Compact commission wasted money, abandoned Montana

It is such a shame that the Compact Commission has wasted millions of taxpayer dollars “negotiating” the Confederated Salish Kootenai Tribes compact over a period of 10 years. 

If you’ve been negotiating that long, you should not end up with a document that is 1,400 pages long and is still incomplete. In the last year and a half, and under the guise of reopened negotiations, the Compact Commission has further wasted taxpayer dollars by not changing anything in the compact that was defeated by the Legislature in 2013.  

So let’s add it up. Ten years at roughly $1 million per year gives us $10 million, according to the Department of Natural Resources and Conservation’s Compact Commission budget figures).  Then for the last year and a half, let’s add another $1 million. 

The state’s contribution to the compact is still pegged at $55 million, half of which will  be spent on a federal, not state, irrigation project. 

So, that amount of money translates into $66 million dollars to negotiate a 1,400 page agreement that in the end doesn’t protect Montanans, gives up state authority to administer state water resources of its residents and invites the federal government to take control of western Montana’s water.

And compact supporters continue to whine about how not passing a compact will be so expensive?

Truthfully, it would be a much better use of taxpayer money to defend Montana residents against the overreach of the federal government than to spend taxpayer monies on defeating Montanan’s property rights.

 —Skip Biggs, St. Ignatius