Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (13 page)

or on local government services. Our sheriff doesn't get called to the Stock Farm to break up bar fights, and Stock Farm owners don't send their chil
dren to the schools here." John Cook acknowledged, "The plus side of those
rich owners is that if Charles Schwab hadn't bought up all that land, it
wouldn't still be providing wildlife habitat and green open space, because
that land would otherwise have been subdivided by some developer."

Because the rich out-of-staters were attracted to Montana by its beauti
ful environment, some of them take good care of their property and become leaders in defending the environment and instituting land planning.
For example, my summer home for the last seven years has been a rented house situated on the Bitterroot River south of Hamilton, and belonging to
a private entity called the Teller Wildlife Refuge. Otto Teller was a rich Cali-
fornian who liked to come to Montana to fish for trout. One day, he was in
furiated to encounter large construction machinery dumping dirt into one
of his favorite fishing holes on the Gallatin River. He became further enraged when he saw how massive clear-cutting carried out by logging com
panies in the 1950s was devastating his beloved trout streams and damaging
their water quality. In 1984 Otto began buying up prime riverside land
along the Bitterroot River and incorporated it into a private wildlife refugee,
which he nevertheless let local people continue to visit in order to hunt and
fish. He ultimately donated conservation easements on his land to a nonprofit organization called the Montana Land Reliance, in order to ensure
that the land would be managed in perpetuity so as to preserve its environ
mental qualities. Had Otto Teller, that wealthy Californian, not bought that
1,600 acres of land, it would have been subdivided for small house lots.

The influx of newcomers, the resulting rise in land prices and property taxes, the poverty of Montana old-timer residents, and their conservative
attitude towards government and taxes (see below) all contribute to the
plight of Montana schools, which are funded largely by property taxes. Be
cause Ravalli County has so little industrial or commercial property, the
main source of property taxes there is residential property taxes, and those
have been rising with the increase in land values. To old-timers and less af
fluent newcomers already on a tight budget, every increase in property taxes
is a big deal. Not surprisingly, they often react by voting against proposed school bonds and supplemental local property tax levies for their schools.

As a result, while public schools account for two-thirds of Ravalli
County local government spending, that spending as a percentage of per
sonal income stands last among 24 rural western U.S. counties comparable

to Ravalli County, and personal income itself is low in Ravalli County. Even
by the low school-funding standards of the state of Montana, Ravalli
County school funding stands out as low. Most Ravalli County school dis
tricts keep their spending down to the absolute minimum required by
Montana state law. The average salaries of Montana schoolteachers rank among the lowest in the U.S., and especially in Ravalli County those low
salaries plus soaring land prices make it hard for teachers to afford housing.

Montana-born children are leaving the state because many of them aspire to non-Montana lifestyles, and because those who do aspire to Mon
tana lifestyles can't find jobs within the state. For instance, in the years since Steve Powell graduated from Hamilton High School, 70% of his classmates
have left the Bitterroot Valley. Without exception, all of my friends who
chose to live in Montana discussed, as a painful subject, whether their chil
dren had remained or would come back. All eight of Allen and Jackie
Bjergo's children, and six of Jill and John Eliel's eight children, are now liv
ing outside Montana.

To quote Emil Erhardt again, "We in the Bitterroot Valley export chil
dren. Outside influences, like TV, have now made our children aware of
what's available outside the valley, and what's unavailable inside it. People
bring their children here because of the outdoors, and because it's a great
place to bring up kids, but then their children don't want the outdoors." I
recall my own sons, who love coming to Montana to fish for two weeks in
the summer but are accustomed to the urban life of Los Angeles for the rest
of the year, expressing shock as they came out of a Hamilton fast-food
restaurant and realized how few urban recreational opportunities were
available to the local teenagers who had just waited on them. Hamilton has the grand total of two movie theatres, and the nearest mall is 50 miles away
in Missoula. A similar shock grows on many of those Hamilton teenagers
themselves, when they travel outside Montana and realize what they are
missing back at home.

Like rural western Americans in general, Montanans tend to be conserva
tive, and suspicious of governmental regulation. That attitude arose histori
cally because early settlers were living at low population density on a
frontier far from government centers, had to be self-sufficient, and couldn't
look to government to solve their problems. Montanans especially bristle
at the geographically and psychologically remote federal government in

Washington, D.C., telling them what to do. (But they don't bristle at the fed
eral government's money, of which Montana receives and accepts about a
dollar-and-a-half for every dollar sent from Montana to Washington.) In
the view of Montanans, the American urban majority that runs the federal government has no comprehension of conditions in Montana. In the view
of federal government managers, Montana's environment is a treasure belonging to all Americans and is not there just for the private benefit of
Montanans.

