Stop Feeding the Turkeys | Western news

I don’t know when the Merriam turkey was introduced to western Montana, but it was and it has thrived. I can attest to that.

In the 1980s and 1990s, I converted about 65 acres of forest land to cropland and planted a lot of oats to “tame the soil.” I put in a lot of oats as word and hay spread quickly in turkey country.

Before long, my haystacks began to resemble the back of a threshing machine because the turkeys were scraping the bales to get to the oat grains and blowing up all the strings. This meant I had to use a fork to load the hay onto a cart.

I will be forever grateful to Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks whose staff captured some 400 and relocated them to Flathead where I am sure they were welcomed. For me, it was “good riddance”.

So when one of my neighbors asked me, years later, “Jim, how do you get rid of those turkeys?” my advice was simple and direct. “Stop feeding them.”

Which brings me from turkeys to tourists.

Two Montana County Commissioners, Josh Slotnick, a Democrat from Missoula County, and Joe Briggs, a Republican from Cascade County, worked together to find a way to ease the hardship imposed on Montanans by historic property tax increases residential.

One of the first considerations when collecting taxes is what the political repercussions will be. And the best way to avoid repercussions for this is to tax people who can’t vote for you. Enter the tourist, like the turkey, ripe for plucking.

Taxing tourists and using receipts to offset residential property tax increases is not a very new idea and has been used successfully in several small taxing jurisdictions in Montana.

A tourism economy is not entirely beneficial. There are costs associated with tourism that residents, not tourists, must bear, and the argument is that tourists should pay their share of these costs. In particular, there is a need to improve water supply and septic infrastructure to accommodate increased use caused by tourism.

Places like West Yellowstone and the St. Regis resort area lacked the tax base to make improvements on the shoulders of residents alone, and the “resort tax”, first used by West Yellowstone in 1987, has, I believe, helped the city enormously.

Nearly every town in the Mountain West has seen its economy shift from an industrial economy to what local governments see as their last best chance, tourism. Tourism is therefore now a major industry in Montana.

One reason this is so is due to the implementation in 1987 of the Lodging Facilities Use Tax, expressly designed to promote Montana to out-of-state tourists. ‘State.

In the last fiscal year (2023), the 4% tax raised $59 million, of which 82.8% ($48.8 million) was spent promoting tourism in Montana. Some 60.3 percent went to the Brand Montana program administered by the Department of Commerce and 22.5 percent to regional tourism offices. (See https://brand.mt.gov/Programs/Office-Of-Tourism/Lodging-Facility-Use-Tax.)

At one point I suggested to Parliament that it would be simpler to tax tourists at the border. Years ago, there were actual barriers on the highways leading into Montana that, except when snow closed the roads, were symbolically kept open with a sign nearby reading “Welcome to Montana, the barrier is open.” .

Efforts to revive them in the 1989 Legislature failed, but today it might be tempting to reinvent these simple, quaint wooden bars with a toll booth and a sign that says “Welcome to Montana, Insert Card credit to open the door.

Conservatives who are not in favor of government subsidies might wonder why the state of Montana subsidizes a particular industry. Certainly an industry that brings Montana about $5.4 billion in revenue should, by now, be large enough to stand on its own.

Could these $48 million dedicated to promoting tourism be used to reduce property taxes? Sure, but it won’t because the industry is too invested in subsidies to allow them to be misused.

However, at some point you will have to stop feeding the turkeys.

Jim Elliott served 16 years in the Montana Legislature as a State Representative and State Senator. He lives on his ranch at Trout Creek.