Montana Highlights

Jodie Cross has purchased the Montana Trolley Company, in Kalispell, from Scott Davie. The business will be mostly run by Cross’ daughters Tamina and Kaylee. The business has been operating in the Flathead Valley for 13 years.

The U.S. Department of Commerce has announced that Montana State University will be home to a newly established Community Engagement Office for the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The office will support workforce development in the state and region, especially in the advanced manufacturing and computing sectors. The office will provide inventors and entrepreneurs a direct connection to federal intellectual property resources and guidance tailored to Montana’s technology ecosystem. 

A panel of Montana state medical board members has voted unanimously to revoke the medical license of Dr. Thomas Weiner. Weiner was a the former Helena cancer doctor who has been accused of prescribing unnecessary treatments and harming patients.  The ruling prohibited him from practicing medicine in Montana ever again.

Intermountain Health Holy Rosary Hospital in Miles City has been recognized as high performing among the Best Hospitals for Maternity Care in America, The rankings were compiled by U.S. News & World Report in its annual rankings.

A logging and fuels reduction project near the mouth of Rock Creek has been approved by the Lolo National Forest. The  project has the stated goal of reducing wildfire risk in a high-priority area along the Clark Fork River.

Glacier Park hosted 2.95 million visitors between January and September of this year. Officials said they expect the final total to be around the park’s record high. The current record, which was set in 2017, is 3.3 million annual visitors. Driving the surge in visitation is a shift toward more shoulder-season recreationalists. May visitation has increased 26% since 2021, and visitation during September and October has also been on the rise. Next summer, visitors will likely be able to enter the park at any time without securing a vehicle reservation beforehand. The shift is part of a program that officials said are intended to address two of the park’s most persistent issues: overcrowding at Logan Pass and an ineffective shuttle system. They also plan to enforce a three-hour parking limit on all personal vehicles at Logan Pass.

All of the financial and physical assets of the Dawson County Economic Development Council were divided among seven local organizations after i...

By Morgan Sweeney, The Center Square

December’s jobs data changed little from November, rounding out an underwhelming year for the U.S. labor market. 

Initial estimates put job gains at 50,000, though if December is like every other month this year, that number will be revised downward in the coming months. 

By comparison, last December saw an increase roughly 6.5 times greater, with ...

By Sam Cardwell

Mountain States Policy Center

Across the country, raising the minimum wage continues to be a topic of conversation. Some claim that raising the minimum wage to $20 would help both low-income employees as well as employers. Though some are moving forward with this experiment, others are being more cautious.

For example, voters in Olympia, Wash., this year rejected a bal...

By John O’Brien

Legal Newsline

A ballot initiative designed to keep corporations from spending on elections in Montana is a little too ambitious, the state Supreme Court has found.

The new proposals included in Ballot Issue 4 violate the rules for wording such initiatives, the court ruled. State Attorney General Austin Knudsen made that argument to the justices over a vote that would ...

Montana’s experience with no speed limits was cited as evidence to implement speed restrictions in Arizona. Center Square reported that the Arizona state legislator, proposing lifting daytime speed restrictions on rural interstate highways claimed that in the mid-1990s when Montana instituted no-speed zones for a few years, officials found two to three times fewer fatalities per vehicle mile t...

Jodie Cross has purchased the Montana Trolley Company, in Kalispell, from Scott Davie. The business will be mostly run by Cross’ daughters Tamina and Kaylee. The business has been operating in the Flathead Valley for 13 years.

The U.S. Department of Commerce has announced that Montana State University will be home to a newly established Community Engagement Office for the U.S. Patent and Tr...

Graves Joins Stockman Bank as VP Branch Manager

Jay Graves recently joined Stockman Bank as VP, Branch Manager for the Grand Avenue location in Billings. His responsibilities include overseeing bank operations, management and employee supervision, and all lending activities. Graves brings 20 years of banking experience to the position, whi...