Candidates square off in 2-hour forum

More than a hundred people crowded into the Whitefish City Council chambers on Sept. 30 to hear this year’s two House District 4 candidates speak at a forum hosted by the Whitefish Chamber of Commerce.

In less than two hours, Repub-lican Derek Skees and Democrat Will Hammerquist answered 36 questions from the audience in rapid-fire succession. They also directed one question at each other in a forum that was punctuated by one-liners, zingers, quips and even a few jabs.

Moderator and Chamber executive director Kevin Gartland asked at the start that questions be “clean.” Questions ran the gamut from budget deficits, education funding, job creation and taxes to Second Amendment issues, nullification of federal mandates and virtuous leadership.

The budget

Hammerquist, whose father runs a local construction company, and who worked for the Montana Contractors Association in Helena after graduating from Montana State University-Bozeman, said the economy needs to be diversified to make up for the construction slow-down.

He called for increasing the state’s manufacturing base — including developing the former Idaho Timber and North Valley Hospital sites in Whitefish. To encourage new businesses, he called for investing more money from the state’s Coal Severance Tax Trust Fund here in Montana, supporting education and training for workers, suspending the business-equipment tax until economic conditions improve, and providing targeted tax credits to attract new businesses.

Skees took a different stance. It will take individuals to get the economy out of a recession, he said, so government must be reduced. To address a $400 million projected budget deficit at the end of the next biennium, Skees called for reducing spending. Instead of raising taxes, the business-equipment tax should be completely abolished, he said.

Citing his experience as a businessman, also in construction, Skees said government should institute business accounting principles and put the numbers on a Web site so taxpayers can see how their money is being spent. The government needs a better way to tax, and he called for more privatization.

“If you can see a service offered in the Yellow Pages, the government shouldn’t be doing it,” he said, quoting President Ronald Reagan.

While both agreed Montana was fortunate it had so far stayed in the black, Hammerquist cited his experience working in Lt. Gov. John Bohlinger’s office in support of government. Most of the state budget goes to “education, medication and incarceration,” he said, noting that government needs to increase efficiency in how it provides services.

Hammerquist called for holding budget meetings out of Helena and making them more bipartisan and fair to all Montanans. Just cutting 40 percent of the state budget would be too simple and would result in a tax shift from one taxpayer to another.

Montana needs to be “more business-friendly,” Skees said, disagreeing with Hammerquist’s suggestion of using targeted tax-credits to lure new business to Montana. By aggressively reducing taxes, the state could attract all kinds of businesses and “go after our natural resources,” he said.

A sales tax

While Skees opposes raising taxes, he is interested in replacing property and income taxes with a sales tax. He said a “consumption tax” would be more fair because it would treat everyone equally — and it would take in money from tourists. The state constitution presently caps any sales tax at 4 percent, but Skees said he’d be willing to let the rate go higher if approved by voters.

Noting that sales-tax ideas never got past the legislature over the past 20 years, Hammerquist said divisions between east-side and west-side legislators, and between farmers and businesses, would stop another attempt at creating a sales tax. Besides, with the income tax pulling in about $800 million, a 4 percent sales tax “wouldn’t pencil out,” he said.

Hammerquist, who’s been successful in gaining protection in the North Fork and Haskill Creek drainages from oil and gas interests, said he will support environmental regulations. The people’s “right to a clean and healthful environment” was put in the 1972 Montana Constitution because of past mining impacts, he said.

“We continue to see it play out in Libby where the problem is asbestos,” he said.

Skees agreed that protecting the environment was “critical,” noting that 40 years of education had “made all of us conservationists.” But whereas he would not vote for anything that would harm the environment, he wanted to see more natural resource development, such as harvesting beetle-killed trees.

Frivolous lawsuits are a big reason timber harvesting has declined, Skees said. The delaying tactic discouraged businesses from investing in the state’s timber industry. Environmental groups that file these kinds of lawsuits should have to either pay a bond up front or pay for losses incurred by those who are sued, he said.

Hammerquist noted that frivolous lawsuits took place at the federal level, not state. Biomass energy projects, like the pilot project at the F.H. Stoltze Land & Lumber Co. mill in Columbia Falls, along with value-added manufacturing businesses could help reactivate the timber industry, he said.

Carbon taxes

As for a carbon tax to address greenhouse gases, Hammerquist said he believes the science that blames humans for changing climate, but if nothing is happening at the federal level, why should the state do something?

“Montana is a speck on the overall global impact,” he said, calling for more efficient use of energy resources.

The science is not in, Skees said — the impact of humans on climate needs more study. Furthermore, a carbon tax would hurt U.S. businesses while helping China, India and other nations without a similar tax.

The two candidates also differed on education funding. Skees called for more competition in education, such as voucher programs where parents could choose schools. He noted that he dropped out of college to follow a successful career path and was “honed on the knife of competition.”

Hammerquist said he would support education funding, right on down to health care for children. Some rural school districts could be consolidated to save money, but he was “not ready to abandon the idea” of public education to the market place.

Both candidates supported citizens’ rights to own guns. Hammerquist said he was an avid hunter and “has more guns than I need and less than I want.” Skees noted that he is the only HD4 candidate supported by both the National Rifle Association and the Montana Shooting Sports Association.

“God bless the Second Amendment,” Skees said. “Without it, we couldn’t support the First.”

Virtuous leaders

Both candidates were asked about their residency. Hammerquist said he owns a rental home in Helena and a piece of land in Polebridge, but he lives in Whitefish. Skees said he lives in a spec home he built in Kalispell and would move to Whitefish if he could sell it.

The two were also asked about “virtuous leadership” and the origin of their sense of morality. Hammerquist cited his family and attending Lutheran church. Skees agreed that family was important, but said that’s where a person learns about work ethic. Understanding good and evil comes from a “higher power,” he said, citing his belief in Christ and lessons from the Bible.

Skees also holds a strong belief in the work of the Founding Fathers. But he also believes citizens should stand up to the federal government, even going so far as to call for “nullification” to stop the new federal health care bill. He cites the tenthamendmentcenter.com Web site for evidence that states rights can be used to stop the federal government, and his list of federal laws to “nullify” could include “everything,” he said.

Hammerquist said he’d prefer to focus his energies on local and basic needs, like supporting education, addressing property taxes, seeing that the Whitefish River clean-up is completed, and keeping an eye on the U.S. 93 West reconstruction project. He also pointed out several examples of natural resource development that is occurring in Montana, including new coal leases on the Otter Creek tracts and the first new coal mine in Montana in 20 years.

“I think that’s awesome that we have a new coal mine,” Skees said. “But we could use nine more.”