. Older people come here and are retiring here, which is good. We need to get our younger people to want to stay here or come back here when they get done with school. You don’t see that much of it.

The county is facing a tight budget and looking to cut. How would you address that?

I would like to get the citizens involved in the budget process. Get a spot and put the budget right out there in the paper. I don’t think it should be hidden. I know (Lincoln County Clerk and Recorder) Tammy (Lauer) would gladly show anybody. I think it needs to be put out there more so people can see where the money is going.

One of the solutions could be to raise taxes. Would you support that?

No. Raising taxes is never a good solution to me. When you raise taxes you actually wind up losing money in the long run. You make people want to move away. You have a lot of retired people moving in here maybe because the taxes are lower, or whatever the case may be. I am going to go back to jobs. If we had more jobs our tax base would be higher so we wouldn’t have to do these drastic cuts.

There is a situation with overpayment from taxpayers. How you would handle that?

One guy, I think that it was in The Western News, put his opinion in there and he wanted to get paid right now. I don’t think that is a solution. I don’t think that they can even figure it out right now.

Listening to Tammy, she is having trouble trying to figure out who gets what and how much. They can go back and see how much they paid, but how much to return? I think reducing it for the next two to three years is a start in the right direction.

I don’t think that it should have happened, in my opinion. I think that it should have been noticed a long time ago by the commissioners because they have to sign off on it. I don’t know why they didn’t look at that a little closer to find out why that happened.

I don’t like the idea of floating mill levies. I think that if the people voted on a mill levy, and if you want to raise the mill levy it should be voted on again. It is too easy to make a mistake, as we found out with a floating mill levy. For instance 20-mill levies and they want to vote on raising it to 30, add it on a vote. I think that is going to happen through the Montana State Senate. I think Chas Vincent is working on that.

What do you feel the county’s role is in dealing with the EPA?

I actually have a pretty close relationship right now. Mike, the EPA guy, I can’t remember his last name. As long as they don’t bring in the army or something. I think that they are doing a fairly decent job, although I think some cases go too far.

What do you mean by go too far?

Well, I should say for the yard cleanup stuff. There is only a certain amount that you can cleanup there.

I think that the houses should be the most troublesome. I don’t believe the yards are as much of a problem as much as the houses are. There are houses right now that still have asbestos in them.

Any modification that you do to a building after that has to be mitigated with some kind of asbestos, and that takes extra money out of somebody’s pocket. If they are going to do a complete cleanup, then I think that it should be a complete cleanup, as far as the houses.

I am not an advocate of moving all the dirt and stuff. I think that they are causing some more problems than they are fixing in some cases. In moving all of the dirt, you get dust. I don’t care how much water they put on it. They are going to get some dust anyway. I do know that Mike has done a wonderful job here. He lives here so he actually cares what happens here.

Is there anything else that you want to share?

I will be a very hard worker. I will be available to anybody, almost all of the time. I will return all of my calls.

I would like to set up — of course I haven’t run this by the other commissioners — I would like to set up a timeframe monthly in the evenings for the citizens to come discuss their concerns for like, an hour or two. I would like to have one in Libby, one in Eureka and one in Troy. Each month. Discuss anything that they want to discuss as long as they remain civil. That is the only thing that I would request. One person talk at a time. Let the people talk and get out their opinions.

I know that going up to Eureka, it seems like people are a lot more involved than people here in Libby. I would like to change that.

Why do you think that is important to you? Why is that something that you picked out?

Because I guess I see a community that is hurting, and the only way to get better is to get involved. If you look at my demographics, the older people are staying here and the younger people are leaving. You see businesses going out of business. The retail is kind of the last to go. I know people care. You just have to push them that extra little bit to come out and care about what is happening in the whole county. I know there are people here that care enough that want to help.