Bozeman Daily Chronicle, Jan. 29, on fixing the Affordable Care Act:
Republicans in Washington now have the majorities they need to repeal the Affordable Care Act - which they have been wanting to do since the law was passed in 2010.
What follows next could be nothing short of catastrophic for many millions of Americans - including tens of thousands of Montanans. Enough smart politicians know that, and hence the hesitancy to repeal the law so far. They are smart enough to know that if they repeal the law without some kind of reasonable replacement, the political consequences could be dire.
But that doesn’t mean hotter heads won’t prevail and repeal without an adequate replacement won’t happen. If it does, some 61,000 Montanans who found coverage for the first time under an expanded Medicaid program will lose that coverage. Another 150,000-plus with pre-existing conditions could also lose coverage.
As this political theater unfolds in Congress, we strongly urge our congressional delegation to present a united front against the repeal of the ACA. Sens. Jon Tester and Steve Daines, along with Rep. Ryan Zinke (at least until confirmed as President Trump’s secretary of interior) are urged to use what influence they can to preserve the essential parts of the act.
Repeal would be particularly hard on rural states like Montana. Disproportionate numbers of Montanans are self-employed and need to purchase their own insurance. The front lines of health care here are the small, rural clinics that say they will have to close without the benefits of the ACA.
Rather than repeal the law, let’s fix what needs fixing - the parts that contribute to rising premiums and overall costs - but retain the expansion of Medicaid and the bans on lifetime caps on insurance payouts or the refusal to cover patients with pre-existing conditions. And let young people stay on the parents’ policies until age 26.
Sen. Tester has already spoken passionately on this issue on the Senate floor. Sen Daines and Rep. Zinke are urged to join the chorus.
Change the name of the program if it will allow Republicans to claim they have repealed Obamacare. But keep what’s been clearly successful about this program. Don’t leave millions of Americans without adequate access to health care.
Editorial: https://bit.ly/2jATFJ6
___
The Billings Gazette, Jan. 31, on the use of bonds:
What’s a good bond rating worth?
For the city of Billings last week, the AA+ rating from Fitch Ratings helped slice millions of the cost of building a new wastewater treatment plant.
The city’s bond issue was so attractive to investors that they paid a $7.1 million premium for the opportunity to buy $56.5 million in 20-year bonds. The premium reduced the amount the city needed to borrow.
At the same time, the high bond rating resulted in a low interest rate of 3.2 percent. A week earlier, Assistant City Administrator Bruce McCandless had noted that municipal bond interest rates were running around 3.5 percent.
Billings earned those favorable borrowing terms with its a track record of conservative financial management, low debt load and good financial planning. The wastewater treatment plant upgrade has been years in the planning, which began after city leaders learned that the plant would have a deadline of 2019 for meeting new, higher federal standards for the treated water discharged into the Yellowstone River.
The bonds will be repaid with fees charged to wastewater system users - that’s all of us who get monthly bills for Billings water and wastewater service. Actually, the city started increasing wastewater services fees six years ago to cover this plant replacement. The entire project will cost $77.9 million, including spending $14.3 million in wastewater department reserves accumulated to help fund the project. Bonds were issued to finance the rest.
Ratepayers will be paying less for the required upgrade thanks to Billings’ sound financial planning and management.
The city’s bond experience should be instructive for Montana lawmakers: Bonds are part of maintaining adequate public infrastructure.
For several sessions, some lawmakers have opposed any bonding, rejecting any new state debt. That strategy doesn’t work in the long run. Even if needed projects are delayed, they are still needed. Repair, replacement and construction costs go up every year. The cost of doing nothing grows and includes crashes on deteriorated roads, wasted heat in substandard buildings, school and university buildings that fail to safely accommodate all students, water and sewer systems that malfunction, potentially creating public health crises.
Last month, Gov. Steve Bullock issued a press release boasting of the state’s AA+ bond rating. The state of Montana had about $117.8 million in outstanding general obligation bonds in December when Fitch analysts concluded that its very low risk of default merited the high rating.
