Montana County Commissioner Loses Election After Suggesting Long-Term Post-Coal Budget Planning [View all]

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Robert Pancratz couldn’t believe it. The Musselshell County commissioner had been defeated in the Republican primary for his seat by a two-to-one margin earlier this month. Mark Olson, who lives in Musselshell and serves as the undersheriff in Golden Valley County, won by 26 percentage points. “That just blew me away,” Pancratz said. “All of my campaign, I had not a hint that there was that much opposition.”

Musselshell County’s three commissioners, Mike Goffena, Mike Turley and Pancratz support keeping the mine open. But they also fear Musselshell County would need to raise taxes and cut services to balance its books if the Crow Revenue Act passes as written. After studying the county’s finances, Pancratz, who works as a risk analyst consultant, concluded that the county could lose as much as $11.6 million if the Crow Revenue Act passes and the price of coal is high. The commissioners have lobbied for changes to the bill that would guarantee the county some revenue from the land transfer. Pancratz says he was just doing his job.

“As a risk manager, I have to develop a contingency plan for the possibility that the long-term stream of coal revenue could be disrupted or ended,” he said. “We needed to have a plan to effectively transition to other revenue sources. When I used the word transition, they took that as I was an environmentalist that was against coal.” “Why anybody would have a problem with that is baffling to me. But that’s what happened.” According to Pancratz, Signal Peak Energy branded the men as environmentalists who want to see the company shut down forever and this willful mischaracterization played a large role in his defeat.“The picture they painted of me was totally false,” he said.

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Some worry that, with the mine facing a lawsuit, an unpredictable global coal market and the uncertain future of the Crow Revenue Act, the commissioners cannot afford to lose momentum in their efforts to attract new industries to the area. Olson’s win in the primary will “set [economic diversification planning] back long term,” Nicole Borner, a former Musselshell County commissioner, who thinks Olson was hand-picked by the Signal Peak Energy to run and is not informed about what the job entails. “We will always just have a few crumbs to duct tape a few issues,” she said. “We’ll never be able to fix the prior forty years of being in a coal bust and our infrastructure just literally falling apart.”

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https://insideclimatenews.org/news/20062026/montana-musselshell-county-fiscal-future/