- [Hannah] Coming up on "Impact."

We talk with two of the few Montana candidates who won in places where their parties normally don't.

- The truth is, it takes a lot of hard work.

These things don't just happen.

- [Hannah] Plus, we take a look at Montana's film industry and the role a tax incentive will have in its future.

- [Speaker] If we do not pass the tax incentive, we're done.

- [Hannah] Those stories, next on "Impact."

- [Announcer] Production of "Impact" is made possible with support from the Greater Montana Foundation, encouraging communication on issues, trends, and values of importance to Montanans and viewers like you who are friends of Montana PBS.

Thank you.

- Welcome to "Impact."

I'm Hannah Kearse.

This November Montanans decisively put Republicans back in charge of state government.

Democrats gained some seats in the House and Senate, something that was widely predicted after new district boundary lines took effect.

In nearly all the legislative races, the winning party was predicted far in advance with few examples of candidates prevailing against the partisan headwinds.

Montana PBS's Stan Parker introduces us to two candidates who won in places their respective parties rarely do.

- What a great night to be a Republican in America.

But what a great night to be a Republican in Montana.

Thank you all.

- [Stan] Montana Republicans had a lot to celebrate on election night.

At a shindig in Bozeman, cheers abounded as news of GOP control of DC and Helena rolled in.

If there's a silver lining for Democrats, it's that they did gain several seats in the state legislature.

That was expected after new district boundaries, those based on the 2020 census, took effect.

But small victories are still victories, with each lawmaker in the far-flung districts of the state celebrating in their own personal ways.

- My daughter and my daughter-in-law got me this for, it was sitting here as a present from them after I won the election on Tuesday night, I came home, and this in a card was sitting there.

I told her I'm gonna put that on my desk on the floor of the House.

So I have it there for now.

- [Stan] Democrat Paul Tuss is what political junkies refer to as an overperformer.

As the electorate grows more partisan, it also gets more predictable.

Red districts mainly go red.

Blue districts mainly go blue.

Not so for Paul Tuss.

He won reelection to a second term in his Havre House district even though Donald Trump carried his district by a 20 point margin.

- I only got a yard sign in here.

Me too.

Take that out.

I moved to Havre 24 years ago last week.

This goes with all the other yard signs in the back of my truck here.

And I came here for my job.

It's the job that I continue to have here at Bear Paw Development Corporation as executive director.

When I came here, I had originally thought that I'd be here for three or four or five years and here I am, a quarter of a century later.

I live in the same house in the same neighborhood that I moved into in 2000.

I have the same job that I had in 2000 and I couldn't be happier.

- [Stan] On the other side of the aisle, the biggest Republican overperformer was someone who also has deep ties to his community.

Gayle Lammers of Harden.

- I didn't realize that these races were so predictable and that ours was kind of a surprise until this week when everybody's like, "Well, how'd you pull it off?"

Well, you know, I just know people trust me down here.

You know, I just went out and talked to everybody.

So I don't know.

- [Stan] Lammers won a state senate seat that stretches from South Billings to Ashland, including the northern Cheyenne and Crow Indian reservations.

Usually a reliable base for Democrats.

- A really great gal who's helped me throughout my campaign when I was running all over Crow country.

She made this for me and it's just a really beautiful belt and I'm gonna wear it in the state senate when I get up there and it's gonna remind me of home.

And every time I make a decision up there, I'm gonna be thinking of the folks down here in Crow country.

- [Stan] This is Lammer's first campaign, although he did get a taste of Helena when he was appointed to a vacant house seat by Governor Gianforte.

He's mostly known for the business his family has owned for more than a century, Lammer's Trading Post.

- Comes from Canada.

Good stuff.

I'm the fifth generation.

My son, I plan on getting him in there.

He's only two.

His name's George and it's kind of funny.

His name's George Gayle Lammers.

My name's Gayle George.

My dad's name's George Gayle.

His dad's name was Gayle George.

So it kind of goes like that.

It's kind of a funny thing.

I landed on Gayle, you know, I don't know how great that is, but I love it.

It's a family name.

Everybody says "Gayle, huh, interesting."

Like, yeah, it's a family name.

But anyway.

- [Stan] Lammers and Tuss are the only two members of a very exclusive club.

They're not the only overperformers, but they are the only ones to win seats where the metrics said they shouldn't have even stood a chance.

- We essentially know for roughly 90% of races, who's gonna win them and who's gonna lose them based on the party label that they put next to their name.

- [Stan] Kendra Miller has an encyclopedic knowledge of the legislative districts and the partisan odds of each because she helped draw the map.

She was a Democratic pick to sit on the Districting and Apportionment Commission, a panel reconstituted every 10 years to redraw the map after a new census.

- Every 10 years we get new figures for where Montanans live and where people across the country live.