Even by Montana standards, the Bitterroot Valley is especially conserva
tive and anti-government. That may be due to many early Bitterroot settlers having come from Confederate states, and to a further influx of bitter right-wing conservatives from Los Angeles after that city's race riots. As Chris
Miller said, "Liberals and Democrats living here weep as they read the re
sults after each election, because the outcomes are so conservative." Extreme
proponents of right-wing conservativism in the Bitterroot are members of
the so-called militias, groups of landowners who hoard weapons, refuse to
pay taxes, keep all others off their property, and are variously tolerated or
else regarded as paranoid by other valley residents.

One consequence of those political attitudes in the Bitterroot is opposi
tion to governmental zoning or planning, and a feeling that landowners
should enjoy the right to do whatever they want with their private property. Ravalli County has neither a county building code nor county-wide zoning.
Outside of two towns plus voluntary zoning districts formed by local voters
in some rural areas outside towns, there aren't even any restrictions on the
use to which land can be put. For instance, one evening when I was visiting
the Bitterroot with my teenaged son Joshua, he read in the newspaper that a movie he had wanted to see was playing in one of Hamilton's two movie
theatres. I asked for directions to that theatre, drove him there, and discov
ered to my astonishment that it had been built recently in an area otherwise
consisting entirely of farmland, except for an adjacent large biotechnology
laboratory. There were no zoning regulations about that changed use of
farmland. In contrast, in many other parts of the U.S. there is sufficient public concern about loss of farmland that zoning regulations restrict or
prohibit its conversion to commercial property, and voters would be especially horrified at the prospect of a theatre with lots of traffic next to a
potentially sensitive biotechnology facility.

Montanans are beginning to realize that two of their most cherished atti
tudes are in direct opposition: their pro-individual-rights anti-government-

regulation attitude, and their pride in their quality of life. That phrase
"quality of life" has come up in virtually every conversation that I have had
with Montanans about their future. The phrase refers to Montanans' being
able to enjoy, every day of their lives, that beautiful environment which out-
of-state tourists like me consider it a privilege to be able to visit for a week
or two each year. The phrase also refers to Montanans' pride in their tradi
tional lifestyle as a rural, low-density, egalitarian population descended from old-timer settlers. Emil Erhardt told me, "In the Bitterroot people
want to maintain the essence of a rural quiet little community in which
everyone is in the same condition, poor and proud of it." Or, as Stan Falkow
said, "Formerly, when you drove down the road in the Bitterroot, you waved
at any car that passed, because you knew everyone."

Unfortunately, by permitting unrestricted land use and thereby making
possible an influx of new residents, Montanans' long-standing and continu
ing opposition to government regulation is responsible for degradation of
the beautiful natural environment and quality of life that they cherish. This was best explained to me by Steve Powell: "I tell my real estate agent and
developer friends, 'You have to protect the beauty of the landscape, the
wildlife, and the agricultural land.' Those are the things that create property
value. The longer we wait to do planning, the less landscape beauty there will be. Undeveloped land is valuable to the community as a whole: it's an
important part of that 'quality of life' that attracts people here. With in
creasing growth pressure, the same people who used to be anti-government
are now concerned about growth. They say that their favorite recreation
area is becoming crowded, and they now admit that there have to be rules."
When Steve was a Ravalli County commissioner in 1993, he sponsored pub
lic meetings just to start discussion of land use planning and to stimulate
the public to think about it. Tough-looking members of the militias came to
those meetings to disrupt them, openly carrying holsters with guns in order to intimidate other people. Steve lost his subsequent bid for reelection.

It's still unclear how the clash between this resistance to government
planning and that need for government planning will be resolved. To quote Steve Powell again, "People are trying to preserve the Bitterroot as a rural community, but they can't figure out how to preserve it in a way that would
let them survive economically." Land Lindbergh and Hank Goetz made es
sentially the same point: "The fundamental problem here is how we hang
on to these attractions that brought us to Montana, while still dealing with
the change that can't be avoided."

