State Senator – the office of state senator serves in the Montana legislature’s upper house. There are 50 senators who are elected from districts made up of two House districts. Senators are elected to 4-year terms which are staggered so that half are elected every two years. Senators propose and vote on proposed laws during the legislative sessions that meet for 90 days in odd-numbered years, and provide oversight of state agencies and study issues through interim committees that meet between sessions. Senators are limited to two consecutive 4-year terms.
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I was born in the early 60’s into a large Lutheran Navy family in Virginia and am 63.
My parents moved to Colorado, where I lived for 54 years and I worked in semiconductor manufacturing and sales starting with Texas Instruments in 1981. Over my career, have consulted to food, finance, military, high tech, bio technological pharmaceutical and petrochemical manufacturers. I moved to Montana in 2017 to work with Applied Materials.
I hold a Master’s Degree from Regis University, in Denver, in Business Operations and Project Management and I hold a Professional Project Manager, PMP certification.
I look forward to serving Montana.
We need to address worker wages in light of record corporate profits. Address the issue of affordability and availability of housing for working and Montanans on fixed incomes.
Protecting the future by ensuring we protect and pass on a stable climate system, as well as safeguarding and improving public education.
Defend the Right to Privacy as written in the Constitution which supports a woman's right to maintain a choice when related to her reproductive rights.
We need to balance the current ultra conservative super-majority in the state legislature and ensure we protect all types of human diversity and do not allow overstepping our honored system of human rights and freedom and insure checks and balances support this.
The current majority of ultra conservative legislators have failed to maintain equalization between Corporate and Residential property taxes. Tax revenue generated by Residential Taxes increased by over $250 million last year and Corporate taxes declined by over $75 million. Working as your State Senator, I commit to working to support an adjustment to our property tax formula.
The Governor could have easily done what his predecessors have done and adjusted the rate, but chose to implement a rebate program and a task for at additional cost to taxpayers
Affordable public health insurance for all US Citizens needs to be in place that will cover mental health. I fully support this ongoing initiative and the closer we get to 100% coverage, critical mental and physical healthcare services become more easily available. With the current conservative majority in local and federal legislation this will continue to not exist, as private health insurance is really quite profitable and deeply entrenched.
We must stay up to date by addressing funding needs. In 2025, Medicaid Expansion is up for reauthorization. A very high percentage of participants are low wage working Montanan's whose access to mental health care is dependent on this program.
The current per student funding formulas will need to be reviewed and addressed to see if that can be raised per/student. Next we need to look at an overall boost to our teacher’s starting salaries and the salaries over the life of their careers. We need to be able to recruit the best and brightest teachers, and ranking 51st in the US in teacher salaries is not allowing for that.
At a minimum, Montana should be willing to provide budget authority to districts to increase, with the next budget approval period, a minimum increase of 5%/year and provide additional state funding for the Guaranteed Tax Base supporting schools and education.