Montana’s rating “is based on its increasingly diverse economic base, strong growth prospects, low liabilities and conservative financial practices,” Fitch said. The ratings firm said the state’s liability burden is low and tax-supported debt is “exceptionally low” at 0.6 percent of personal income with Montana ranking 37 among the 50 states in personal income per capita.
Bullock’s infrastructure proposal includes spending state cash and bonding to finance state projects and grants for local infrastructure. The Republican majority will introduce its own infrastructure proposals.
As a compromise is hammered out, we call on all lawmakers to be open to using bonds prudently as a part of funding critical infrastructure. Don’t kick decisions down the road again. Make urgent and long-delayed infrastructure investments in 2017 that include some long-term bonds.
Editorial: https://bit.ly/2jt7T3C
___
The Missoulian, Jan. 30, on whether booking photos should be released to public:
Last week the Montana House Judiciary Committee pulled the rug out from under police chiefs and news organizations who jointly supported a simple measure to clarify that booking photos are public information and should be treated as such. Unbelievably, the committee chair submitted a request to amend the bill to instead prohibit the release of these photos.
He did so despite the fact that no one spoke in opposition to the original bill at the hearing Jan. 18. And despite the fact that the intent of House Bill 236 is to at last provide the obvious answer to the question of whether the mugshots taken of suspects upon their arrest should be made available to the public.
For a long time, each county in Montana answered this question individually, leading to a situation in which mug shots were routinely released by some counties, such as Yellowstone, and routinely withheld in others, such as Missoula.
That changed in October 2015, when a district court case helped set a statewide precedent after the judge ruled that Park County was required to release the booking photo of a registered violent offender who was charged with aggravated assault and attempted deliberate homicide. Attorney General Tim Fox later referred to the ruling to explain his decision not to offer a new ruling in a Gallatin County case that also concerned booking photos.
For most county attorneys in Montana, as well as the state attorney general, that settled it: Mugshots would henceforth be released along with arrest records. Missoula County Attorney Kirsten Pabst was among these sensible souls; she immediately informed the Missoula County Sheriff’s Department that booking photos were to be treated as part of the arrest record and considered public criminal justice information. And for the past year, the Missoulian has published mugshots along with relevant crime stories.
Gallatin County, on the other hand, resisted the ruling and began insisting that anyone seeking access to mugshots should be required to file a motion and secure a court order - each and every time. So, although the issue was indeed settled for the most part, legislative clarification has been needed to make the law crystal clear to the lone holdouts.
Thus Rep. Frank Garner, a Republican from Kalispell, introduced a straightforward bill this legislative session to accomplish that clarification. The four-page bill is an easy read, and includes a simple addition to state statute clarifying that “booking photographs” are included in the definition of “initial arrest records,” meaning they are public information. Notably, the bill has the support of nearly every news organization in the state as well as the Montana Association of Police Chiefs.
However, the Judiciary Committee ignored this support and prepared amendments to the bill to prohibit the release of booking photos until after the person is convicted of a crime, with some limited exceptions. Chairman Alan Doane said he thinks the public release of booking photos is comparable to “revenge porn” and counter to the spirit of “innocent until proven guilty.”
But this reasoning makes no sense. Law enforcement officials often provide mug shots to news media when asking for the public’s help identifying or locating a suspect. What good would it be to wait to provide these photos until after the person is caught and convicted?
A photo doesn’t mean a suspect is guilty any more than an arrest report does. All it means is that an individual has been charged with a crime. Remember, a lot of people booked into the Missoula County Detention Facility are subsequently released on bail. People have the right to know who in their community has been arrested and what crimes they are being charged with as a matter of public interest and public safety, and to hold our criminal justice system accountable.
Mugshots are far and away the most accurate way to identify an individual. Providing only a suspect’s name can lead to community confusion if the name is a common one, as in John Smith or Jane Anderson. Eliminating the possibility of such confusion is precisely why booking photos are taken in the first place.
The original version of the bill should be passed out of committee for a full vote in the House without further complication. If the proposed amendments are made, however, the bill should be killed.
Editorial: https://bit.ly/2keM1Gs
Please read our comment policy before commenting.