To conclude this chapter about Montana, largely related in my words, I'll now let four of my Montanan friends relate in their own words how they
came to be Montanans, and their concerns for Montana's future. Rick Laible
is a newcomer, now a state senator; Chip Pigman, an old-timer and a land
developer; Tim Huls, an old-timer and a dairy farmer; and John Cook, a newcomer and a fishing guide.

Here is Rick Laible's story: "I was born and brought up in the area around Berkeley, California, where I have a business manufacturing
wooden store fixtures. My wife Frankie and I were both working hard. One
day, Frankie looked at me and said, 'You're working 10 to 12 hours a day,
seven days a week.' We decided to semi-retire, drove 4,600 miles around the
West to find a place to settle, bought our first house in a remote part of the
Bitterroots in 1993, and moved to a ranch that we bought near the town of
Victor in 1994. My wife raises Egyptian Arabian horses on the ranch, and I
go back to California once a month for my business that I still own there.
We have five children. Our oldest son always wanted to move to Montana,
and he manages our ranch. The other four of our kids don't understand the Montana quality of life, don't understand that Montanans are nicer people,
and don't understand why their parents moved here.

"Nowadays, after each of my monthly four-day visits to California, I
want to get out of there: I feel, 'They're like rats in a cage!' Frankie goes back
to California only twice a year to see her grandchildren, and that's enough
of California for her. As an example of what I don't like about California, I
was recently back there for a meeting, and I had a little free time, so I took a
walk on the town street. I noticed that people coming in the other direction lowered their eyes and avoided eye contact with me. When I say 'good
morning' to people that I don't know in California, they're taken aback.
Here, in the Bitterroot, it's the rule that when you pass someone that you
don't know, you make eye contact.

"As for how I got into politics, I've always had many political opinions. The state assembly legislator for my district here in the Bitterroots decided
not to run and suggested to me that I run instead. He tried to convince me,
and so did Frankie. Why did I decide to run? It was 'to put something
back'
—I felt that life has been good to me, and I wanted to make life better
for local people.

"The legislative issue in which I'm particularly interested is forest man
agement, because my district is forested and many of my constituents are
woodworkers. The town of Darby, which lies in my district, used to be a rich

lumber town, and forest management would create jobs for the valley.
Originally, there were about seven lumber mills in the valley, but now there
are none, so the valley has lost those jobs and infrastructure. The decisions about forest management here are currently made by environmental groups
and the federal government, with the county and state being excluded. I'm
working on forest management legislation that would involve collaboration
between the three lead parties within the state: federal, state, and county
agencies.

"Several decades ago Montana was among the top 10 U.S. states in its
per-capita income; now, it stands 49 out of 50, because of the decline of the
extraction industries (logging, coal, mines, oil, and gas). Those lost jobs
were high-paying union jobs. Of course, we should not go back to over-extraction, of which there was some in the old days. Here in the Bitterroot,
both a husband and wife have to work, and often they each have to hold two
jobs, in order to make ends meet, yet here we are surrounded by this over-
fueled forest. Everybody here, environmentalists or not, agrees that we need
some fuel reduction in our forests. Forest restoration would eliminate over-
fueling of the forests, especially of the low small trees. Now, that overfueling
is eliminated just by burning it. The federal government's National Fire Plan
would do it by mechanical extraction of the logs, the purpose being to re
duce the biomass of fuel. Most of our American timber comes from Canada!
Yet the original mandate of our national forests was to provide a steady stream of timber, and to provide watershed protection. It used to be that
25% of the revenue from national forests went to schools, but that national
forest revenue has decreased greatly recently. More logging would mean
more money for our schools.

"At present, there is no growth policy for all of Ravalli County! The val
ley's population has grown by 40% in the last decade, and it may grow by
40% in the next decade: where will that next 40% go? Can we lock the door to more people moving in? Do we have the
right
to lock the door? Should a
farmer be forbidden to subdivide and develop his property, and should he
be sentenced to a life of farming? A farmer's money for his retirement is all
in his land. If the farmer is forbidden to sell his land for development or to
build a house, what are you doing to him?

"As for the long-term effects of growth, there will be cycles here in the future, as there have been in the past, and in one of the cycles the newcom
ers will go back home. Montana will never overdevelop, but Ravalli County
will continue to develop. There is a huge amount of publicly owned land here in the county. The price of land here will rise until it gets too high, at