12 April 2019 — 1117 mdt

Taking 96,000 hostages to save SB-331 won’t save Colstrip

There’s only one way for Montana to keep Colstrip’s coal fired power plants open, providing job and polluting the land and sky: the State of Montana can buy the old power plants and operate them at a loss. Our legislature rejected that option early in this session.

SB-331 exempts Northwestern Energy from regulation by the Public Service Commission. That helps Northwestern, but it doesn’t guarantee that Colstrip will continue operating for decades to come. In fact, it creates a perverse incentive for an early closure of the plants.

SB-331’s proponents are being willfully blind to economic realities. Coal fired electricity generating plants are being retired across the nation and around the world, replaced by wind, solar, and natural gas, fueled plants that generate electricity at a lower cost with fewer carbon emissions.

That willful blindness led to yesterday’s 25–25 defeat of HB-658, the bill extending expanding Medicaid, in the MT Senate. Five sponsors of the bill voted against it, hoping that by taking it — and the 96,000 Montanans served by expanded Medicaid — hostage, SB-331 could be assured of passage. Here are the names of the Judas Five:

This exercise in extortion is beyond dirty politics. It’s depraved politics, the inevitable consequence of ignoring the facts and moral compasses. Unless they come to their senses immediately and release their hostages, the Judas Five will find that when the roll is called up yonder, they won’t be there.