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.
You may not have heard much about Sandra Merchant, Republican candidate for Clerk and Recorder in Cascade County. But you probably have noticed that Trump cult members across the country are focusing on local election offices to advance their conspiracy theories about the 2020 election being stolen from Trump. So the question we have is, does Sandra Merchant buy into that mythology or does she not?
So we looked around to see what she had to say about her reasons for running for office. First stop, of course, are her campaign materials. Her web site is https://merchantforcountyclerk.com. Not a lot of content here, but that is not unusual in a campaign. Though you don’t always see scrolling advertisements for gun shows on a candidate website as you will on hers. She also lets readers know that she organized a homeschooling group “in her community.” Hard to say where or when that was. Of course neither of these things have a hell of a lot to do with local election integrity.
So, on to her Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/smerchant4cascadecountyclerk. Not a lot here either. Nice photo of Ronald Reagan and nice photo of her and a saddle horse. Always interesting to look at “friends” on these pages. Her friends list has some people from the right flank of the local Republican Party including local legislators, Jeremy Trebas, Steven Galloway, and Steven Gist. Far right county commission candidate Rae Grulkowski is also a friend. Interestingly the Clerk and Recorder’s office reported that Grulkowski accompanied Merchant into their office to file for office, introducing her to the staff saying Merchant had come to file for the Clerk and Recorder position.
Perhaps the more interesting thing about her friends list is that none of the “moderate” local Republican officials (like Fitzpatrick, McKamey and Buttrey) are on her friends list. Desma Meissner, who ran from the right against Wendy McKamey in the Republican primary, is on her friends list. Last but not least, the wackiest Republicans in Great Falls . . . Public Service Commissioner Randy Pinocci and Sheriff Jesse Slaughter are also on her list of friends. With that said, we don’t think many of us would want to be judged by the list of people on our Facebook friends list.
Next up, public statements in the media. Unfortunately local politics are simply not covered in the Great Falls Tribune, which is now a shadow of its former self. The Great Falls Electric is good but doesn’t cover local political campaigns. Neither of these papers provide for local editorial comment which is where most campaigns will put out pieces on issues of the day. This is a big problem in Great Falls and perhaps a topic for another day. For the purposes of this article, there is just nothing there.
So, what to do? Well, check the local right-wing rag. . .the E-City Beat. Interestingly E-City started this election cycle with bold proclamations about doing tough candidate “surveys” for their readers but backed off when Republican activists pointed out to them that it might damage Republican candidates. So now they are just taking puff pieces from candidates. . .all Republican. And, of course, they still publish hit pieces on local Democrats. . .particularly female Democratic candidates.
Bingo! E-City Beat has a piece by Sandra Merchant. Unfortunately not a lot here. The only thing we could find about the election fraud mythology was this statement, “Election security is a big topic right now. I will do all I can to be sure we have fair, accessible, honest, and accountable elections.” Meh.
OK, let’s try looking at her campaign’s contributor list. Some of the activists from the Great Falls election fraud promoter crowd appear here. See our post https://wtf406.com/2022/09/the-big-lie-in-cascade-county Lola and Steven Galloway ($500), Rita and Ron Staley ($800), Jan Wenass ($50), Desma Meisner ($50) to name a few. But hey, you can’t just assume that candidates share the views of their contributors. . .completely.
After looking through all of this stuff all we can really tell is that she doesn’t have any experience or education for serving as Clerk and Recorder. It appears she lived in New York and had a “horse business” there but nothing about how or why she came to Montana. She also worked as a medical coder for ten years and served in the Civil Air Patrol. None of that indicates any knowledge of the duties of the Clerk and Recorder. But probably most important her materials ignore the “elephant in the room,” election fraud.
So, we reached out to Sandra Merchant and just asked for her position on the election fraud myth. Here’s the email we sent:
Dear Ms Merchant,
We are preparing an article on your candidacy for Cascade County Clerk and Recorder. Unfortunately we have been unable to find much information on your positions on specific issues. In particular, we would like to know your position on whether or not significant election fraud occurred in the 2020 election and specifically whether you believe that Donald Trump won the 2020 election. We look forward to your reply. Thank you.
Across the country Trump supporters falsely say the last election was stolen. They demand “reform”
which really means they are demanding changes that disenfranchise millions of voters and threaten to
make our election system less secure and easier to manipulate so they can “win” future elections. Many
of these people are true believers but the farther up the far-right food chain the promoters of election
fraud myths understand that the best way to assure that they remain in power is to undermine the
public’s faith in free and fair elections.
Having lost their efforts to destabilize our elections at the national level after the court system
consistently rejected their allegations of fraud, they have turned to state and local organizing. In state
after state, legislators have introduced bills to limit and complicate elections. All funded and supported
by right-wing organizations and activists (Like Mike Lindell, the My Pillow Guy).
The voter fraud road show has also shown up in Cascade County and helped create a cadre of activists
who have busily been wasting local government’s time and resources. Two weeks before the primary
election, on May 24th Teressa Manzella brought featured speaker, Mark Cook, a shadowy figure from
Colorado who purports to be a computer expert specializing in “root cause analysis, for a community
meeting held Heritage Hall at MSU Great Falls as part of a state-wide tour promoting the conspiracy
theory that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump.
