If you like free and fair elections, brace yourself. Cascade County is in trouble and as a voter, you need to be informed. Sandra Merchant, election denier and now County Clerk & Recorder refuses to do her job. She needs to be replaced and soon! Send an email to the following people today and tell them to “ImmediatelyREMOVE Sandra Merchant as Clerk and Recorder for not fulfilling the duties of her elected office.”
[email protected] – MT Association of Elected Officials Executive Director, Eric Bryson
Ask the folks at the Sun River School District who requested a mail ballot election for their board of trustees. Merchant recently informed them she cannot run their requested mail ballot election. Was Sun River School District late with their request? Heck no, school administrators met required timelines but Merchant sent a letter saying they would need to run a poll election instead. Her excuse? She claimed the recent closing of IPS, the county’s mailing service, prevents her from running a mail ballot election. In her letter to the School District it states she could not find another source to mail ballots.
Sound fishy? It is. In the last year, Merchant and her ilk have publicly derided the mail ballot process, emphasizing their bias for poll elections. So is this Merchant’s backhanded way of eliminating the mail ballot process in Cascade County? You decide.
Here’s some facts you should know:
There are five elections between now and June and possibly two more in the fall – Sun River and Great Falls Public School elections (May), West Great Falls Drainage District (May), Ft Shaw Irrigation election (May), Library levy special election (June). In autumn, the city commission/mayor primary (September) and general election for city commission and mayor election (November).
Over 85% of the county’s voters prefer and REQUEST mail ballots for elections.
Mail ballots are more convenient for voters AND more cost-effective. It takes hundreds of paid people to run a poll election and a handful to run a mail ballot election.
The Elections office must train and oversee these poll workers. Not sure Merchant knows her job, since word has it that her office called the Sun River School District and asked them who their election judges are. Doesn’t Sandra Merchant know it is HER JOB to get the election judges?
The burden for non-county elections is borne by the requesting entity, so a poll election costs the city, library, school districts, water districts, etc. considerably more than a mail ballot election.
The library has been notified that their levy may need to be run in autumn when the city will be running its public safety levy. No doubt both levies will fail if that happens.
Merchant has also claimed that the redistricting process is going to take time away from planning any mail ballot elections. That process does not start until July, so why the hold-up for these four spring elections?
IPS mailing services gave ample notice of their business closure. In very early February, Cascade County Commissioner, Joe Briggs, asked Merchant to research other mailing service so mail ballots could be done this spring. Had Merchant contacted Kalispell which has 50,000+ voters in the county, she might have found a solution. But hey, why look very hard when your objective is to eliminate mail ballot voting?
It’s common knowledge that Merchant does not trust the county’s reliable count machines to tabulate voter ballots. Are Merchant’s gymnastics to eliminate mail ballots just a precursor to hand-counting ballots in the future? Let’s hope not.
Nursing homes, particularly in rural communities, are closing across the state. The residents in these facilities are often forced to move away from family and friends to find a place that will accept them. The problem is Medicaid payments from the state for these facilities are far below what is needed to cover costs. Everyone knows about this problem, and Gianforte proposed a paltry increase while trying to save the rest of the budget surplus to give tax breaks to his rich friends. Problem is it’s too little, too late. Here’s an explanation from Big Sky 55+
First, A Little Math (Don’t Worry, This is Simple)
The current reimbursement rate for Medicaid patients is $208 per patient per day. The current cost of operation for nursing homes is estimated to be at least $279 per patient per day. Bottom line is that the current reimbursement rate is at least $71 a day short of covering expenses. But wait, there’s more! For every $1.00 the state spends for Medicaid expenses, the federal government pays $2.37. Simply put, for every dollar the state “saves” by not funding Medicaid services, it leaves $2.37 on the table. This only makes sense to Republicans.
Gianforte is Supposed to be a Good Businessman!?!?
