Jennifer Allen for Montana House District 11

I have been interested in studying revenue and taxes for several years. I have taken classes twice in the past with a retired Deputy Director of our revenue dept and attended a class recently with a current legislator to learn specifically the problems with our property taxes.

Residential property taxes are particularly reactive to market value impact. There are known interventions the Legislature can take to help equalize the process.

Over time, property taxes have become too big a piece of Montana’s revenue pie. I want to modernize the entire revenue system since it has been decades since we have done so.

There is an excellent article that suggests we “would be wiser to focus on… specific smaller, incremental tweaks to the tax base… Pragmatism needs to prevail over ideology.”  (The Practical Realities of Property Tax Reforms)

I am pleased that the Governor has developed a housing task force. I agree with several recommendations from this committee such as the need to fund infrastructure grants from a state level, including sewer and water.

We must be cognizant that the needs of individual Montanans such as health care workers and seniors on a fixed income are different. I want us to develop the full continuum and range of housing options including getting to the lower range of affordability. This would mean the legislature expanding the use of Coal Trust dollars to include full grants versus loans and helping to leverage Federal Housing dollars.

I have been excited to see the range of new infill housing units being built and renovated that’s going on in Kalispell and Whitefish. Encouraging projects like these are critical to solving the housing crisis.

The Medicaid Expansion program is due for review for reauthorization in the 2025 Montana Legislature.

I was a Supervisor at Kalispell’s Mental Health Center when the Expansion was initially approved. With consistent access to medical care, my clients were able to re-enter the workforce.

By looking at data from Wyoming and other states, we know the financial and human costs (including increased mortality rates) that will come from the failure to reauthorize the Expansion.

We need Medicaid Expansion and its Federal incentives to help keep our rural hospitals afloat, and it will be absolutely vital to rebuilding our mental health system.

In 2022 the Kalispell Chamber of Commerce released the Child Care Call to Action. This document details a broad range of options complete with implementation plans that incorporate intervention and follow up monitoring.

If elected, I would be willing to work with the Chamber to develop and support any state level legislation specific to addressing implementation of these ideas.

In addition, I would work to rejuvenate past legislative attempts to build paid family leave for all workers. This would include adoptive families and care for senior and ill family members. 

As a 70-year-old woman, I remember having to lie about “unpredictable cycles” to get birth control pills and reading articles about whether you should kill the mother or kill the baby in a crisis.

After the demise of Roe v. Wade, abortion remains legal in this state only because of a 25-year-old state Supreme Court ruling that protected it under the strong right to privacy in our state constitution.

Most Montanans support the right to abortion up to viability, and to save the health and life of the mother.

I have always been (and always will be) a strong supporter of our rights of access to the full range of reproductive health needs, including education, birth control, and abortion.

An important part of responsible gun ownership is to prevent your guns from ending up in the hands of people who are unsafe – untrained children and persons who are dangerous to themselves or others.

Maine recently passed significant gun safety legislation six months after their deadliest shooting in state history. They did this despite having a strong tradition of hunting and gun ownership.

I support all the moves made by the state of Maine, including background checks without loopholes, waiting periods for gun purchases, developing Extreme Risk Protection Orders (“Yellow or Red Flag Laws”), robust funding for suicide prevention, mental health crisis intervention, and support for training families on how to use gun safes/locks for safe gun storage. 

I also approve of additional limitations and oversight on the ownership of high speed/rapid kill weapons such as machine guns or assault rifles. When the national ban expired in 2004, we saw an immediate and steep climb in the number and severity of mass shootings. 

We need to respond to climate change in a speedy robust way that matches the severity of the emergency.

We must reduce our reliance on fossil fuels and support the development of clean, renewable energy sources.

Montana must level the playing field, providing the same financial and tax benefits to renewable energy that we do to fossil fuels.

Climate change requires that we prepare for change across the board. This includes our agriculture and tourism industries, our transportation and energy distribution systems, our conservation planning, and our state revenue streams.

Montana’s mental health system is in a shambles. I was working in mental health when the state funding bottomed out and things fell apart.

The state has lost programs, staff, and institutional knowledge that will be difficult to replace. Even our state mental hospital lost accreditation and is collapsing.

The fact that Montana is always in the top five nationwide for suicide and substance abuse is unacceptable.

A task force was commissioned to look at solutions, but so far the impact has been minimal. 

It is vital to provide funding for services for mentally ill or addicted individuals. Although some funding was set aside last session for mental health, it is being distributed spottily, as grants to whomever happens to apply for the funds.

Montana needs to plan what we want in a reasonable system, distribute funds in a way that allows that plan to come to fruition and provide sufficient ongoing funding for the programs to be maintained into the future.