Incumbent wants to give taxpayers some relief

Rep. Keith Regier, R-Kalispell, was first elected to the Montana House in 2008. If re-elected, he says he will sponsor bills that “give taxpayers some relief.”

House District 5 runs east to west across the middle of the Flathead and includes the Highway 206, Lake Blaine, LaSalle and West Valley areas. His Democratic challenger is Melanie Knadler, a teacher at Glacier High School.

Regier was also a teacher. After retiring from Evergreen Elementary School, where he taught sixth grade, Regier started his own business, Stillwater Sod. He has a bachelor’s in education from the University of Nebraska and a post-graduate degree from Montana State University-Northern. He’s lived in the Flathead since 1975.

Regier said he would vote against the proposed Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes water compact in its present form.

“The compact is supposed to establish the purpose of the reservation and provide water for that purpose,” he said. “The current compact gives too much water to the tribe and removes state control of water. I would vote for a reasonable water compact.”

The state’s estimated $400 million budget surplus is an overtaxation problem, Regier said.

“Montana has had an ending-fund balance for many years,” he said. “That means that the state is collecting too much money from the taxpayers. I would like to see some permanent tax relief with income taxes and reduced state property taxes.”

Senate Bill 395, which would have expanded Medicaid to cover 70,000 Montanans not covered by Obamacare, never made it out of the House’s Human Services Committee in 2013. Regier said Medicaid needs to be reformed before any expansion is done.

“Able-bodied people that aren’t working should be helped in getting a job, and those that are chronic users of Medicaid need to be evaluated for possible abuse of the system,” Regier said. “Obamacare took billions of dollars from Medicare, which created more people needing insurance. Obamacare also caused many people to have their work hours reduced to 30 per week or less. This caused some people to lose income and not be able to afford insurance. The federal government is creating a mess with health care and wants to shift the financial responsibility to the states.”

Regier sees no reason to change the enrollment-based funding formula for public schools, but he wants to change how Montana’s pension plans work for teachers and state employees. In the last session, he introduced a bill that would have replaced defined benefit plans with defined contribution plans, but it was tabled in the House Appropriations Committee.

“All new hires should be on a 401K plan, and the state needs to meet its promise to those on the pension,” he said. “Montana needs to stop making pension promises that need to have large amounts of money to keep solvent.”

Montana’s state agencies are too big, Regier said, including the Department of Environmental Quality and the Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks. But he said the idea of states taking over management of federal lands has merit.

“It should be done slowly,” he said. “I think the state could generate revenue from those lands.”

In light of how many residents vote by absentee ballot, Regier had a streamlining suggestion.

“They are required to return unvoted ballots in the primary election,” he said. “These unvoted ballots should just be discarded. I would like to see the absentee voting process made more voter friendly.”