2025 Montana Legislature and Politics

• Montana lawmakers eye child care challenges for the 2025 session

  Policy proposals so far focus on state-funded financial subsidies to address high child care costs and low wages for workers.

Montana’s Headwaters Tech Hub

• Like It Or Not, Self-Driving Semi-Trucks Are Inevitable; Bozeman, Montana Company, Aurora, Leading The Way

  “From early on, we knew Montana’s photonics leadership would be invaluable for bringing safe, scalable self-driving technology to the world,” said Chris Urmson, co-founder and CEO at Aurora

• Artificial Intelligence could change Montana’s economy – Video

  The Montana Bureau of Business and Economic Research has been forecasting the state’s financial outlook for the past 50 years.

Come Home Montana

• “The Crazies” – Book on Crazy Mountain wind farm generates insight to wealthy Montana landowners

  So it’s a crazy tale that a group of wealthy nonresident landowners succeeded in sabotaging Sweet Grass County ranchers Rick Jarrett and Alfred and Dorothy Anderson’s efforts about six years ago to have a wind farm built on their land.

• Small Mortgages Offer Opportunity to Invest in Rural Communities

  Low-cost homes are available but unattainable for many because of limited financing

• The Final Falafel? Missoula’s Acropolis Gyros up for sale

  You don’t need to know your way around a pita to take advantage of this business opportunity.

Great Falls Development Alliance

• Ignite Great Falls: big east-side development, restaurant updates

  More than two dozen speakers from businesses and organizations gave updates on their growth and expansion. A few highlights included some exciting upcoming construction projects.

• GFDA Top Ten for 1-12-25

  Ted Mitchell of Great Falls based Mitchell Development & Investments announced a major 100-acre mixed use retail, dining, hospitality, office and residential development to be constructed on 57th Street on the east side of Great Falls.

• Montana Renewables Announces Closing of $1.44 Billion DOE Loan Facility for Renewable Fuels and Biomass Energy Facility

  For example, by 2028, the economic footprint of the Great Falls site is expected to support a population of 4,400 Montanans, consisting primarily of working-aged families and their children.

• Your Questions About Montana Renewables, (Partly) Answered
  As of the morning of January 11, two of our readers wanted to know what feedstocks are going into the company’s formula for sustainable aviation fuel. I read the press release, and I had the same question, too.

Prospera Business Network

• Join us throughout 2025 as Prospera celebrates 40 years of helping business and communities find their pathway to success.

  Prospera Celebrates 40 Years of Business and Community Success!

Next Generation Broadband in Montana

• Highlands College receives $5.75 million to implement broadband training program

  The program will run four years and aims to train 280 broadband workers with commercial driver’s license (CDL), heavy equipment, splicing, safety, professional skills, flagging, and rigging certifications.

• Brad Feld – Bandwidth: The Untold Story of Ambition, Deception, and Innovation that Shaped the Internet Age and Dot-Com Boom

  The adventurous stories of business legends such as Phil Anschutz, Craig McCaw, Jim Crowe, and even Carl Icahn were exciting to read. The exploits of bad actors such as Joe Nacchio, Gary Winnick, and Bernie Ebbers were even more exhilarating. Epic battles of hostile takeovers, botched business plans, phoenixes rising from ashes, and entrepreneurs who persevered reminded me why I get so much fulfillment from helping start-ups become large successes and enduring companies. And why I am willing to fight for any company in which I’m involved.

Wyoming Business

• Wyomingites Pay More For Rural Postal Service Deliveries Through Sneaky Surcharge

  The U.S. Postal Service has quietly initiated a surcharge on package deliveries to rural areas, which includes much of Wyoming. The up-charges have been quietly slipped into Postal Service agreements with merchants like eBay.

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

• The Big Rural Problem We Don’t Talk About – Class 3 Obesity – Is Your Local School Offering This? What can be done about it?

  A hot button local issue in my community a few years ago was whether or not the school district should build a new gym and locker rooms. The measure passed, and the project also included construction of a fitness center. Recently, I got a lifetime membership ($10) and a key fob that gets me inside. Except for a short window during the school day when it’s used for physical education class, I can use the recumbent bikes and treadmills and eventually (I hope) the elliptical and the weight machines.

Government News & Events

• Unvaxxed – “It’s trouble waiting to happen”

  The decline in vaccination seems likely to have consequences. “Herd immunity,” in which unvaccinated children can’t easily spread measles because others are protected, requires about 92 percent inoculation. The further rates fall, the more likely an outbreak becomes. For children, measles and other once-common childhood diseases can lead to hospitalization and occasionally death.

• Video: Tracy Stone-Manning talks about her time at the BLM

  Tracy Stone-Manning, the director of the Bureau of Land Management, discusses her time at the agency.

• Earth breaks yearly heat record and lurches past dangerous warming threshold

  Scientists say if Earth stays above the threshold long-term, it will mean increased deaths, destruction, species loss and sea level rise from the extreme weather that accompanies warming.

• Universal basic income seems to improve employment and well-being

  Finland ran a two-year universal basic income study in 2017 and 2018, during which the government gave 2000 unemployed people aged between 25 and 58 monthly payments with no strings attached.

Careers

• Singapore’s Tourism Initiative Focuses on Mental Health

  A calm mind is a lifelong goal, and Singapore is leading the way in mental health tourism with 16 therapeutic gardens designed to help visitors with anxiety, autism, dementia, and ADHD. By 2030, the country plans to open 30 free gardens, created with scientists’ input to engage the senses.

• These jobs will disappear fastest by 2030 as AI rises, according to the World Economic Forum

  According to a new report, cashiers, post office clerks, and bank tellers are among the most at risk, while frontline workers in delivery and construction will see their sectors grow.

Transportation

• New from NACTO: Here’s How Your City Can Embrace Biking

  Bike’s are the fastest-growing mode of transportation — here’s how to make the best of it.

• Montana National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) Program Announcement

  This Project consists of performing all services necessary to design, construct, operate, and maintain 7 EV charging stations in communities along Montana AFC’s on I-15, I-90, and I-94. The EV charging station locations within the communities are to be determined by Proposers.

Energy and Climate Change

• More Headaches For Natural Gas: Next-Gen Heat Pump Water Heaters Are Here

  “Water heating accounts for about 18% of your home’s energy use and is the typically the second largest energy expense in any home,” the US Department of Energy advises.

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