Property Rights

A Bedrock of Free Citizenship

Property rights are a bedrock of free citizenship, opportunity, and prosperity in these United States of America. Without the right to own and control our private property—our homes, our land, our businesses, and even property of our persons, such as our firearms and cellular devices—we are at risk of losing almost every other right guaranteed in our U.S. Constitution. This is why unwaveringly protecting property rights for Montana citizens will be a paramount priority as your House District 70 representative at the state capital. Also, obvious especially in the Western U.S., we, as citizens of the state and nation, collectively own public lands, waterways, and monuments, and should enjoy the privileges and responsibilities afforded by that ownership. This necessitates laws to conserve and steward these public properties, including making improvements to them; it does not mean that a bloated unelected bureaucracy and special interest non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have the right to diminish citizens’ rightful use and enjoyment of public properties by circumventing legislative processes. It does mean that our national, state, and local law enforcement agencies must protect and preserve them against abuse, irreverent vandalism, and destruction.

Leaning on Thomas Jefferson’s Creator-given inalienable rights of “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” in our Declaration of Independence (following George Mason's Virginia Declaration of Rights, which referred to "the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety”), the fourth and fourteenth amendments, respectively, say “The Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States; and nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as to Prejudice any Claims of the United States, or of any particular State,” and “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

From pioneers staking out claims in the nascence our nation to the Homestead Act to the consumer- based markets we enjoy today, protecting our private property from government overreach (either by taking or by regulatory hobbling), and protecting the sovereignty of both personal (citizen-owned) property and public (state and national) property from foreign acquisition is a hallmark of our national liberty.

Assuring Protection of Property Rights in Montana

What is at stake today for Montanans and House District 70, specifically? We can define at least five issues that currently threaten or compromise personal property rights and prosperity including:

• State of Montana Department of Revenue excessive property tax increases
• Federal government regulation and encroachment, as in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s massive Missouri River Headwaters Conservation Area proposal and the same agency’s multi-year failure to compensate Beaverhead County for non-taxable lands, per the assurance and oath of the agency when the Red Rock Lakes National Wildlife Refuge was established in 1935, and which threatens the viability of the public schools in the Lima School District.
• The Biden and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrations’s push to enter a secret Columbia River Agreement to decommission four dams on the Snake River, which threatens reliable, consistent, affordable and renewable clean energy for more than 220,000 Montanans, including all of us in District 70.
• Foreign property ownership.
• National (such as the EPA Waters of the Unites States, WOTUS) and international (such as 30x30) agency and NGO encroachment of citizens’ private property liberties, which threaten farming and ranching across the state and nation, and may impact one of the premier Montana and District 70 tourism industries: fly fishing.
• Legal and judicial activism in the state, which endangers valid livelihoods and industries through specious claims of “harm” due to climate change.

Some of these issues are those that I can directly impact in collaboration with other state legislators as your next District 70 House representative. For instance, I am enthusiastic about introducing a bill that will take the state beyond Montana Senate Bill 203, which bans land purchases by what it refers to as “foreign adversaries”. Also, as a current local school board member, I realize the important contribution of property taxes on the sustainability of our public schools. Nevertheless, I recognize a new day is dawning for education in our state and across America, and I am eager to work with my state house colleagues on solutions to a solve problems associated with modern public education, primarily because of federal agencies usurping the rights and personal responsibilities of parents and local communities.