So close, yet so far away

My great-grandfather, John E. Fitzpatrick, started ranching on Nevada Creek near Helmville around 1880. My grandfather grew up there but moved to Anaconda in 1913.

A little over 4,000 feet to the west of the remnants of the Fitzpatrick ranch, California liberal, Trish Schreiber lives on a 300-acre ranchette after spending most of her life in the San Francisco Bay area.  I grew up in Anaconda.

Even though we share a certain geographic proximity, our political perspectives couldn’t be farther apart.

When I grew up, the Montana economy was based on agriculture and natural resource extraction and they made major contributions to our property tax base. Both of those industries have declined in their economic importance although agriculture has fared much better than mining, timber, and oil/gas production. Montana has become a tourist state predominantly selling lake and mountain vistas and real estate for second homes. That change is reflected by significant change in our tax base.

I established my current residence at Georgetown Lake in 2016. I decided to analyze the change in the tax bases of three of the counties which make up most of House District 76 during the past nine years. In 2016, residential property made up 34% of the tax base in Deer Lodge County. It increased to 48% nine years later. In Powell County, the shift was from 36% to 52% and in Granite County it jumped from 48% to 65% of the tax base. With that type of shift occurring throughout Montana, residential taxpayers are paying an ever-larger share of the cost of local government and the schools.

Montana needed to update its tax code to reflect the new reality of Montana’s tourist-based economy and find a method to protect Montana residents from ever escalating property taxes. The 2025 legislature did just that. It reduced taxes for nearly 300,000 Montana residents on their primary home and shifted the tax burden to out-of-state residents. It is time to stop subsidizing the Californians who vacation here.

With the passage of the 2025 tax relief legislation, folks with the big homes on Flathead Lake and at Big Sky started complaining and they found support from politicians like, “Tax-Hike” Trish Schreiber who recently said she wanted to tax “all property (not just residential property) at the same rate regardless of its use.” If implemented, the Schreiber plan would double your property taxes.

As a lifelong Montanan, I believe Montanans should get priority in our property tax system. We charge out-of-state residents higher rates for hunting licenses and for college tuition and it’s time to apply that principle to property taxes too. There is no reason why a person from California should get preferential treatment in our property tax system at the expense of Montana residents.

I oppose a sales tax too. As Republicans, we should be looking to cut your tax burden, not find more ways to tax Montanans. Montanans deserve lower taxes, not a sales tax or the Schreiber plan to double your property taxes.  

State Rep. John Fitzpatrick is a Republican from Anaconda representing House District 76.