HELENA — The Republican candidate for House District 79 is Jill Sark. HD 79 is currently an open seat with no incumbent.
Sark told MTN she is running for the legislature because she worked for the state for almost 40 years implementing the work of the legislature and now she would like to work on developing legislation.
The top issues she wants to see addressed by the legislature are property tax reductions, Medicaid expansion and state energy and natural resource production.
House District 79 comprises the west side of the Helena Valley, the upper west side neighborhood, Rimini, Unionville and Fort Harrison. The Democrat candidate for HD 79 is Luke Muszkiewicz, you can learn more about him here.
Watch our full interview with Jill Sark
Q: Why are you running for the legislature?
Jill Sark: Well, I worked for the state of Montana for 38 years, and I worked on the side of implementing legislation that was passed, and I had interaction with the legislature while I worked for the state. So I want to now step over to the other side and be part of developing legislation, passing legislation, and voting on legislation.
Q: What are three key issues you believe need to be addressed by the next Montana legislature?
JS: Property tax reduction needs to happen. The can can't get kicked down the road any longer this session. They need to deal with property tax. The property tax task force came up with some recommendations, and they came up with some good ideas. And I also have some good ideas myself, and that would be [to] only allow increases that are approved by the legislature. Put a cap on how much an increase can happen each year, and put a sunset on levies that are used to determine the amount of tax credit.
Q: Any other issues you feel are important in the legislature?
JS: Yes, Medicaid. So there are kind of two prongs to the Medicaid piece. One is Medicaid expansion. That's going to be a big topic this coming session. My feeling on Medicaid expansion is that I felt like Medicaid expansion was for single adults who were able-bodied or couples that didn't have children who were able-bodied. I, in fact, managed the general assistance Medicaid program in the 1980s in Libby, and that's the population it served. As I start, as I wrote, started running for office this time and looking at the subjects, I read through the policies, and I was surprised to see that Medicaid expansion in Montana covers much more than just single adults or a single spouse and that do not have children. As I look through it, there isn't a resource limit. The income is used from the month the year before, and I feel that I can't get behind Medicaid expansion the way it's written today, but with amendments, I could, and I have several ideas, other ideas for amendments to Medicaid expansion. The other piece of Medicaid is continuing to look at the reimbursement rate for elderly and persons with disabilities, so nursing homes and home and community-based services, which were the services in the home last session, there was an increase to the reimbursement rate, but there wasn't a set inflationary each year, so that needs to be looked at to continue to keep those services intact, allow people to stay in their homes as long as possible, and when they do have to go to the nursing home that we actually have a nursing home available in Montana, I think we lost 11 nursing homes in 2022, the third area is energy, and Montana used to export energy, and now we are importing energy. So I'm looking at coal, gas, oil, and then I'll throw in wood since I'm from logging country. But here's, the crux of the issue. We have a lot of natural resources in Montana, and we have to use those natural resources now, while we're figuring out how we're going to do things later. And an example would be my husband works at Ashgrove Cement. They have to burn either coal or natural gas to heat the kiln hot enough to produce cement. Wind, solar, hydro, they won't heat the kiln hot. They don't produce enough energy. So you can just imagine if we don't have cement, what don't we have? We don't have building, we don't have sidewalks, we don't have roads. So it's important to continue with coal, gas and oil now, and keep looking forward to what might happen in the future, and ironically, the. A base to a windmill. For one of the windmills, those great big wind turbines, requires tons of cement for its base. So if you don't allow coal and you don't have cement, you're also you're cutting out wind.
Q: Housing and property taxes are a key issue for many Montanans, what actions if any do you think the legislature should take?
JS: So see, I talked about capping the amounts annually. I believe we should look at what the counties proposed when the special session was requested back, I think it was in January, and they were talking about that equalization, and they were also talking about decreasing the amount of mill levies. And it was the majority of counties in Montana, so I felt like, if the majority of counties are looking at that, that should be considered. And of course, as we know, the special session didn't happen, but there were some really good ideas coming out of counties. I think we should continue to support the property tax programs for the disabled and those with low fixed incomes. The other thing is, what I've been reading about recently is they're calling it homestead, and that means a person's primary residence has a lower tax rate than maybe a vacation home or a second home. And I think that's a great idea.
Q: This fall Montanans will be voting on access to abortion. What do you think the legislature’s role regarding abortion should be following that vote?
JS: Well, the role of the legislature following an approved constitutional initiative is not to determine the date. So the Montana Constitution, Article 14, Section Nine, states that if a constitutional initiative is passed, if it doesn't have a date, the effective date is the next July 1. So if you look at CI 128, it doesn't have a date, so its date will be July 1 of next year. So that is not something the legislature would do. The other piece that the legislature should do is go to the code and ensure that the code for example, the code for let's see, I 50 dash, 2108 the code that involves abortion. They need to look at that and ensure that it aligns with the constitutional initiative. An example in there would be in the code, it says viability is 20 plus weeks. The constitutional initiative says viability equals what a medical professional would determine it doesn't give a period of time. The third thing that the legislature does with the constitutional initiative is to write the laws when they are given the leeway. So leeway, I couldn't find any leeway within CI 128 but CI 126 does. And in CI 126 it says it pertains to certain elections, or elections determined by law, so that our elections determined by law, maybe school elections or county elections, then they could write the law.
Q: Another issue impacting Montana families is childcare, are there actions you think the legislature could take to address the issue?
Yes, I do. And in fact, one setback we just had recently where the child care resource centers were replaced with an out-of-state company that, I mean, it was, I heard a lot of people testify that they really wanted to keep the child care resource centers they had because the childcare providers need help as much as the parents do. Best Beginnings was passed last session. If parents can't afford to bring their children to childcare then they can't afford to work, and so I think we need to allow parents to work and continue to look at maybe an annual inflationary increase to that subsidy.
Q: Is there anything else you want to say that we haven't covered so far, or that you think voters should know?
JS: I think you got most of my things. Is it okay that I'm looking here? Okay, okay, we talked about energy production and Medicaid expansion. Well, could I expand a little bit on Medicaid expansion or Medicaid policy changes for the elderly and disabled? So if there is a cost of living increase, that's I think, really paramount, but I also need to look at the traveling nurse situation. So traveling nurses are much more expensive, and I think there may need to be some rules where a traveling nurse company from out of state can't come in and hire the existing nurses that are within the state. And I don't blame the nurses, because they make a lot more money that way, but those traveling nurse companies make a lot of money. So I think, I think it just needs to be examined. How it's working. Look at other states, what are they doing, and implement processes and policies that will improve the timeliness. Because one of the problems right now is that there's a several-month wait before somebody is determined eligible for for Medicaid. So if my mom is living at home and needs some help, and we can't get help for several months, she could have a fall and end up in a nursing home or a rehab center, whereas, if we could use what is called presumptive eligibility for home and community-based services, she would have had services right away, and would maybe prevent that going to a more restrictive, more expensive type of facility.
