Editor’s note: Due to a printing error, this story on the Lewis and Clark County commissioners race did not run in its entirety in Thursday’s newspaper. We are offering the story again and apologize for the error.
Two candidates coveting the Lewis and Clark County commissioner seat offered extremely different views to the public in a forum that may be the only time they square off during this election season.
Incumbent Andy Hunthausen, who is seeking a fourth six-year term, appeared Monday alongside challenger Joe Dooling in a forum sponsored by the League of Women Voters of the Helena Area. While not touted as a debate, Dooling took issue with Hunthausen during much of the 90-minute conversation in front of a few dozen people at the Helena Avenue Theatre.
The election for the nonpartisan seat is Nov. 5.
Topics ranged from growth, infrastructure, taxes and relationships with various towns within the county to septic tanks and passenger rail. Sharon Haugen, cochair of the league, served as moderator.
People are also reading…
Hunthausen said he was “filled with gratitude to serve my community.”
He said he had prepared for the job through his experience as a teacher and counselor, and said he has a master’s degree. He also said he has attended various leadership institutes. He said he has more than 300 endorsements on his website, including his two fellow commissioners.
He noted the questions had been submitted to the candidates prior to the forum, and the county is much more broad than the issues that were to be discussed that night.
“There is much depth and breadth to the county and tonight we are only going to be talking about a piece of that,” he said.
Dooling, a businessman, farmer and rancher, said he wished more candidate forums had been scheduled. He said he has been in the area since 1999 and “started with nothing” and now is the fifth biggest irrigator in the Helena Valley Irrigation District. He said he grows malt barley for Coors, grows hay and raises cattle.
“I always joke and say ‘I got your beer and burger covered,'” he said.
He said he got in the race because it is becoming too expensive for senior citizens and young families to live here. He said his mother, who was in the audience, has an $8,000 tax bill for a home she paid $243,000 for 20 years ago.
“This is unsustainable,” he said. And he noted Montana was recently ranked the worst state in the nation for housing. He said a recent college study found that 50% of the cost of housing was due to local regulations.
Dooling said he knows what it takes to run a business and how to do more with less.
The league noted that the county’s population in 2024 was estimated at 76,000 residents as compared to 56,000 residents in 2015 and was projected to hit 83,000 by 2030.
Hunthausen said the county is focusing on “commonsense” zoning and had just entered into a joint infrastructure study with the city of Helena. He said the county was rewriting its growth policy and has asked the public to participate. He said the county is also rewriting its subdivision regulations.
“We have to be prepared for it,” he said about growth. “It’s coming.”
He said Lewis and Clark County recently became an MPO, a Metropolitan Planning Organization, to plan transportation infrastructure with Helena and East Helena.
Hunthausen said growth isn’t bad, as it is an economic engine. The county needs a new tax base to help with the growth.
Dooling said the county had made errors that were unfair to landowners in setting land use policy. He said nearly 100% of the landowners had opposed limiting lots to be 10 acres and not being able to sell smaller properties.
Dooling said as a farmer he has learned you do a lot better with a carrot than a stick. He said the county needed to work with landowners and determine direction. He said the county needs to work with the landowners and develop incentives to keep farmland intact.
Dooling described the land use policies of the past six years as “scatter-brained, at best.”
He said commissioners rezoned 250,000 acres at the northern end of the valley a few years ago, and of 7,000 parcels 5,000 of them are noncompliant based on the zoning they passed. He said it was ripe for a lawsuit.
“At the end of the day we really need someone who really understands land,” Dooling said, adding they need to figure out a way to come up with smart growth.
He said this has prompted people to move to neighboring counties who work in Lewis and Clark County, but all the money they make goes to the neighboring counties’ infrastructure where they live.
He called it a double hit on Lewis and Clark County taxpayers.
Both candidates said the county relationships with Helena and East Helena are good. But Dooling said some areas of the county have failing infrastructure that needs to be taken care of.
“I think the relationships should be everywhere, not just pick winners and losers,” he said.
He mentioned joint work on Valley Drive in East Helena and work to the fairgrounds in Helena.
He said he has made an effort to know the commissioners and staff of those communities.
The candidates were asked for their proposals to reduce expenditures or slow the rate of growth for the county budget or alternatives to financing those expenditures.
Hunthausen said the county is subject to state tax rules and regulations.
“We only have the ways that are given to us, we just can’t make things up or decide we are going to start charging for this or taxing for this or selling this,” he said. “We have to use the structure the state gives us.”
He said he was hopeful in the next legislative session there would be changes, and that they have been trying to do more with less all along at the county level.
“Growth does not pay for itself,” he said.
Dooling said the county is living “beyond our means … I think we can do a lot better and quite frankly, we got to do better.”
He said the county has grown by 60 employees in the past four years, to 390 workers, which he said is unsustainable.
Dooling said earlier in the forum that Ravalli, Lake and Flathead counties have reduced spending.
Hunthausen said nearly $1 billion in assets, such as homes and businesses, have been added to the county in the past 10 years that all require services.
He said the county had to add another justice of the peace, sheriff’s deputies and detention officers.
The candidates were asked about what the county can do about housing.
Dooling said people who want to do subdivisions have struggled with the process.
“We have to welcome developers and develop in places that have infrastructure,” he said.
Hunthausen said the county is participating in a study on fair market rent. He said they used some of federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) dollars to help Helena Area Habitat for Humanity buy land in East Helena, where 1,000 homes will eventually be built. He talked about infrastructure improvements the county participated in such as wells in Eastgate and work on the sewer system for Craig and Wolf Creek.
He said the county is aggressively going after every federal and state grant it can get.
The candidates were asked if they support septic system developments, with the questioner describing such systems as “dinosaurs.”
Dooling said if more regulations are put on septic tanks there will not be anymore development in the Valley.
“Shutting down our septic systems will make this housing problem four times as worse,” he said.
Hunthausen said the science is clear that if septic systems are put in and maintained properly, they work well. When they are not, they are a detriment to groundwater.
He said there is a Water Quality Protection District that encompasses the Helena Valley. There is a Septic Maintenance District as well that works with residents.
For the final question, they were also asked about the pros and cons of passenger rail coming to Lewis and Clark County, referring to the Big Sky Passenger Rail Authority’s efforts to restore the Hiawatha line to southern Montana.
Hunthausen said it would be another form of transportation that all could use and the economic benefits are obvious. It would be an Amtrak route and federally funded. He said at one time there was a fear the cost could fall on the local taxpayer. Lewis and Clark County has not joined the Big Sky Rail Authority.
“I am for the discovery phase of whether we can bring back passenger rail in a way that works for Montana,” he said.
Dooling called it “one of the silliest ideas we have had in a long time.”
He said when you have passenger rail it has priority and freight trains hauling goods have to sit on the sidelines, which would prompt an increase in prices.
“The No. 1 industry in Montana is agriculture and we should not be jeopardizing it for a train that no one is going to ride,” he said. “No one who has a meeting in Billings is going to take the train and expect this to be on time.”
The forum is online at Helena Civic TV at https://www.helenacivictv.org/on-demand/5851