Robert Pancratz couldn’t believe it.
The Musselshell County commissioner had been defeated in the Republican primary for his seat by a two-to-one margin earlier this month. Mark Olson, who lives in Musselshell and serves as the undersheriff in Golden Valley County, won by 26 percentage points.
“That just blew me away,” Pancratz said. “All of my campaign, I had not a hint that there was that much opposition.”
At stake, from Pancratz’s perspective, is the fiscal future of his community, which includes Roundup, Montana, home to Montana’s only longwall coal mine. The mine, owned and operated by Signal Peak Energy, sits on the eastern side of the continental divide in a staunchly conservative part of the state, where its presence provides jobs and its profits generate taxable revenue for local governments. (The vast majority of its coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel, goes to markets in Asia.)
But that revenue could potentially be diminished by tens of millions, according to calculations by Pancratz, if a bill introduced by U.S. Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., passes Congress. The Crow Revenue Act would convey federally held coal to Signal Peak through a land transfer to a private intermediary, depriving Musselshell County of its share of the taxes Signal Peak Energy pays to mine coal on federal land.