The last legislature commissioned a study to determine what it would cost to stop the crashing of long term care facilities in Montana. Though the full cost is probably higher depending on the facility, the legislative study recommended a “benchmark” of $279 per day to cover costs. Gianforte’s budget proposed paying 88% of that amount. Last time we checked, any business has to meet expenses to keep its doors open. Doesn’t matter if you cover 88% percent or 95% of your costs, you still go out of business if you can’t cover 100%. But, as we have said before, Republicans don’t understand Economics 101.
Democratic Proposal Passed the House
In response to the obviously inadequate proposal in Gianforte’s budget, Representative Mary Caferro (D-Helena) introduced HB 649, which increased funding for long term care to the benchmark amount. Surprisingly, the bill passed on the House floor and is now on its way to the Senate.
Great Falls Republicans Split on Supporting Full Funding
There are two distinct factions in the Great Falls Republican Party which have been at war with each other for years. One camp is the local Central Committee which is composed of less extreme, corporatist members. The other camp is the tinfoil hat conspiracy crowd which is centered around the local Pachyderm Club. The dominant faction is the Pachyderm Club.
Corporatist Lackey Republicans for HB 649
Conspiracy Crazy Republicans against HB 649
Fred Anderson
Steven Galloway
Ed Buttrey
Scot Kerns
Steve Gist
Lola Sheldon-Galloway,
George Nikolakakos
If the above chart makes you think that the crazy crowd doesn’t run the local Republican Party in Cascade County, we remind you that the crazy Republican office holders in Cascade County include our Sheriff Jesse Slaughter, Clerk and Recorder Sandra Merchant, County Commissioner Rae Grulkowski, and perhaps the weirdest elected official in the state, Randy Pinocci. There has been a lot of news coverage about this split in Cascade County. Here’s just one example.
Hopefully the bill will be well received in the Senate. Montana has a huge budget surplus, and the people in nursing homes are among the most vulnerable in the state. Pushing them out the door is unnecessary and inhumane. Question is, does the Republican Party care?
Before we get into the meat of some concerning personnel changes at the Cascade County Clerk and Recorder’s office, we need to remind ourselves that hiring political cronies and firing or harassing people because they worked for political opponents is illegal. Got that?
Since defeating long-time Clerk and Recorder Rina Moore by a mere 31 votes, Sandra Merchant has begun remaking the office to fit her conspiracy-laced agenda. First, Election Supervisor Lynn Deroche, who has worked in the Clerk and Recorder’s office for 16 years, has taken another job in county government at a much lower salary. It’s not clear whether she resigned or was fired. Deroche said that she provided notice that she was resigning after being frozen out of interoffice communication by Merchant.
As an example, Deroche said she was not allowed to participate in interviews to fill an open election specialist position, a position she supervised. Deroche said that after a month of being isolated in the office and just three days before she was scheduled to leave her position, Merchant asked her to explain how to conduct some up-coming elections. Deroche says she told Merchant three days was not enough time to teach Merchant how to administer an election. Some time later Deroche says she was summoned to the Human Resources Office and told she did not need to return to the Clerk and Recorder’s office but would still receive her last couple of days’ pay. End result is that the election supervisor job has been left vacant.
New Election Specialist – Connection to Merchant and Commissioner Grulkowski
In the meantime, interviews proceeded to fill an elections specialist position in the office. There was an applicant who was already in a temporary position in the office. She subsequently withdrew her application. The job was listed with the County Human Resource Office. County Commissioner Rea Grulkowski andSandra Merchant were interviewers.Grulkowski, who also came into office in the last election, is an election denier who’s bizarre conspiracy theories were the subject of a New York Times article in October of 2021. (WTF 406 covered Grulkowski’s conspiracy theories and the New York Times piece in a previous article https://wtf406.com/2022/09/facts-no-match-for-fear-in-county-commission-race/ )
When the election specialist interview process was completed, the position was given to Devereaux Biddick. WTF406 has previously written about Biddick’s participation in the election denier group active in Cascade County. Last fall we reported, “On July 29 County Commission candidate Rae Grulkowski was back in front of the County Commission, this time presenting a letter from Devereaux Biddick. In this letter Biddick alleged that the county primary election did not conform to standards set by the Secretary of State. She requested two precincts be ‘reviewed for reconciliation.’”https://wtf406.com/2022/09/the-big-lie-in-cascade-county/
The election specialist job which Biddick received has starting pay of almost $40,000 per year and includes a full benefit package. The qualification statement for the position included a High School Diploma, GED or HSE, and three years of progressively responsible office experience in a team environment that preferably includes one year in an election-related environment and one year of legal experience and terminology.
