Experience matters

If you got a mailer attacking my opponent, for the record that is not from me, and I disavow it. I do not do attack mailers, never have and never will.

The interest earned off the current principle of the Coal Tax Trust Fund currently funds over 15 different programs in Montana.

Those dollars back up Montana’s retirement systems, Montana’s schools, Montana’s Agriculture and infrastructure across the state just to name a few.

Every session legislators try to spend that principle on all kinds of things, but Democrats in the legislature have done a very good job attacking coal in Montana and our natural resource industry in general. That fund is no longer growing.

So yes, legislators could indeed vote to use the principle of the fund and spend it away, and Montana’s retirement systems would crumble and we would have stripped the ability of future generations of Montana’s to fund infrastructure in the state.

And it’s not like it was easy to pass that infrastructure bill in the first place.

Infrastructure bills had failed every session for the last decade, they were always one of the most contentious issues every legislative session. It was by a considerable margin the hardest bill to get passed during the 2019 legislature and was also, by far, the largest jobs bill passed by the 2019 legislature.

So I fail to see how securing a million dollars for Seeley is a bad thing. That is a direct $1 million in savings to folks in Seeley Lake, seems like a win in my book.

And if you are worried about the cost to the people of Seeley on things like the sewer, it seems strange to then turn around and vote for a democratic party in the legislature that plans to increase our taxes by hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars, including a 4% statewide sales tax and a separate sales tax for Missoula County.

Seems like that would just make the problem considerably worse.

I will make the same promise I made in the last election. If re-elected to continue serving you in the legislature, I will work with anyone on a good idea regardless of who comes up with the good idea, and I will vote against a bad idea regardless of who comes up with the bad idea.

So if you think that you are taxed enough already, if you think that we have to control the growth of government and the growth of government spending, if you think that small businesses are overburdened with needless regulations and that our God-given rights enshrined in both our State and Federal Constitutions are not up for debate, I would be honored to have your support and I would be honored to have your vote!

Representative Mike Hopkins (R) House District 92