And then it's the job of the Districting and Apportionment Commission to adjust boundary lines to deal for those population changes.

So at the end of the day, it's about equal representation.

- [Stan] The commission has five members.

Two picked by Democrats, two by Republicans, and a chair selected by either the other commissioners or the state supreme court if they can't agree.

That was the case this go around.

- We have a much more public process than most states.

In a lot of states, maps get drawn behind closed doors and they get rolled out on the floor and voted on within a couple of hours.

Like that's not an abnormal process in other states.

And we had, you know, dozens and dozens of public hearings.

We drove all over the state to listen to people.

We took public comment, you know, stacks and stacks of public comment that we'd all be reading through before the meeting.

So we have a really public process.

- [Stan] Miller had a fair bit of disagreement with her Republican co-commissioners, including on the final map.

The chair ended up casting a tie breaking vote in favor of the Democrats' proposal.

Republican commissioner Jeff Esman believes the final map diluted the voices of rural voters by lumping them in with urban districts.

- You know, if you draw logical communities of interest, then you'll have urban districts, you would have suburban districts, you won't have a district like 57 that's downtown Bozeman and Rural Park County.

Does not meet the definition of a community of interest.

- [Stan] Simply put, the Republicans thought you should draw a map based solely on the constituents of each individual district.

The Democrats thought you should run the numbers to see if the map you drew broadly matches voter support for each party.

- Our legislature should look like the state as a whole.

So what I wanted to make sure was that it was never the map itself that was undermining the will of Montana voters.

- [Stan] The commission also openly considered how competitive it considered each district to be.

The metric they settled on was to take a sample of 10 races over the three most recent elections and see how often voters in each proposed district pulled the lever for the same party.

It turns out it was a great predictor of how Montanans would go on to vote in 2024.

- It ultimately predicted 122 out of 125 seats.

So 98% of the districts, we knew more than two years before the election last week, who was gonna win them based on party label.

And so that really stood out to me, that man are we divided and polarized.

- [Stan] One thing Essmann and Miller do agree on, even though they approach the issue differently.

is that a lack of competition is no good for Montana voters.

- If you've got 135 out of 150 seats in the safe category, that to me means it's gonna inexorably lead to less campaigning on the part of the candidates.

And I think that's a problem.

It's good to listen to your voters, especially those that don't agree with you, because you end up representing all those people whether they voted for you or not.

And most, you know, 80, 90% of the bills the legislature deals with are not particularly partisan.

And I hope that these safe districts won't, you know, won't really degrade the effort that the candidates make when they run for office.

And that's my biggest long term concern.

- Good morning.

- Hey, good morning.

How are you?

- Here, lemme get those in.

- I got some presents for you.

- Thanks.

Thanks.

- [Paul] I have friends of mine that have come to Havre to visit me.

And whether we're going into a coffee shop or a restaurant or a bar or the hardware store, they tease me about being an old fashioned politician where it just so happens that I know a lot of people.

- [Stan] How would you define old school politician?

- You know, it's, I think you define that as somebody that is very involved in the retail politics of their community, right?

That is very visible in the community and pops into the barbershop to say hello, or pops into the hardware store to buy a bolt for a project that you're working on at home and you end up talking for 25 minutes to somebody about something completely different than the project that you're working on.

Being present.

Being present in the community, not just during campaigns but literally, every day.

And I think that's what I've done fairly successfully in this community.

- [Stan] The data may be powerful, but so is relationship.

- We have so much data available to us now.

So from that standpoint, I think we know too much about our voters.

You know, I think it was better when you had to go out and learn about your voters by knocking on their door, looking 'em in the eye and asking them what they thought about an issue.

I did that and frankly it was part of the legislative job I like best, is talking to people.

I hope that good legislators in the future will continue to engage in that effort.

'Cause I think it'll make 'em better legislators and their voters are gonna be happier with the results they get.

- Do you know what?

They sent us up to Helena for orientation pretty quick and we were up there and I've been up there learning a little bit and...

I've looked at some of the data and I've talked with some of these data guys, you know, they send you stuff, they say, "Hey, you know, this looks like this, this and that.

But I don't know, I just, you kind of get more of a feeling when you get out there with people and you go talk to 'em all.

You're still rocking them cowboys, ain't ya?

Good to see you brother.

And you kind of know, like I kind of knew I had a really good chance, just because of the amazing amount of positive energy that you know, from going around to all the districts and talking with everybody.

But I can see like where the data driven thing, you know is a big factor, but there's a lot of hope out there to break the mold.

- [Stan] Tuss and Lammers show the secret to breaking the mold is really no secret at all.

Just old fashioned politicking and being a consistent, active presence in the community over decades or even generations.

It's hard to capture that in a spreadsheet.

And no wonder the metrics failed to predict their success.

