Commissioner looks back at career

Richard Hanners / Whitefish Pilot

By RICHARD HANNERS

Whitefish Pilot

Flathead County Commis sioner Gary Hall says he’s hauled a lot of three-ring binders out of his office, and much of the artwork is gone from the walls. By New Year’s, his term will be up and a new commissioner will be moving in.

“The past six years have been extremely rewarding for me,” he said. “I’ve experienced a lot of personal growth — and my skin is a lot tougher than it used to be. I feel like I just graduated with an MBA.”

Born and raised in the Flathead, Hall attended grade school in Whitefish before the family moved to Kalispell. His father, who ran a hunting and fishing store in Whitefish and then started an excavating business, was once asked to run for county commissioner.

After serving in Vietnam, Hall worked briefly at the Anaconda Aluminum Co. smelter in Columbia Falls. He moved to the blue-collar mill town in 1983, and the next year, he and his wife Jayne built a restaurant where Fox’s Drive-in is today.

The Hall family are devout Christians. Hall at one time served as office administrator for the Salvation Army in Kalispell. His son Matthew became a youth pastor at New Covenant Fellowship church, and his daughter Rebekah attended Portland Bible College.

Rebekah was killed in a motor vehicle accident three years ago. She was 24 years old.

“She left me with a saying that has become a life motto for me —’no regrets,’” Hall said. “I have no regrets at all from the past six years as commissioner.”

In 1997, Hall announced he was running for mayor of Columbia Falls. By that time, he and Jayne owned and operated the Park Inn Bed and Breakfast, and Hall worked full-time at Costco.

Calling himself a “closet politician” at the time, Hall said it was not a hurried decision, that he had planned to run for mayor for two years. He proved to be a good campaigner, narrowly upsetting incumbent mayor Lyle Christman 331-309.

Hall joined two other brand new mayors that year in the Flathead — Bill Boharski in Kalispell and Mike Jenson in Whitefish. Jenson had been a classmate of Hall’s in grade school, along with Dale Duff, Brad Knuth and Dick Foster.

Hall was re-elected mayor in 2001, but within a year he announced his bid for county commissioner. Looking back, Hall said it was the “natural progression of his interest in politics,” but a number of people asked him to run.

“People had concerns about the divisiveness between the county and the three cities,” he said. “There were planning issues and dissatisfaction with how things were being done. There was no willingness to hear other sides.”

The 2002 election was marked by negative campaigning — especially after the primary, where Hall faced incumbent Republican Dale Williams, the commissioner some blamed for ending countywide planning by disbanding the Tri-City Planning Office.

“We’ve got the cities doing one thing and the county doing another,” Hall said at the time. “I don’t like that arrangement.”

Hall and his wife were basically on their own during the primary campaign. Flathead County is the size of Connecticut and a difficult place to cover, but Hall won a hard-fought election, defeating Williams 4,561-3,397. Williams’ claim that 1,600 Democrats crossed over to vote for Hall was overshadowed by the 1,980 votes Whitefish Republican Carl Talsma picked up, Hall said at the time.

Williams, however, was not ready to give up and ran as an independent. In a front-page newspaper ad decorated with Halloween ghosts, Williams said, “The primary election was a trick.” Another Williams ad claimed Hall and his Democratic opponent, Karen Reeves, of Whitefish, were “approved” by the green political action committee Montana Conservation Voters.

Hall described himself at the time as a moderate in a race of extremists.

“On the extreme left is Democrat Karen Reeves, with her ties to the Montana Wilderness Association and Citizens For A Better Flathead, and on the extreme right is Williams, who spent three hours on John Stokes’ KGEZ the other day,” Hall said at the time.

As the official Republican candidate in November, Hall garnered endorsements from a who’s who of local — and national — Republicans, including county attorney Ed Corrigan, county clerk and recorder Sue Haverfield, county commissioner Howard Gipe, state Senator Greg Barkus, U.S. Sen. Conrad Burns, and U.S. Sen. Trent Lott, of Mississippi.

In the end, Hall benefited from high voter turnout and defeated Reeves 11,472-9,887. Williams picked up 4,274 votes as an independent.

Hall was also endorsed in 2002 by sheriff Jim Dupont, who soundly defeated Hall in this year’s primary 8,065-3,585 by running on a campaign generally favoring property rights over more regulation.

The changes Hall supported when he first took office made him a lot of enemies, he said, particularly when it came to planning. Enduring the “personal character assassinations,” however, was worth it in the end.

“I’m better for it,” he said. “I wouldn’t trade my experience over the past six years for anything.”

The commissioners are not perfect and must be accountable, he said, but a lot of the public criticisms result from misunderstandings.

“People read articles in newspapers but then don’t understand what’s really happening,” he said. “We work hard before making a decision. That’s different than how it used to be.”

Ticking off his accomplishments as commissioner, Hall cited 100 hours he spent on the county growth policy, establishing a Long Range Planning Task Force and hiring good staff, including county administrator Mike Pence.

“Hiring and budgeting are the most important things we do,” he said.

Other accomplishments include erecting the Ten Commandments monument on the old courthouse lawn, building intergovernmental relations during the historic 2003 forest fire season, and working with the Flathead On The Move organization, which drafted the “Principles Of Civil Dialogue” found today on county and city documents.

One of his biggest disappointments is the ongoing dispute over Whitefish’s two-mile planning and zoning jurisdiction — the so-called “doughnut” area. He called the division between the city and county “an experiment in cooperative planning that didn’t work out.”

“I grew up in Whitefish, I attended school there, mayor Mike Jenson and I were born two days apart, my dad dug the first foundations on Big Mountain,” Hall said.

Hall says he plans to stay involved in public affairs. He has a new home in Columbia Falls and is active in the First Best Place Task Force’s efforts to revitalize downtown Columbia Falls.

At 60, Hall says he’s excited about the new season in his life and is grateful for the opportunity he had to serve as county commissioner.