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Montana Department of Revenue staff told a legislative committee Monday that next year’s reappraisal cycle could produce a partial repeat of last year’s jarring tax spike as the state’s surging real estate market continues to translate into higher residential taxes.
The department expects the market value of the average Montana residential property to be reappraised at 21% higher when it completes next year’s reappraisal cycle. A staff economist said Monday that if the Legislature doesn’t rebalance state tax statutes, the higher values will likely result in the average residential tax bill rising by 11% next fall while taxes stay roughly constant or fall on other types of property. Last year’s reappraisal cycle saw the median residential property value increase by about 40%, producing a 21% increase in the median tax bill, according to a Montana Free Press analysis of revenue department data.
Precinct-level election data available from the Montana secretary of state, however, indicates that Montana’s political geography remains more complex than a monolithic sea of Republican red.
At the top of the Montana ticket, three-term incumbent U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, a Democrat, lost to Republican candidate Tim Sheehy by a 7.1% margin, with Sheehy winning all but 11 of Montana’s 56 counties. Tester, however, won majorities of the vote in the cores of Montana’s largest urban centers: Billings, Missoula, Great Falls, Bozeman, Kalispell, Helena and Butte. Tester also won rural precincts around Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks as well as many areas that overlap with Indian reservations. The data presented here represents a complete but preliminary count of votes in the state’s 727 election precincts. Montana Free Press will update this story once election officials complete their official certification process, which involves verifying and finalizing county vote counts within 14 days of the election before statewide certification by the state board of canvassers.
In 2022, The Heritage Foundation, a conservative-leaning think tank, and 140 former Trump staffers authored Project 2025 -- a roadmap for how to replace the rule of law with ring-wing ideals.
Project 2025 is a federal policy agenda and blueprint for a radical restructuring of the executive branch authored and published by former Trump administration officials in partnership with The Heritage Foundation, a longstanding conservative think tank that opposes abortion and reproductive rights, LGBTQ rights, immigrants’ rights, and racial equity. Project 2025’s largest publication, “Mandate For Leadership,” is a 900-page manual for reorganizing the entire federal government agency by agency to serve a conservative agenda. Project 2025 includes a long list of extreme policy recommendations touching on nearly every aspect of American life, from immigration and abortion rights, to free speech and racial justice. A number of its recommendations rely on support from the executive branch and from Congress. Many other initiatives are outright unconstitutional.
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