Opinion By Kim Gillan

Republished with permission

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Serving 16 years in the Montana legislature taught me much about the do’s and don’ts of crafting a state budget. Legislators are charged with deciding how to use hard-earned Montana taxpayer dollars to make government work for the people. It was our job as legislators – Republicans and Democrats, rural and urban – to balance the state’s budget and ensure that every penny of Montanans’ tax dollars was wisely spent to provide needed services to improve our state.

We faced tough decisions to balance the pressing, sometimes competing needs while ensuring efficiency and serving the people. And, like all good farmers, we made sure to keep grain in the bin just in case we had a rainy day and faced an economic downturn. In my opinion, our legislative responsibility was accountability to our folks back home and letting them know how taxpayer monies were spent.

But just recently we learned that Governor Gianforte has set up – off the books and out of the public’s eye – what could be considered his own personal spending account by skimming interest off of federal dollars ARPA) that are meant to help build our state. A newspaper headline read: “Governor’s office controls an unrestricted interest fund worth $86 million, and counting.” With no public or legislative oversight, the Governor’s office decides how to spend interest from federal dollars on what may be his pet projects. Representative Terry Falk, a Kalispell Republican who chairs the General Government Joint Appropriations Subcommittee, called the interest fund “inappropriate” and “concerning.”

Read the rest at Kim’s Substack.