For "Impact," I'm Stan Parker.

- The lawmakers of the 2025 session met in Helena the week after the election to select their leadership.

Republicans chose Matt Regier of Kalispell as Senate president, and Brandon Ler of Savage as Speaker of the House.

Democrats chose Pat Flowers of Belgrade as Senate minority leader and Katie Sullivan of Missoula as House minority leader.

The future of Montana's film industry is at a crossroads again.

And while the state has seen its fair share of productions come and go, filmmakers see an opportunity to keep growing the workforce.

Montana PBS's Sam Wilson peeks inside the film business in the state and the finances that keep it going.

- [Sam] Nestled among the rolling hills of the Paradise Valley lies a quintessential western town complete with a church overlooking Main Street and hired hands filing in and out of a saloon.

(wheels rattling) But these hands are crew members working on a film called "The Wolf and the Lamb," and they're preparing for the project's last day of shooting.

Though it appears to be from the late 1800s, the Yellowstone Film Ranch was built from scratch in 2020 in response to a film tax credit that had just been passed by the Montana legislature.

Proponents of the tax credit say it's a boon to the state's economy.

- These productions are giving us money, they're putting people to work, they have to spend a certain amount to get a refund.

- [Sam] Critics ask who is really benefiting from the deal.

- To me, there are a lot more reasons for an industry to come to Montana than to get tax credits.

And I felt like this industry above all others probably doesn't need our charity.

- [Sam] The number of productions in the state has gone up.

The Film Ranch alone has hosted 11 feature films in its four year career.

Several of those were produced by Bozeman based Jeri Rafter.

- In Montana, most of the movies that are made here are very different from large studio films or even from the TV series "Yellowstone."

The main, the center of the ecosystem here in Montana with feature films is for much smaller films, but we do a lot of them, which means people have more consistent work.

We are just kind of laying the groundwork for full-time jobs, basically.

(chair scraping) - Montana's been a creative destination for a long time.

In 1897, Thomas Edison was testing out his new cameras and new film stocks and sent film crews around the world basically to film.

And we have documented that the first film footage that we know of in Montana was filmed in Livingston, Montana.

We also know that he filmed in Helena and that footage survives today.

- [Sam] The technology of filmmaking these days would be unrecognizable to Edison, but one tool stands out in the way it has shaped the industry.

Tax credits.

First introduced by Canada in the late 1970s as a way to lure productions north, it is now rare for a country or state not to offer some kind of incentive for films.

- Films are very expensive to make.

They're a cost operation.

They actually plan the project, you make the project, you put the project into the market, and then way like over here, you might see some returns.

So the returns can be a long ways away.

So rebates, tax credits, incentives of the kind that happen all around the world are a financial tool for filmmakers.

And those can be a cash rebate, those can be a tax credit rebate, those can be a tax credit.

And here in Montana we have an income tax transferable credit for filmmakers and that's called the Media Act.

- [Sam] The Montana Media Act works like this.

Before shooting on a project begins, the Montana Film Office certifies that a production plans to spend at least $350,000 in the state.

After the project is wrapped, they send their receipts to be audited by the Department of Revenue, which awards a tax credit that can range from 20 to 35% of qualified spending.

Because most film companies do not have a tax liability in Montana, they can transfer or sell their tax credit at a discount of no more than 15% to an entity in the state that does have a tax liability.

At the end of the day, the film production receives cash, a Montana business or individual receives a discount on their taxes, and the state sees less money go into the general fund.

There are different ways to look at the value of these tax incentives.

According to a study commissioned by the Montana Film Office in 2024, Montana misses out on about $900,000 a year in tax income due to the Media Act.

But that's before considering other less tangible benefits.

The same study reports $334 million in direct spending by film productions in the state since 2022.

And when including tourism impacts of film, they tally over a billion dollars of benefits to Montana.

- The way that this particular film tax incentive works does not cost the State of Montana anything.

The money that comes in to fund the films comes from out of state, like 99% of the time, these films are funded by people who do not live here.

So we're automatically getting new money that's coming here to pay Montanans, to pay Montana vendors, to pay Montana hotels.

So that isn't recirculated money, that's new cash that's coming in.

The tax incentive works.

They have to come and spend all of that money first.

They have to come and pay payroll, they have to pay those state income taxes.

I have to pay the business taxes, we have to pay fees to the Montana Film Commission as well as the Department of Revenue in order to even get in line for the tax incentive.

- [Sam] That argument was not enough to convince a majority of legislators in the 2023 session, which rejected three separate bills aimed at extending the credit past 2029 and raising the cap, currently set at $12 million per year.

The bills were supported and opposed on a bipartisan basis and the closest effort lost on a tie vote in the House.

- I appreciate the proponents keeping this bill alive.

It's probably more exercise than I've had in the last two months standing up on this bill.

