30 September 2018 — 2339 mdt
The first Montana university levy was passed in 1920
If you listen to the drumbeaters thumping for Legislative Referendum 128, which would extend for another ten years the six-mil levy that helps fund the academic side of Montana’s universities, you will encounter two misleading assertions: the levy is a tradition dating from 1948, and support for the levy has been declining.
That’s the advertising pitch to get you to vote Yes. The historical truth is more interesting, but it’s being ignored by the propagandists promoting the levy. They evidently think the full history story is too complicated for the simple Montanans without college degrees who comprise approximately two-thirds of the voters.
I have faith in my fellow voters’ ability to understand history, so here’s the rest of the story.
The first university levy — just one mil — was put to the voters in 1914. It failed. Six years later, in 1920, when women could vote, and a pro-levy campaign was organized, a 1.5-mil levy passed. In 1930, at the beginning of the Great Depression, the levy, doubled to three mils, passed. Ten years later, the levy, now 3.5 mils, passed again. World War II and the 1944 G.I. Bill followed. By 1948, Montana’s universities needed more money. Instead of waiting until 1950, the university levy was raised to six mills and put to the voters in 1948. It passed, with 60.8 percent of the vote, and has been approved by Montana’s voters ever since at ten-year intervals.
Electoral support for the levy peaked in 1978, when Jimmy Carter was president and Tom Judge was governor. Since then, the margins of victory have declined, tempting some to draw a trend line starting not at 1948 but at 1978 because that allows MONTPirg field director Hunter Losing to make this argument:
Losing said the levy is a Montana tradition, and has passed every decade – although by a smaller margin in more recent decades.
“It has never failed in its history, every 10 years it has passed. But it’s been passing at a lower and lower margin each year, so we’re trying to reverse that trend and pass it at a higher margin,” Losing said.
There is no trend. The levy elections are independent events. In 1958, as the nation emerged from a mild recession, the levy passed with 51.5 percent of the vote. Ten years later, it survived the dirty essay controversy. It received a solid 56.8 percent of the vote in 2008, at the beginning of the Great Recession, as major banks were failing and gasoline prices exceeded four dollars a gallon.
If the levy receives 55 percent or more of the vote on 6 November, I’ll consider that a convincing victory.
I’m voting for the levy, and urge that you do, too. My only regret is that there is not a ballot measure abolishing football and intercollegiate athletics, as an infusion of cash coupled with the ouster of the gladiators and the mischief making alumni who support them would powerfully improve Montana’s university system.