‘Political games’ not appreciated
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Editor,
The water compact for the Flathead Reservation between the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, the State of Montana and the feds has been ongoing for more than 10 years. The “team” representing the state is comprised of nine members: four appointed by the governor, two appointed by the president of the senate, two appointed by the speaker of the house and one appointed by the attorney general; and the entire commission reports directly to the governor. The four congressional appointees serve for as long as they are active in congress.
House District 12 Rep. Dan Salomon has been on the commission for what, 19 months now, and we are finally blessed with one article and one letter to the editor (in the Valley Journal) in recent weeks concerning the current status of these negotiations? Where has his voice been for the past 70 or so weeks? Where have the updates to this disastrous compact offer been during his tenure? What exactly motivated him to bring this issue into the public purview — “re-election strategy”? I am reasonably certain it wasn’t any major concern for our well-being or rights to one of the two basic necessities of life on earth — water — that this long-awaited agreement/proposal is destined to deny us (and most of Western Montana) as currently written.
I suspect that the “exposure” (by concerned citizens who finally got wind of this atrocious piece of legislation) of this ludicrous three-legged stool proposed by the tribal leaders (the water compact, the irrigator stipulation amendment and the unitary management board) and the recent town hall meetings conducted in Ronan and St. Ignatius, by said citizens to inform the populace, were the light switch that finally illuminated the issue and resulted in the newspaper entries by Mr. Salomon.
I don’t know about the rest of your readership, but I’m older than most of the appointees, and as a constituent, I expect to be treated with a lot more respect and spoken to (kept informed) as an adult, not ignored or talked to like a child who “just can’t understand” the intricacies of garbage like this. Political games have no place in my basic survival.
Michael Gale
Ronan
