Dems Busse, Graybill talk taxes and transparency in Missoula

Laura Lundquist

(Missoula Current) In the race for the governor of Montana, the Democratic challenger wants a return to greater government transparency and less property tax.

On the University of Montana campus this week, gubernatorial candidate Ryan Busse and running mate Raph Graybill hosted a town hall to answer questions about what their administration would prioritize if they are elected in November. Both men appeared energized after the gubernatorial debate hosted Wednesday afternoon by ABC Fox in Missoula.

Busse said the Missoula town hall was the fourth in a string of publicly noticed appearances around the state, adding that his opponent, Governor Greg Gianforte, doesn’t make public appearances to take uncensored questions. Graybill, an attorney, said Gianforte’s unwillingness to interact directly with all members of the public violates the constitutional rights to know and to participate in government.

“I had a case against Governor Gianforte on this very issue,” Graybill said. “My client asked for (a list of 2021 bills that might be unconstitutional). Gianforte said no, you don’t get to see that. The reasoning he gave was ‘I believe I make better decisions if I can keep secrets than if I have to be transparent.’ Our framers in Montana say transparency is what makes for better decisions.”

Graybill was referring to a 2021 lawsuit brought by Helena resident Jayson O’Neill after Gianforte denied O’Neill’s requests for bill monitoring forms, citing attorney-client privilege. O’Neill won in December 2022 when Lewis and Clark County judge Kathy Seeley ruled O’Neill had a constitutional right to know. Seeley said Gianforte’s claims of executive privilege “would effectively gut the right to know as it applies to the Executive Branch.”

A few of the 14 questions the candidates answered dealt with taxes, particularly the large jump in property tax that Montanans received this year. Gianforte has blamed local governments for increasing taxes, but Busse said Gianforte is responsible because he didn’t adjust how the state collects taxes.

Property tax is a combination of property value, local government taxes and a state neutral tax rate multiplier. Graybill said four gubernatorial administrations prior to Gianforte had taken the recommendation of the Montana Department of Revenue and adjusted the state tax rate multiplier to keep property taxes lower.

But Gianforte didn’t do that, even though the Department of Revenue estimated that the appraised residential property value would increase 43% between 2022 and 2023. Instead, he offered two rebates after the fact of up to $675 each to property owners who applied.

Busse questioned why people were required to apply when the Department of Revenue has all the information needed to automatically credit every property owner who paid taxes. That meant 43,000 eligible households didn’t get the first rebate, because they didn’t provide the correct information

“The governor asserted today in the debate, as he often does, that ‘It’s okay, everyone got a rebate.’ But here’s the deal: Everybody did not get a rebate. If you live in a rental home, you did not get a rebate,” Busse said, explaining that many landlords raised their rents to pay for higher property taxes before knowing they could get a rebate. “Additionally, they made you ask for the money. We call that a ‘red-tape rebate’ or an opt-in rebate. Raph and I have dedicated ourselves to no more opt-in rebates.”

When asked whether the total rebate of $1350 covered the property tax increase resulting from the unadjusted neutral tax rate, Busse said it didn’t for tens of thousands of homeowners. The average property tax increase was 21% so some homes had increases of several thousand dollars. That meant some people were taxed out of their homes, Busse said.

Busse said the property tax increase was unnecessary since Montana had a budget surplus in 2023 and is likely to again in 2025. If he’s elected, Busse said he’d follow the Department of Revenue’s recommendations on the neutral tax rate multiplier. He’d also ask staff to dig deep into Montana’s tax code because the leading industries are no longer agriculture or natural resource extraction - it’s financial services, real estate and recreation. So there needs to be a shift in how businesses are taxed.

“We are in a changing economy and a changed economy, and we need leadership to look at what to do with our tax code. How do we modify the way we raise money for the government based upon the reality of what Montana is becoming? That’s a heavy lift,” Busse said. “But the very basic thing is we can’t tax people out of our homes.”

Busse has criticized Gianforte for championing a series of tax cuts in 2023 that favored corporations and the rich. For example, Senate Bill 121 lowered the income tax for top earners to 5.9% from 6.8%. The Montana Budget and Policy Center said a combination of bills would give the top 1% earners in Montana more than $9,000 in annual tax cuts while those with incomes below $46,000 would see cuts of a few hundred dollars on average.

When asked if they’d try to reverse those tax cuts, Busse said he didn’t know if they’d try to roll that back but they want a fair income tax code. Graybill said there are a lot of other tax advantages that corporations have that he’d like to eliminate, such as challenging their tax bills. Because corporations can afford to challenge their bills in court, they often end up with settlements that allow them to pay less.

For example, in Great Falls, Calumet Montana Refining had protested its taxes and ended up with a settlement where it paid $11 million for three years of property taxes, a reduction of $5.9 million, in 2020.

“That’s an advantage in the tax system that ordinary people do not have. We are interested in going deep into the tax system and finding these kinds of built-in advantages and making sure the tax code is truly fair, truly equal,” Graybill said.

Taking a break from taxes, Busse said he was happy to answer a question about how to reverse the decline of the Department of Fish, Wildlife & Parks. First, he’d make new appointments to the seven-member Fish and Wildlife Commission, four of whom should be up for Legislative confirmation in 2025.

Busse said all of the current commissioners have made or are making money from wildlife so “it’s all about commercialization.” He said he’d also replace FWP Director Dustin Temple, “who is overseeing a complete dismantling of the finest scientists and law enforcement folks that has taken generations to build.”

“What Gianforte has done to Fish, Wildlife & Parks is a travesty. We have been a North Star in this country and the world for publicly managed wildlife, public lands and stream access and Governor Gianforte has attacked every single component of that,” Busse said. “We’re sitting in the middle of the state that has the best stream access law. And yet, the lieutenant governor, who’s an attorney, has spent 20 years saying she’s ardently opposed to our stream access law and she’s done everything to dismantle it. I think if they get a second term, I think the stream access law is in peril. It will be weakened.”

Lieutenant Governor Kristin Juras wrote a 2010 law review article where she called Montana’s stream access law a “monumental erosion of property rights.”

The next town hall in Missoula will be held Oct. 27 at the Burns Street Center from 5:30-7 p.m. The gubernatorial debate can be viewed online on ABC Fox, and Montana PBS will broadcast the debate at 7 p.m. on Thursday.

Contact reporter Laura Lundquist at lundquist@missoulacurrent.com.