Incumbent keeps his eye on the budget

By RICHARD HANNERS / Whitefish Pilot

The House District 6 incumbent says he will continue the fight to control spending and lower taxes. Bill Beck, R-Whitefish, faces Scott Wheeler, D-Kalispell, and Tim Martin, C-Kalispell, in a large district that includes greater Whitefish, neighborhoods in Kalispell and rural homes north of Olney and west of Marion.

Beck has lived in Flathead County for 19 years. A Navy veteran with bachelor's and master's degrees in business, Beck's background is in management, budget and finance.

He has coached youth baseball and football and served as president and chairman of various civic organizations, including the Save The Old Main Association, at the Montana Veterans Home, in Columbia Falls. He has also served as chairman and judge for high school academic activities and as a commissioner on the Whitefish Area Fire Board.

In 2004, Beck ran unsuccessfully against Rep. Mike Jopek, D-Whitefish, in House District 4, then defeated Wheeler two years later in House District 6.

Parlaying his business and military backgrounds, Beck has been talking to Brig. Gen. John Walsh, the new commander of the Montana National Guard, about getting guardsmen to help out with remodeling work at the veterans home's historic Old Main building.

Built 111 years ago, the building has undergone significant renovation, and Beck hopes he can get the interior finished so it can be set up as a veterans clinic.

The incumbent plans to bring back a bill he withdrew last session aimed at ensuring licensed drivers carry liability insurance. He said the MERLIN database network needed to track insurance policies was funded by the legislature in 2005 and 2007 should be up and running by next year.

Beck agreed that Flathead Republicans tend to vote in blocks but points out that Democrats did the same in the contentious 2007 legislative session. There was more bipartisan cooperation in 2003, when there was a $300 million budget deficit, he said, than in 2005 and 2007, when there were $300 million and $1.2 billion surpluses.

As a member of the joint budget subcommittee, Beck was witness to numerous funding requests that would increase the size of government.

"We put in a lot of 'one-time only' provisions, so if the money was not used for what it was intended, it would go back to the general fund," he said.

The Corrections Department, for example, requested a 40 percent increase. Beck said he drove out to look at some of the department's facilities and found some critical problems, but the one-time-only provision was the answer.

Beck sits on an interim committee that looks at information technology upgrades at state facilities across Montana. He says $40 million is available, and the first priority is on security.

"There's some disagreement about that," he said. "Some officials want central authority, others want it de-centralized to department levels."

Beck said he would like to see more of the surplus go to tax reduction.

"Last session, we pushed hard for $300 million in permanent property-tax relief, but the bill disappeared in the Senate," he said.

A similar thing happened with the business equipment tax, he said. House Republicans had wanted to eliminate the tax, Beck said, but counting votes, they came up with a compromise bill that lowered the rate from 3 percent to 2 percent. When it came back from the Democrat-controlled Senate, however, it was back to 3 percent.

"Ninety percent of Montana business is small businesses, not large corporations," he said. "They take the risks, they provide the jobs and benefits. I'm not opposed to bringing in large corporations, but Montana's regulations and taxes make the state business-unfriendly."

After speaking with school superintendents across House District 6, Beck concludes that what's needed in education is more local control. Each school district is different, he said, and superintendents don't like the formulas used to distribute state funding.

"School districts should decide if they want all-day kindergarten, for example, not the state," he said. "If they don't want it, they could use the money for something else."

Beck said he'd like to see a state income-tax exemption for health care costs, and he didn't approve of expanding the state Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) to cover adults and middle class families.

"That was questionable," he said. "Health and education issues will come up every session until we take some really positive steps to address them."