Here in Cascade County, there is a very active group of election deniers. As in Nevada and Colorado
voting fraud activists are targeting the county commission. Election deniers across the country are
getting almost no help from local clerk and recorders regardless of political beliefs or party affiliation.
The reason is simple. Clerk and Recorders are intimately involved in our election process, and they
know that the allegations of fraud are a baseless waste of time.
Here in Cascade County, Lewis Zanto, a local realtor who works for Dustin Young and Company, was
given 1 hour on the County Commission agenda to discuss “election integrity” on April 25th. About 35
people attended the meeting including local far-right legislators Lola and Steven Galloway, County
Commission candidate and conspiracy promoter Rae Grulkowski, and various local republican activists.
County Commissioner Joe Briggs pointed out the irony of republican activists complaining about the
2020 election since Republicans won all Cascade County offices. “As I look around the room, I see the
people that I can identify by party roles. Republicans. I’ll just put it that way,” Briggs said. “I would have
expected our folks across the aisle to be the ones that were concerned about what happened in the last
election.”
Following this presentation, the Commissioners received a follow-up letter dated June 21 from Jan
Wenaas. In the letter Wenaas said that she wanted to know if action had been taken on the information
“her group” had presented at the April meeting. She also presented her analysis of certain election
software and audit procedures.
On June 24th Deputy County Attorney, Jennifer Quick, responded to the points in Wenaas previous letter with a four-page memo to the County Commissioners. Though the memo obviously took hours to
prepare, in essence the response to Wenaas was that items listed fall under the purview of the clerk and
recorder and/or the Secretary of State. On July 15th the County Commission formally responded to
Wenass and to her ally, Devereaux Biddick, using the information and memo from Deputy County
Attorney Quick.
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.”
Freemen revisited?
In the early 1990s Montana was plagued by the Freemen, a group conspiracy driven “wing nuts” who
attended public meeting making wild and unsubstantiated allegations of government misconduct. They
also filed blizzards of paperwork snowing over local elected officials. And when their demands weren’t
met, they convened their own courts and issued arrest warrants for local officials. They continued their
efforts to gum up the work of local and state government until the whole scheme came crashing down
in a confrontation with the FBI. At the end of the day these election deniers aren’t much different.
Who’s Who in the Big Lie?
Mark Cook (Mesa County, Colorado) Computer Expert Presenter
Theresa Manzella (legislator from Ravalli County area)
Ron Stahley (Cascade County Republican PAC)
Lou Zanto (Cascade County Republican PAC) – Realtor at Dustin Young & Company andPresident of Prairie
Candidate Rae Grulkowski’s lies were the subject of a New York Times article.
Both photos taken from individuals respective websites
County Commissioner Don Ryan
Cascade County Commission Race, District #3. Where facts are no match for fear!
The Cascade County Commission race between Don Ryan (Democrat) and Rae Grulkowski (Republican) is the only contested commission race this cycle in our county. Who are these people?
Commissioner Don Ryan was appointed in early 2021, after the retirement of Jane Weber. Don Ryan previously served in the Montana Senate for two terms and was elected four times for the Great Falls School Board. Ryan has been serving on the Cascade County Commission without any newsworthy problems. His website provides a long list of accomplishments during his tenure as commissioner…but what about his opponent Rae Grulkowski?
You might recognize the name from Grulkowski’s disinformation campaign against the National Heritage Area (NHA) effort in Central Montana. Based on conspiracy theory-filled information she gleaned from the internet, Grulkowski decided to fight the proposed heritage area in 2020. Her dishonest efforts were notable enough to make the national news, starting when she spent $1,300 to send out packets full of lies to hundreds of voters. According to the New York Times, Grulkowski told the voters that “the designation would forbid landowners to build sheds, drill wells or use fertilizers and pesticides. It would alter water rights, give tourists access to private property, create a new taxation district and prohibit new septic systems and burials on private land, she said. None of this was true [emphasis added].”
As noted in the article, Grulkowski did not identify a single instance of a property owner’s being adversely affected by a heritage area. What she is worried about is not anything specific, but “wide open things that could happened.” National Heritage Areas have been around since the 1980s. I guess nearly 40 years is not enough precedent for Grulkowski.
Emboldened by her success in spreading lies and conspiracy theories, she is now running for our county commission!
Aside from her lies on the NHA, what else can we expect from Grulkowski?
Luckily, the New York Timesarticle provides a nice summary of her stated beliefs for us:
“Outside of a poultry coop, as her chickens and ducks squawked, Ms. Grulkowski ticked through the falsehoods she had read online and accepted as truths in the past year: The Covid vaccine is more dangerous than the coronavirus. Global child-trafficking rings control the political system. Black Lives Matter was responsible for the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. The United Nations is plotting to control world population and seize private land. Mr. Trump was the rightful winner of last year’s election. Even in Cascade County, where Mr. Trump won 59 percent of the vote, Ms. Grulkowski argued that 3,000 illegal votes were cast.”
One of the greatest hits on her public Facebook posts is spreading the “Big Lie” about election integrity. In one example, Grulkowski wants us to “write to the Secretary of State, Legislators, and Congressman to encourage them to investigate Montana’s 2020 election.” What information is Grulkowski looking for? Does she think the elected Republicans she is asking people to write to were illegitimately elected? Did Trump not get 56.9% of the vote in Montana in 2020? Were Democrats robbed of their seats?
It really makes a person wonder. What kind of detachment from reality can we expect next if she is elected?
