Trego's Mountain Ear

I was reading an article that described several reasons why the government doesn’t work.  It was a generalized article, and as I thought of the additional challenges our three county commissioners have – beginning with the geographic challenges – I realized that it was time to develop a few articles that explain the challenges to good government that our county faces.

It isn’t that we have bad county commissioners – as I was retiring from SDSU and moving back home, Lincoln County had one of those rare elections for commissioner . . . one with two good candidates, Mike Cole and Steve Curtiss.  Mike won – but whichever way the vote had gone, the county would have had a good commissioner.  After a single term, Mike Cole lost his bid for reelection to Josh Lecher.  This year, after a single term, Josh lost the primary to Noel Durum.   And whether he does a good job or a poor one, Noel is unlikely to win reelection at the end of his first term.

To understand why Lincoln County’s government doesn’t work well requires a bit of study.  I’m going to start in 1909, when Lincoln County was carved out of Flathead.  Things started with a good, logical base.  The problem in function came 60 years later, with a change in geography.

Lincoln County was created to duplicate the Kootenai’s drainage – and along with that, the county was connected by the railroad.  In 1909, the county towns (excepting Yaak and Sylvanite) were connected by the railroad.  A slow train, stopping at each station, connected what had been isolated communities.  It wasn’t a bad idea.

Sixty years later, the gates at Libby Dam closed, and Ural, Warland, Rexford and Gateway were flooded.  The railroad was relocated to a spot where it runs through Stryker, Libby and Troy, stopping only at Libby.  Still, the railroad served as central to the county for a short time – but the link was the ranches and towns along the Kootenai.  When Libby Dam was complete and Koocanusa filled, the commercial link between north county and south county was severed.  J. Neils had linked lumber workers from Libby through Rexford for 60 years – but the Dam ended the railroad, the social linkages and the commercial timber connections.

For the past half-century, Lincoln County has been disconnected, with a nearly unpopulated area that exists from Jennings Rapids to the mouth of Pinkham Creek – connected by the lonely highway 37.

Next issue – why our elected county government lacks control over our hired bureaucracy.