The Montana Republican Party today released information on two construction liens filed by two contractors this month against Brian and Nancy Schweitzer.  The liens are for $21,000 in work completed in August on the couple's Georgetown Lake retreat.  Click here to see the lien documents. 

No doubt, when the Montana media gets their mitts on this story, Schweitzer will be made to look the victim against unscrupulous contractors and he'll become a hero among his blue-collar, Georgetown Lake neighbors.

It's another chapter in the sad chronicle of Montana losing out on energy development.  Last week the Bismarck Tribune reported that Great Northern Power Development will build a coal gasification plant near South Heart, North Dakota.  The project is expected to bring 200 new jobs.  South Heart is just 50 miles from the Monana border.

Meanwhile Montana has not a single coal gasification or liquefaction project on the drawing board.  Keep on talking, Governor Schweitzer.

The editorial pages in Montana newspapers have been gushing with praise for the mail ballot elections run this week in some of Montana's largest municipalities.  Election administrators too have been quick with their praise of the experiment and virtually silent on the glaring problems inherent with a mail ballot election.

One of the "glitches" was in returned ballots.  According to the Billings Gazette, "More than 5,000 ballots - about 10 percent of the total - came back to the election office as undeliverable..."  And recall the previous circus in Missoula where 11,000 - 26% - ballots came back to the elections office as undeliverable.

Most people we know have about as much confidence in the US Postal Service delivering 100% of the mail correctly as we have in Mike Kramer running a drug treatment center, so if there are tens of thousands of incorrectly addressed ballots in just two counties, how many were incorrectly delivered?  In Lewis & Clark County - which had a mail ballot fiasco of it's own that has prompted a "re-do" in January (VBM is supposed to be cheaper, right?) - ballots were incorrectly forwarded by the Postal Service because the election administrator forgot to stamp "Do not Forward" on the envelopes.  Ballots in Gallatin County were also forwarded.

With tens of thousands of ballots floating around in the mail, VBM is a dream come true for election fraud perpetrators.  One of the tenets of the secure election system we have now is that ballots are always under the watchful eye of at least two election workers.  VBM throws that security out the window and places that responsibility in the hands of postal workers, most of whom work alone. 

Election administrators love VBM because it makes their jobs a lot easier.  The pundits in the Montana media love it because it increases voter turnout.  Those are both laudable goals, but they come at the price of election integrity, and with all the blunders in this year's elections, it's obvious that it's not a worthwhile tradeoff.

We stumbled across this interesting study from Basin Electric Power Coop on the Wyoming Taxpayer's Association web site.  To sum it up, Montana is second to last in our region for providing property tax incentives for wind generation, providing a 50% rate reduction over the life of the project.  Compare that with an 85% reduction in North Dakota and a 70% reduction in South Dakota.  We also lag behind the Dakotas in incentives for coal-fired generation.

Admittedly, Basin Electric's comparison is a bit cursory.  It doesn't take into account the total tax structure for these states.  For instance, in addition to property taxes in Montana, coal-fired generation must also take into accounth the Coal Severance Tax.  However, this just reinforces the point made in our article from yesterday that while Montana talks big about energy development, our neighboring states are actually doing something to make it to happen.