Daines Talks Issues with Community Leaders, Visits NE MT Veterans' Memorial

U.S. Senator for Montana Steve Daines visited Glasgow last week on June 1, to meet with community leaders and talk about issues such as education, long-term care, infrastructure and energy. Daines commented that the meeting, "really covered from the cradle to the grave and everything in between."

Representatives from various agencies, the hospital, the school board, Prairie Ridge, the Valley County Sheriff's Office and Frances Mahon Deaconess Hospital as well as business owners and elected officials attended to talk about the issues concerning Valley County, rural Montana and the Glasgow community.

The Senator engaged those participants asking for clarity and seeking policy solutions and suggestions he could take back to Washington for action. The first issue raised by County Commissioner Bruce Petersen was mental health access. COO of Frances Mahon Deaconess Hospital Ellen Guttenberg took on the task of discussing critical access funding, mental health in the region and the issue of Medicaid funding for many of the programs. Guttenberg spoke out about Medicaid funding and proposals for that program. Specifically, she addressed per capita and block grant funding saying, "neither of those work very good for Montana. Obviously, per cap (per capita) is a no brainer why that doesn't work for Montana. The block grant funding seems like a good idea but what we've seen is when that funding is given to the state's health care it's an easy target. Mental health is a good place to make cuts, nursing homes are a good place to make cuts, so a block grant funding kind of puts the health care industry at risk."

Daines responded to Guttenberg's concerns saying, "The challenge we have right now in Medicaid is there really isn't any budget. It is this open-ended unsourced funding(...) So here's the problem, there really aren't much incentives for the state to find smarter ways to spend Medicaid dollars, to reign in waste, fraud and abuse that does incur in that program. They're not accountable, so there is no budget(...) So, we've got to figure out how to manage that better. To keep that viable long-term."

Daines went on to discuss health care in broader terms before speaking emphatically about the loss of critical access funding in the region, "If you lose your critical access, you lose your health care. You lose your seniors who were going to retire here because they have to go elsewhere to get better health care. I think you have to have that for the community really to stay viable as a community."

Other topics prompted by the Superintendent of Frazer Schools Melanie Blunt-Cole revolved around meth and opiate use, especially on or around the Fort Peck Indian Reservation and in those schools. Undersheriff Luke Strommen took the topic to task discussing with the Senator the need for more patrolmen and deputies to take on the growing issue of drug related crime in the county. The law enforcement officer said, "I can draw a straight line from almost every felony case I have worked in my career to drugs," Strommen added later, "We really just need more boots on the ground in Valley County."

Education funding in the region was also discussed with Daines citing the lack of state and federal funding and the lack of pay to recruit teachers to the area. Infrastructure was brought up and representatives from the county talked through the issues with the city levy and the Army Corps of Engineers and Federal Emergency Management Agency standards for that levy.

Following the discussion Senator Daines made his way out to Fort Peck to tour the Northeast Montana Veterans' Memorial. He was greeted and provided information on the fundraising, design and construction of the monument by the veterans, engineers and construction crews that performed the work of making the monument a reality.

While there Daines also dedicated a tile for his father, who served in the United States Marine Corps.