Senate candidate wants to fight for working families

By RICHARD HANNERS / Whitefish Pilot

Ryan Zinke, the Whitefish Republican candidate for Senate District 2, wants people to know he's more than a battle-tested Navy Seal.

He has two master's degrees, including an MBA in finance, he owns his own small business, he was the dean of a graduate school, he helped manage the government's $19 billion "soft" budget in the war on terrorism, and he led 5,500 people in both battle and in delivering food, medicine and clean water to remote villages.

"I didn't just jump out of helicopters," he said.

Zinke said that he will be the champion of working families in Montana.

"I will always work for Montana's working families regardless of party line — you can take that to the bank," he said.

That means bringing back good-paying jobs, primarily by helping small businesses, he said. Zinke advocates significantly raising the cap for the business-equipment tax, addressing property-tax reassessments and taking a hard look at workers compensation, which he believes is being abused.

"It costs about $25 an hour for someone to live here in the Flathead," he said. "But wages are around $10-$13, and it takes two incomes for a family to make it."

As the big manufacturing businesses in the valley continue to atrophy — he cited Columbia Falls Aluminum Co. and Plum Creek — the Flathead needs to transition to more forward-looking industries by offering tax incentives. He suggested value-added businesses, such as flooring and wood molding manufacturers, as an example.

Calling himself a "Teddy Roosevelt Republican," Zinke wants Montana to carefully develop its valuable natural resources, particularly oil, gas and coal.

"Historically, Montana has suffered from natural resource extraction — buffalo, heavy metals in Butte, timber and now water, the benefits always went to outside interests," he said. "We need to be sure our oil, gas and coal benefit Montana's working families."

The state owns enormous coal reserves in the Otter Creek tracts, but the technology for clean-coal generation and sequestering carbon dioxide underground to prevent climate change still needs to be perfected, Zinke said, and it's up to the federal government to fund that research.

"We don't have a problem with mining coal — it's burning it cleanly," he said.

He advocates using tax incentives to promote environmentally-safe coal-powered electrical generation and more wind-powered generating plants in Montana.

Zinke doesn't expect to see a big budget surplus for the next biennium. Oil, gas and coal production has actually been flat, he said.

"Oil companies were given incentives to drill but not to produce," he said, "and big oil rigs have been migrating over to the Dakotas."

Zinke said there are places where government may need to grow, such as planning and providing incentives for Montana graduates to stay in their home state, but he wants to reduce bureaucratic inefficiencies.

"We need to reduce the tax structure, for example, so we don't need to hire 100 more people at the state revenue department," he said.

Sharp debate here over water quality and habitat issues are the result of growth, and Zinke wants to plan for 100 years in the future "so our grandchildren will look back and say we did it right." That means gravel pit review "needs to be more robust" and plans by Plum Creek to develop its timberlands into residential subdivisions needs "prudent review."

Zinke questioned why Montanans sued themselves over public school funding. The state is spending $500,000 defending a lawsuit brought by school districts, and taxpayers are paying both sides, he said. While he agrees that schools need more money, especially for teachers, "who have done their part," Zinke wants to see more streamlining and consolidation of school bureaucracy — but it must be done carefully.

"Sometimes efficiency is not the best path when it comes to kids," he said, saying he wants to protect the "voice of small school districts."

With Montana's best and brightest students leaving for jobs in other states, creating a "brain drain," Zinke proposes no-interest loans to students who agree to stay in Montana after graduating. A product of a family with three generations of plumbers, Zinke praised the vocational training at Flathead Valley Community College.

Healthcare is a vital component of his plan for working families, but the issue is "very complex." Zinke called for tort reform to help reduce malpractice insurance and the number of unnecessary medical tests performed by doctors.