MATR Newsletter – December 30, 2020
The state with the best education wins!

Big Sky Economic Development

• Register today for these 2021 trainings – Big Sky Economic Development

  Explore the upcoming events for 2021!

Great Falls Development Authority

• Great Falls Economic Development Top 10 for 12-29-20

  Nothing stopped entrepreneurs from opening new businesses in the Great Falls Montana region.

Montana Governor’s Office of Economic Development

• What Happened When Tulsa Paid People to Live in Tulsa but Work Remotely – Tulsa Remote

  The first class of hand-picked remote workers moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma, in exchange for $10,000 and a built-in community. The city might just be luring them to stay.

MEDA -Montana Economic Developers Association

• Gender pay gap narrows in Montana, but still wide

  Montana women earn only 73.2 cents for every dollar that Montana men make, but it’s still an improvement over the 68.4 cents they were earning in 2013.

• MACo (Montana Association of Counties) News: December 2020

  Time for Our Annual Resolutions & Reminders

• Trinity Hunt acquires Montana’s Dayspring Restoration

  “This is a good fit for Trinity Hunt, from a number of perspectives, including, mainly the founder-owned, owner-operated aspects of Dayspring,” Greer said. “The people-based business model, which is what we’ve been highly focused on for the last four or five years.”

• Montana Startups on the move! Should yours be on the watch list?

  It’s a great time to start a new company.

• Montana angel investment fund, Frontier Angels, believes now’s a good time for startup businesses

  “It has been amazing the number of new companies that are being founded in the midst of a pandemic. The pandemic, like many other macroeconomic shocks, is a time of disruption and in a time of disruption we’re all changing the way we do things, and that’s creating a lot of new opportunities for entrepreneurs to create new products and new businesses,” explained Pat LaPointe, the managing director with Frontier Angels.

• Rural hospitals, beyond the rhetoric

  Protecting rural hospitals was a mainstay of campaign messaging in 2020. But what specific challenges has Montana’s frontier health community faced, how have they kept the lights on, and what could legislators do to help — or hurt — in 2021?

Gov. Steve Bullock

• Bullock: The humbling privilege serving as Montana’s governor

  The future holders of this office will inherit a better state for our kids and grandkids. To keep leaving it better, let us never lose sight of the opportunity and feeling of promise every kid growing up here deserves.

Montana Governor Greg Gianforte

• Gianforte names directors of Administration and Revenue departments

  Republican Gov.-elect Greg Gianforte on Tuesday announced his second and third cabinet appointments — Misty Ann Giles, who will run the state Department of Administration, and Brendan Beatty, who will be director of the Department of Revenue.

Idaho News & Events

• Idaho Power chips away at solar incentives again

  Installing solar panels will likely make a lot less sense for farmers and large businesses after a recent Idaho Public Utilities Commission ruling.

21st Century Education Initiative – “You Should Care…”

• Regents recommend approval of Bitterroot Valley College District, say they can’t afford it

  “recognize the significant educational merits of the proposal while also recognizing that important information about the sources of funding necessary to launch and sustain an additional community college in Montana is currently unavailable to the Regents and can only be provided by future commitments made by the voters of Ravalli County, other potential funders, and the Legislature itself.”

• Teenspire Global: Innovative Training for the Next Generation

  Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, new ideas are springing up around the globe to help marginalized communities. Teenspire Global Mission is a new model with innovative ways young people can make a difference.

2021 Montana Legislature and Politics

• Montana law to take effect; residents can grow, possess pot

  Residents can possess up to one ounce of marijuana or eight grams of concentrates and can grow up to four marijuana plants at their homes and transport it freely within the state, Lee Newspapers of Montana reported.

• The Daily Montanan Launching Jan. 5

  No paywalls, no ads. Nonpartisan news from States Newsroom’s newest affiliate.

Careers

• Guest view: Miss Montana USA engages with those who disagree

  One conversation with a young high school girl stuck with me. Her first message to me was “You became Montana’s most hated person in 24 hours.”

Transportation

• Plastics recycled into paved roads

  A plastics consortium has developed a way to turn single-use plastics into paving material for roads

• Japan to eliminate gas-powered cars as part of “green growth plan”

  Japan aims to eliminate gasoline-powered vehicles in about 15 years, the government said Friday in a plan to achieve Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga’s ambitious pledge to go carbon free by 2050 and generate nearly $2 trillion growth in green business and investment.

Energy and Climate Change

• 2020: The Year of Green Hydrogen in 10 Stories

  Green hydrogen exceeded expectations in 2020 with a spate of huge projects, binding deployment targets and a handful of gigafactories.

• The batteries that could make fossil fuels obsolete

  The advent of “big battery” technology addresses a key challenge for green energy – the intermittency of wind and solar.

• Physicists build circuit that generates clean, limitless power from graphene

  If millions of these tiny circuits could be built on a 1-millimeter by 1-millimeter chip, they could serve as a low-power battery replacement.

VR/AR, Blockchain, Bitcoin, Artificial Intelligence and The Internet of Things

• Boston Dynamics robots (and a robot dog) break it down on the dance floor

  Set to the Contours’ Do You Love Me, the choreographed moves are impressive (if a little bit alarming, and definitely mesmerizing).

Privacy, Hacking and Virus Alerts

• Ransomware Is Headed Down a Dire Path

  2020 was a great year for ransomware gangs. For hospitals, schools, municipal governments, and everyone else, it’s going to get worse before it gets better.

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