Last week, Montana Free Press wrote about a feud between the Northern Cheyenne Tribal Council and its president. This week, the conflict intensified. 

Let me provide some context. Northern Cheyenne Tribal President Gene Small, who campaigned in 2024 on transparency and accountability, initiated an audit into the council’s use of federal COVID-19 relief funds. While some council members opposed the audit, the body ultimately approved it. Amid growing public frustration with the council, a group of traditional chiefs last week voted to dissolve the governing body “due to extensive theft, misuse of monetary sources and misconduct.” 

The chiefs’ declaration notably excluded two council members — Torrey Davie, who represents the Busby district, and Theresa Small, who represents Lame Deer. Throughout the conflict, Davie and Small have sided with the president. Responding to the chiefs’ declaration, the remaining eight council members issued a statement saying that when the tribe adopted its Constitution in 1935, “our Chiefs gave up their governing authority.” 

The body continued to hold meetings despite the chiefs’ declaration and ultimately voted to remove Small, alleging he had violated the tribal Constitution. The Bureau of Indian Affairs, the federal agency that oversees tribes, late last week issued a statement saying the entity recognized the council members and president, essentially disregarding both the council’s vote to remove the president and the chief’s vote to dissolve the council. 

This week, however, in a Sept. 17 letter to the council and tribe, the BIA withdrew its previous statements. 

“The authority and makeup of the tribal council are currently the subject of an intra-tribal dispute, and it is the tribe’s right and responsibility as a sovereign ‘to determine for [itself] the manner and means of resolving such disputes,’” BIA Superintendent of Northern Cheyenne Agency Andrew Werk, Jr., wrote. 

On Sept. 18, Small held a swearing-in ceremony for a group of eight people he said the chiefs had selected to serve on the tribal council. The meeting, which occurred in the tribal chambers, was open to the public and streamed on YouTube.

“This council here isn’t going to pass resolutions, isn’t going to pass ordinances,” Small said during the meeting. “The main purpose of this council here is to get a new election moving.”

In a Sept. 18 statement to MTFP, however, the eight council members who voted to remove Small said, “We are still the governing body of the Northern Cheyenne Tribe.”

Tribal leadership shake-ups can be disruptive for community members. Tribal governments manage millions of federal dollars, run dozens of programs that serve citizens and employ hundreds of people. 

As of Friday at 2 p.m., it remained unclear which entity — the president and traditional leaders or the original tribal council members — would have the final say.

A botched effort by the FBI to dispose of methamphetamine by burning it in an incinerator at the Yellowstone Valley Animal Shelter in Billings forced the hospitalization of 14 staff members and the relocation of 75 animals last week, drawing headlines from local, national and global publications.

According to the Associated Press, the incinerator is usually used to dispose of euthanized animals or carcasses collected by the city of Billings’ animal control division, which shares the facility with the shelter. However, the AP reported that the FBI and local law enforcement have also routinely used it to destroy narcotics.

On Sept. 10, however, one of those drug burns misfired, filling the facility with a cloud of smoke as 2 pounds of methamphetamine were burned due to what city officials described as a negative pressure issue. They said a backup fan intended to help remove smoke from the building if necessary wasn’t readily available.

Shelter director Triniti Halverson, who said she had been unaware of the drug burns, told the AP that the smoke gave her an intense headache and sore throat, and left other staff members dizzy, sweating and coughing. Several staff members ended up spending several hours in hospital oxygen chambers. 

An FBI spokesperson told the AP that the agency routinely uses non-agency facilities to conduct controlled drug evidence burns.

The AP reported that the shelter will remain closed until it can be tested for contamination. MTN News reported that a remediation company that typically works with meth-contaminated houses had been hired to assess and clean the facility.

In a statement on the shelter’s website, Halverson said the shelter has previously had issues with smoke from the incinerator, reporting it frequently enough that the city tried to make repairs in 2024. She also said the animals that were in the building last week were bathed and, where possible, relocated to foster homes.