- Sometimes when you want to pass or kill a bill in this building, all you have to say is something that's completely unprovable and very fantastic, such as these production companies are gonna bring billions of dollars into rural Montana, and they're not.

- We're just giving it away.

We're not even taxing it, we're just giving it away, and as fast as we can, this is an easy no vote.

- [Speaker] Has every member voted?

Does any member- - [Sam] Sherry Essmann was one lawmaker who spoke against the bills.

She boils down her argument like this.

- I generally oppose tax credits, especially those that are given to for-profit organizations because to me that appears that we are picking the winners and the losers, because we're gonna give the movie business a tax credit.

But maybe we're not gonna give the, you know, the dairy company that comes and wants to start a brand new dairy processing center.

Maybe we're not gonna give them a tax credit.

So why not?

You know, every single industry that comes here and says, "Gee, we're gonna bring tons of jobs and we're gonna make this a great labor promoter for Montana.

We want tax credits."

How do we draw the line to say no?

- [Sam] Despite legislative pushback, the tax credit has been very popular for filmmakers.

Once the $12 million of available Media Act credits are claimed in a year, the Department of Revenue begins assigning credits for future years.

At the moment, credits are claimed through most of 2027 and a backlog of qualified productions will likely claim the rest of the credits until the act sunsets in 2029.

Lynn-Wood Fields, president of the Montana Media Coalition, says the passage of an updated bill is existential.

- The minute we didn't pass that in 2023, I had multiple productions call me and say, "Lynn, I'm sorry, we're gonna go to Georgia."

Like we will not have an industry here.

And I cannot be more clear about that.

So when I hear legislators saying, "Oh, it's beautiful here," it's beautiful in a lot of places, like they're going to New Zealand, they're going to Canada, it's, we have become desirable.

If we do not pass the tax incentive, we're done.

- Right now, people are depending on some movie maker, whether it's independent, whether it's a major movie studio, whether it's TV, whatever.

They're sitting and waiting for those jobs to come here.

There's nothing permanent about it as far as I can see.

Yes, I know there's been a lot of productions here.

I haven't seen any of them, I've watched one episode of "Yellowstone," I'm proud to say.

I was at the capitol one day for meetings when they were filming in the capitol.

They disrupted our entire day's work for one person to walk down those big beautiful stairs.

You know, that, I don't know how many people were employed that day, but certainly it couldn't have paid very many bills for any Montanans.

- The amendments we're putting into the bill really protects Montanans moving forward, we have 60% reserve for Montana productions.

And so when people have criticism of "Yellowstone," I don't necessarily disagree.

I think that I would like to see more productions that hire more local Montanans.

And I noticed when we passed that incentive in 2019, productions and crew didn't really know how to connect to each other.

So I created the Media Training Center and we have a production assistant, which is an entry level position on a film set.

And we do rapid training, so 10 hours or less to get people ready and then we connect them to productions.

- All right, number seven.

What are some of the things that a production assistant will do on a set?

- [Sam] Joseph Grady is an instructor for Fields's Media Training Center.

He sees the program as a way to help more Montanans benefit from the Media Act.

- The goal of teaching production assistants in this way is to give them good footing on a first day of work.

We want to be the ones earning the keep, so to speak, as opposed to outsourcing it to people coming into the state.

And that really is the benefit of this PA course, is building that in the dirt sort of workforce here locally.

And that really is what this film industry provides.

It provides everyone who participates a chance to be part of the storytelling, a chance to be part of that hard work where they can look at the end of the day and say, "I participated in that.

I helped create and make that story.

And I worked hard to do so and I earned my living."

- [Sam] Back at the Film Ranch, work bleeds into the night.

Jerry Rafter says that of the 80 full-time positions she employed for 21 days of the production, 92% were from Montana.

Having so many Montanans on set is still uncommon, but Rafter and others are hoping that with a growing talent pool, more productions can look like this in the future.

- "The Wolf and the Lamb" is a perfect film for Montana.

It's an independently made film.

It cost under $5 million to make.

They spent almost all of their money in Montana and we had a great time making it.

- Cut.

- That's a cut.

- [Sam] For "Impact," I'm Sam Wilson.

- Authors of an updated bill say that lawmakers can expect to see legislation come across their desks in the upcoming session, asking to raise the cap of the Media Act to $30 million and extend the credit to 2035.

That bill will be carried by Republican Senator Greg Hertz.

That's all for this episode of "Impact."

I'm Hannah Kearse, and from all of us at Montana, PBS, thanks for watching.

(calm music) (calm music continues) (calm music continues) - [Announcer] Production of "Impact" is made possible with support from the Greater Montana Foundation, encouraging communication on issues, trends, and values of importance to Montanans, and viewers like you who are friends of Montana PBS.

Thank you.

(bright music)