Incumbent, Republican vie for Senate District 8 seat
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Jobs, the state budget, DUI laws and the Medical Marijuana Act are just some of the issues that Senate District 8 candidates Shannon Augare, D-Browning, and Rick Jennison, R-Ronan, say they’re prepared to face in the upcoming legislative session.
Augare, the incumbent, said he’d work to make sure that every dollar spent to stimulate the economy will overturn four to seven times. He also believes that tracking newly created jobs and comparing the effects of stimulus spending in urban and rural communities will help the legislature be more effective in dealing with an economic recession.
Jennison said one major problem in the state is a lack of natural resource jobs.
“They’re the jobs that will help the economy, not stimulus jobs,” he said.
He feels that “activist judges” like U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy have hurt Montana’s economy by pushing their own agendas; for example, Jennison said Montana has more than a million acres of forest infested with pine beetles, but lobbyists have made it impossible to log these areas.
“We have to make it so somebody with $35 can’t stop logging,” he said. “You can’t take two or three years to address these issues, because (pine beetles) multiply … Lobbyists have to have the wind taken out of their sails.”
On balancing the state budget, Jennison said the problem boils down to a simple fact: more money has to go in than goes out.
“It’s simple. Helena and (Washington) D.C. make this thing so complicated they can’t do anything at all,” he said.
Jennison also said he’d like to see education vouchers put into use so people who choose to send their kids to private school would get tax breaks.
Augare said his goal is to “ensure that we have continued surplus years.”
While some re-prioritizing is in order to make sure the state continues to provide quality education, Augare also supports cracking down on out-of-state businesses that don’t pay their fair share of taxes.
“If we were to pay attention to out-of-state tax cheats … we probably would not ever feel the effects of a recession,” he said.
While DUI laws are a hot-button issue in Montana, Jennison said the problem lies with judges who aren’t following the laws already in place.
“The judicial (system) is not doing their job,” he said.
With the right judges who would toughen up on repeat DUI offenders, Jennison believes Montana’s drinking and driving culture would take a severe hit.
“The cost of the cure has to fall back on the offender,” he added. Augare, who this year chaired the Senate’s Law and Justice Interim Committee on DUI laws, favors programs that he says are proven to change behaviors rather than merely punish offenders.
“We know just sending them to jail and expecting them to change their behavior isn’t working,” Augare said.
He supports having drug and alcohol courts and a program that would require mandatory blood tests of DUI suspects, who under current laws, can refuse to give a breath sample.
“There’s far too many ‘refusals to blow,’ and this would cure that,” he said.
Medical marijuana is another area that needs close examination, both candidates agreed. While Augare said he’s a strong believer in the citizen-led initiative process, stricter rules on medical marijuana are essential.
“I think one of our frustrations as a state is, ‘Who should be responsible for the regulation?’” he said. “There’s a whole slew of regulation I think needs to occur.”
Mass medical marijuana clinics must be stopped, and recreational users eliminated from the state’s program, Jennison added.
“(But) the legislature needs to tread real lightly here, because that was a voter initiative,” he said.
Overall, Jennison said he’s for limited government and will fight to keep Montana the great state that it is.
“I don’t believe in all the government programs, and that’s what I’m running on … When anybody receives all their substance from a government entity, they’re a slave to that government entity,” he said.
Augare said his strength lies in a moderate approach to working with legislators on both sides of the aisle.
“I probably have more friends on the Republican side,” he said. “I have no partisan agenda; I try to do what’s right.”