The shelter, which has posted repeatedly about the incident on its Facebook page, has also cautioned that the situation seems to be bringing “scammers out of the woodwork” to request donations on the mobile payment app Venmo. It asks people who want to contribute following the incident to instead do so through its website.

Two-and-a-half years after NorthWestern Energy announced plans to increase its share of Montana’s largest power plant, Montana’s biggest utility has released more information about the operation and maintenance costs that will accompany the acquisition.

NorthWestern wrote in an Aug. 29 filing that assuming Washington-based utility Avista’s share of the 40-year-old coal-fired power plant in Colstrip will cost the company about $18 million in operation and maintenance expenses annually. Avista must pull out of the plant by the end of this year to comply with climate laws Washington legislators passed in 2019.

In 2023, NorthWestern told energy industry professionals and policymakers that the larger ownership share would help the company in a “critical” endeavor: ensuring that Colstrip, which is currently jointly owned by six utilities, remains open to protect “sufficient, adequate power in Montana.” The utility also said the “purchase price is zero” for the acquisition and pledged that rates “will not go up” for its approximately 410,0000 electricity customers as a result of the transaction.

But in its filing before the Montana Public Service Commission, NorthWestern described the operation and maintenance costs as creating a “significant financial obligation for NorthWestern.”

To meet that obligation, the state’s largest utility is pitching its elected regulators on a novel accounting structure, one that deviates from the established framework dictating how power purchases from — and sales to — other companies are handled. NorthWestern’s proposal is predicated on contracts for approximately 58 megawatts of power the utility has signed with Big Horn County Electric Cooperative and Energy Keepers, the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes-owned company that operates a hydroelectric dam on Flathead Lake.

NorthWestern is asking its regulators to funnel the full Colstrip-enabled electricity sales outlined in those contracts back to the company. This is a departure from the traditional accounting framework whereby power sales to other utilities are treated as a type of “credit” that lowers ratepayers’ bills.

In exchange for pulling those bill credits from its customers, NorthWestern said it will use the aforementioned contracts to cover the estimated $18 million operation and maintenance costs for the increased ownership share and the fuel — coal — costs necessary to meet the contract terms.

If the power sales outlined in NorthWestern’s contracts with Energy Keepers and the Big Horn Co-op generate less than $18 million, NorthWestern said the company, not its customers, will cover the shortfall.

In its filing, NorthWestern described the proposal as a “fair and equitable” solution for its customers, who it said will benefit from some of the additional generation capacity made possible by the Colstrip share expansion. It also pointed out that it will temporarily circumvent the need for “an immediate filing of a general rate review,” the multi-year process where regulators review a utility’s books and ensure its rates are “just and reasonable.” 

Montana Free Press asked NorthWestern if it is pursuing a similar arrangement for the Colstrip shares that Puget Sound Energy, another Washington utility, is transferring to the company. A spokesperson for NorthWestern, which is courting several power-hungry data centers that will double its electricity demand, wrote in an email to MTFP that it is pursuing similar contracts for some of the 370 megawatts of power Puget Sound is transferring over, also on Jan. 1. It did not provide information on the financial terms of its agreements with the Big Horn Co-op or Energy Keepers.

PSC Executive Director Alana Lake wrote in an email to MTFP that the commission is currently considering NorthWestern’s request and “will issue its decision once the evidentiary record is complete.” Lake also noted that the PSC is wading into the utility’s ability to meet current and forecasted demand with available generation sources.

The number of employees the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services estimates it will need to hire to handle the new work requirement standards for Medicaid enrollees passed by congressional Republican lawmakers earlier this year. 

The figure was shared Sept. 16 by health department officials presenting to state lawmakers during a standard interim budget committee meeting. The agency did not estimate how much hiring additional employees or contractors would cost, but acknowledged that they would need to seek the funds from the Legislature.