Compact Commission abandons Montana
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Editor,
It is such a shame that the Compact Commission has wasted millions of taxpayer dollars “negotiating” the CSKT Compact over a period of ten 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 (see DNRC Compact Commission budget figures). Then for the last year and a half, let’s add another $1 million. The state of Montana’s contribution to the CSKT Compact is still pegged at $55 million, half of which will spend money 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 citizens, and invites the federal government to take control of western Montana’s water.
And Compact proponents continue to whine about how not passing a compact will be so expensive?
Truthfully, it would be a much better use of taxpayer monies to defend Montana citizens against the over reach of the federal government than to spend taxpayer monies on defeating Montanan’s property rights.
Skip Biggs
St. Ignatius
