And They Say I’m Not Ready to Be Governor? Part Two

Roy Brown’s at it again. There are a wide array of skills that Montanans should be able to expect from candidates for governor, from two of which Senator Roy Brown seems to lack: a) reading comprehension and b) a basic understanding of how the state’s budgeting process works.

In today’s papers, he offered an embarrassing critique of the governor:

Brown’s press release erroneously said all the $413 million in new spending proposals were from agencies under the Schweitzer’s control.
In fact, new spending requests from the independent judicial branch and other state elected officials not under Schweitzer’s control made up $235 million or 57 percent of the $413 million total spending requests, Lee Newspapers State Bureau reported Tuesday. The largest request came from state Superintendent of Public Instruction Linda McCulloch for new K-12 school funding.
When Brown was informed of the error in the press release, he said in an interview, “But it’s still an increase.”

But it’s still an increase? That’s the best that Senator Brown can offer after making a false attack against the governor? Are we also to understand that Senator Brown won’t increase any spending? That’s a bold position to take, when  expenses for all kinds of government services are under inflationary pressure. Perhaps Senator Brown is sanguine about the idea of not spending additional proposed funds for a sex offender facility?

Montana deserves political leadership that will rise above cheap, dishonest political tactics. Perhaps Senator Brown might better spend his time looking at the proposed spending increases in detail so that he can offer Montanans something more substantive than this embarrassing attack.

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