Highlights of press coverage following Monday’s rally:
Montana CBS: Hundreds Gather to Protest Cuts
“State employees helped bail this state out when it came to it’s fiscal difficulties over the last biennium,” said Eric Feaver, the president of the MEA-MFT. “Now that our financial house is in order, it’s time for the state to provide a minimal increase to state employees. That’s what we’re here about.”
Feaver says that cumulative decisions during committee hearings and floor sessions have resulted in more than $1 billion in cuts from the governor’s proposed budget.
GOP Response from The Daily Inter Lake:
“While most of Montana’s farmers, ranchers, and private sector employees were at work on Monday, public sector employees under the banner of the Montana Organizing Project funded by the likes of George Soros and SEIU took their paid day off to protest fiscally responsible policies at the Montana Legislature.”
“We are taking a commonsense approach to balancing this budget and righting the ship of state,” Senate Majority Leader Jeff Essmann was quoted as saying. “It is a shame that while Montana’s private sector is just beginning to shift out of neutral, state employees are complaining about their health and retirement benefits.”
The Republican press release said that average compensation including benefits for a state employee is about $62,000, while the average Montanan only brings in about $34,000 per year with no guaranteed health or retirement benefits.
(Billings Firefighter Joe Sands) Sands, who was flanked at the rally by a half-dozen uniformed firefighters from Butte, said Republicans are trying to “scapegoat public employees,” shifting the blame for the country’s economic meltdown and problems “from where it belongs, from Wall Street, to us, public employees.”
By the way- you may have noticed in the Lee Newspapers piece the quote by Eric Feaver of MEA-MFT discussing the Governor’s message on Fox News. Chances are- Mr. Feaver watched that video clip right here on The Flint Report.
3:07 PM Update
The Northern Plains Resource Council just sent out a press release hailing today’s rally at the Capitol in Helena.
The NPRC press release noted this:
The biggest cheers were for Superintendent of Public Instruction Denise Juneau who said, “There’s a political circus going on inside that building,” referring to the Legislature. “And it’s a circus that will last for generations,” then citing a litany of cuts in service to the poor, the elderly, children, and the environment. “They’re making this state I love a laughing stock of the nation,” Juneau continued. “If this legislative session is about value, there is value in conservation.”
I respect Superintendent Juneau, but didn’t she vote against developing the Otter Creek Coal tracts? Didn’t an initial deal on Otter Creek already generate tens of millions of dollars into Montana’s coffers? How many more cuts in services to the poor, elderly, children and the environment would have had to come about had her position on Otter Creek won?
ORIGINAL POST
For most school teachers and students, today is known as a vacation day. But for several major environmental groups and public employee unions, today is the day to rally at Montana’s Capitol. Luckily enough for them, it also happens to be a holiday.
The liberal-leaning Big Sky Connection news service has this:
Twenty local conservation groups are organizing hundreds of folks for the first rally of the day, to show support for environmental issues. They’re taking issue with what the groups perceive as attacks on the environment, public lands and energy policy in the Montana Legislature this year.
The Northern Plains Resource Council, League of Women Voters of Montana, Montana Audubon and the Sierra Club are among the groups participating in the event. The rally is at 11 a.m. and features music and speeches. Those attending will move to the Capitol galleries at 1 p.m.
Plus, others will be attending the “Rally to Save Jobs, Public Services and Education” at the Montana State Capitol at 2 p.m., which follows a rally for the environment in the morning. The Montana Organizing Project has partnered with MEA-MFT for the “jobs” event, and several hundred people are expected.
MEA-MFT president Eric Feaver accuses the legislature of creating a budget crisis to further an agenda of budget-cutting that is not in the public’s best interest.
“This state is not in fiscal disrepair, and the governor knows that, and we know that. So we’re going to rally to save public services and education. That’s what we’re all about.”
While today’s rally was planned weeks ago, Feaver says there are similarities to recent events in Wisconsin, where up to 75,000 people have protested at the capitol in Madison because of budget cuts hitting education, state jobs and public services.
“They are setting the tone for all of us in the public sector right now. There’s no question that as Wisconsin goes, so might go the rest of the nation.”
Meanwhile, the powerful Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is also promoting the events in Montana.
So the environmental groups are rallying in the morning, and then it is highly likely that the same folks will also be at the MEA-MFT rally at 2 PM in the afternoon. What strange bedfellows that might be: The schools, propped up by oil, gas, and coal dollars flowing into Montana’s coffers, being joined in a rally by the very groups who are opposed to all the above.
http://www.dailyinterlake.com/news/local_montana/article_e19fe63a-3e33-11e0-a3bf-001cc4c002e0.html
“While most of Montana’s farmers, ranchers, and private sector employees were at work on Monday, public sector employees under the banner of the Montana Organizing Project funded by the likes of George Soros and SEIU took their paid day off to protest fiscally responsible policies at the Montana Legislature,” said the press release, which was issued by Jessica Sena, a communications aide to the Senate’s GOP Majority.
“We are taking a commonsense approach to balancing this budget and righting the ship of state,” Senate Majority Leader Jeff Essmann was quoted as saying. “It is a shame that while Montana’s private sector is just beginning to shift out of neutral, state employees are complaining about their health and retirement benefits.”
The Republican press release said that average compensation including benefits for a state employee is about $62,000, while the average Montanan only brings in about $34,000 per year with no guaranteed health or retirement benefits.
Several hundred public employees and college students rallied on the steps of the state Capitol on Monday, decrying proposed budget cuts to education and state services as harmful and unnecessary.
The workers, who lined the Capitol’s snowy front steps in temperatures in the 20s, also called out their support for public workers in Wisconsin, which has gained national attention as Republicans there try to strip public-sector unions of their collective bargaining rights.
Eric Feaver, president of MEA-MFT, the state’s largest public-sector union, said Montana is not Wisconsin, noting that Gov. Brian Schweitzer, a Democrat, told national news outlets last week that he believes in bargaining with public employee unions and respects their bargaining rights.
“I don’t know if that’s what Fox News wanted to hear, but that’s what they got,” Feaver said.
(Billings Firefighter Joe Sands) Sands, who was flanked at the rally by a half-dozen uniformed firefighters from Butte, said Republicans are trying to “scapegoat public employees,” shifting the blame for the country’s economic meltdown and problems “from where it belongs, from Wall Street, to us, public employees.”