Jim Elliott
I don’t know when the Merriam turkey was introduced to western Montana, but it was and they have thrived. I can attest to that.
In the 1980s and 1990s, I converted about 65 acres of forest land to cropland and planted a lot of oats to “tame the soil.” I put out a lot of oats for hay and word spread quickly in Türkiye. Before long, my haystacks began to look like the back of a threshing machine because the turkeys clawed at the bales to get to the oats and burst all the threads. This meant I had to use a pitchfork to load the hay onto a cart.
I will always be grateful to Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks, whose staff captured about 400 of them and relocated them to the Flathead, where I’m sure they were welcomed. For me, it was “goodbye.”
So when a neighbor of mine asked me years later, “Jim, how do you get rid of these turkeys?” My advice was simple and direct. “Stop feeding them.”
Which brings me from turkeys to tourists.
Two Montana county commissioners, Josh Slotnick, a Democrat from Missoula County, and Joe Briggs, a Republican from Cascade County, have been working together to find a way to mitigate the hardships imposed on Montanans by the historic rise in residential property taxes.
One of the first considerations when collecting taxes is what the political repercussions will be. And the best way to avoid repercussions in that regard is to tax people who can’t vote for you. The tourist enters, like the turkey, ready to be plucked.
Taxing tourists and using the revenue to offset residential property tax increases is not a very new idea and has been used successfully in several small Montana tax jurisdictions.
A tourist economy is not entirely beneficial. There are costs associated with tourism that residents, not tourists, have to bear, and the argument is that tourists should pay their share of those costs. There are things like the need to improve water and septic infrastructure to address the increased use caused by tourism. Places like West Yellowstone and the St Regis Resort Area did not have the tax base to make improvements at the expense of residents alone, and I believe the Resort Tax, first implemented in West Yellowstone in 1987, has helped the city. immensely.
Nearly every Mountain West city has seen its economy shift from an industrial economy to what local governments see as their last best opportunity: tourism. So now we have tourism as a major industry in Montana.
One reason for this is due to the implementation, in 1987, of the Lodging Facilities Use Tax, which was designed expressly to promote Montana to out-of-state tourists.
In the last fiscal year (2023), the 4% tax raised $59 million, of which 82.8% ($48.8 million) went to promoting tourism in Montana. About 60.3% went to the Brand Montana program administered by the Department of Commerce and 22.5% to regional tourism offices.
At one point I suggested to the Legislature that it would be easier to tax tourists at the border. Years ago, there used to be actual gates on the highways leading to Montana that, except when snow closed the roads, were symbolically kept in the open position with a sign nearby that said “Welcome to Montana, the gate is open.”
An attempt to revive them in the 1989 Legislature failed, but today it might be tempting to reinvent the quaint, simple wooden bars with a toll gate and a sign that reads “Welcome to Montana, insert credit card to open door.”
Conservatives who are not in favor of government subsidies might wonder why the state of Montana is subsidizing a particular industry. Surely, an industry that brings in some $5.4 billion in revenue to Montana should, by now, be large enough to stand on its own.
Could those $48 million in tourism promotion be used to reduce property taxes? Sure, but it won’t be because the industry is too committed to the subsidy to allow it to be diverted.
Still, at some point you will have to stop feeding the turkeys.
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