WTF406 does not have access to Biddick’s application materials yet, but we would certainly hope that her experience dogging county officials with election fraud mythology was not included as “relevant” experience for the elections specialist position. That would be kind of like putting a flat earther in charge of NASA.
Is This Just the Beginning?
The fact is that recently elected County Commissioner Grulkowski and Clerk and Recorder Merchant, who have worked extensively together on their election denier mythology prior to being elected, have now offered a full-time permanent position to a friend of theirs who worked on the same effort. Biddick could be just the beginning of Sandra Merchant’s opportunities to move her cronies from the election denier crowd into government jobs at the Clerk and Recorder’s Office. The election supervisor job will be open thanks to Deroche’s resignation. In addition, the office has traditionally hired additional temporary employees to help during the election cycle.
We began this article by pointing out that this kind of cronyism is illegal. Specifically, the Governmental Code of Fair Practices prohibits discrimination in government employment based on political beliefs. If any of the unsuccessful applicants for the position decided to file a complaint under that law and won, we would all get to pay for the insider dealing of our newly elected county officials. We’ll stay tuned and keep watching.
Billings Republican Representative Sherry Essman is proposing a “fee” to be collected by city and county governments on a variety of non-profit organizations, including churches. Essman’s bill, HB 391, was heard in the House Taxation Committee on February 8th. Sixteen opponents testified against the bill. There were no supporters.
If enacted into law, the bill would provide that tax-exempt non-profits, ranging from educational institutions to health care providers to churches, would be required to pay a fee to local governments. The fee would be based on square footage of their building, which is exempt from property tax because of its non-profit status. The revenue would be spent on public safety and road maintenance.
During the hearing, Republican Representative Scot Kerns of Great Falls questioned the bill, saying that it was inconsistent with “local control.” It seems Kerns and other Republicans pick and choose what kind of local control they care about when it comes to other bills. (WTF406 has already written a story on Kerns’ connections to religious institutions https://wtf406.com/2022/10/separation-of-church-and-state-not-for-kerns/) A thorough analysis of the impact of the bill (called a fiscal note) has been requested but was not yet available.
This bill won’t go very far. It faces opposition from some big players in politics, like non-profit hospitals (Benefis and Great Falls Clinic) and churches. Still, it shines a light on how much tax exempt property affects local government.
Those who followed President Biden’s State of the Union were treated to Biden delivering a classic political sucker punch. The Republicans stepped right into it. The topic was Social Security and Medicare, and the sucker punch he delivered was revealing Republican’s long history of trying to reduce, eliminate, and privatize these popular retirement programs. Only the most recent of which is Republican Senator Rick Scott’s proposal to place a five-year “Sunset” provision on these programs along with others.
Despite the boos and hisses from the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene, Biden remained cool and in control of the exchange. Really not too tough since even those who are not paying close attention know the Republican Party has opposed Social Security and Medicare since the beginning. Though they have been largely unsuccessful, they keep plugging away, trying to undermine the most successful anti-poverty programs in American history. And Biden responded, tongue in cheek, that he was glad we had reached “consensus” on supporting Social Security and Medicare.
Republican proclamations that these programs are failing have been with us since the 1930s. Time and time again they have proven to be false. Time and time again the Republicans have gone back to the drawing board seeking new ways to undermine and eliminate Social Security. Time and time again they have sought ways to privatize Medicare– without success.
Make no mistake about it. The Republicans will continue their attack on senior citizens. Daines, Zinke and Rosendale would like nothing better than getting at the money in these programs to sprinkle around among their rich donor friends. Just ask them. But listen carefully because, just like Republicans everywhere, their answer will begin with, “Of course we support Social Security and Medicare but. . . .” Yeah right guys.
