President Donald Trump told a campaign-style rally that his third trip to Montana in four months was to punish Sen. Jon Tester for opposing Trump’s choice to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Trump also used the rally at a hangar at Missoula International Airport to praise U.S. Rep. Greg Gianforte for body slamming a reporter. Gianforte, who pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault, is “my kind of guy,” the president said.

A spokesperson for Gianforte released a statement late Thursday responding to the president’s remarks.

“Greg will tell you he regrets what happened, he’s not perfect, he’s taken personal responsibility, this has been widely covered, he’s moved on, and that since Montanans elected him, he’s been delivering results for Montana — a booming economy, safer communities, and a more secure America,” the spokesman said.

Tester, a Democrat, is in a heated re-election battle against Republican state Auditor Matt Rosendale. Trump has made an unprecedented number of trips to the state to campaign for Rosendale and has also sent the vice president and Donald Trump Jr. to stump in Montana.

Trump said he has “a lot of respect” for Rosendale.

“But I’m also here because I can never forget what Jon Tester did to a man that’s of the highest quality,” the president said of Rear Adm. Ronny Jackson, whom Trump had nominated to lead the VA. “That’s really why I’m here.

“What (Tester) did was unfair, what he did was vicious, what he did was … almost, almost, if this is believable, worse” than Democratic criticisms of Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh, Trump said. But the president acknowledged minutes later that Jackson “might not have been qualified” to lead the sprawling department.

Tester is the top Democrat on the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee and a longtime champion of veterans issues in Congress.

In April, Tester brought forward allegations of complaints against Jackson that included drinking on the job and improperly prescribing medication. Jackson eventually withdrew his nomination and is under investigation by the Pentagon.

Trump threatened in the spring to make Tester “pay” for releasing the allegations against Jackson and said in a tweet Wednesday he still holds the Democrat responsible for “vicious and totally false statements.”

Nearly $40 million has been spent on Montana’s Senate race because it’s one of 10 places where a Democrat is seeking re-election in a state Trump won in 2016, here by 20 points.

Trump previously held rallies in Great Falls in July and Billings in September. In those events, Trump talked up Rosendale but barely mentioned Gianforte, who also is on the ballot in November.

But Thursday night, Trump praised Gianforte for assaulting a reporter on the eve of Montana’s 2017 special election that sent the Republican businessman to Congress.

On May 24, 2017, Gianforte body-slammed a reporter for the Guardian who was asking him about his stance on health care at a campaign event in Bozeman. Gianforte pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault and was fined $385, sentenced to anger management and community service. Gianforte also donated $50,000 to the Committee to Protect Journalists and sent a letter of apology to Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs.

The crowd at the hangar laughed loudly as Trump joked about the assault, calling Gianforte “my kind of guy.”

“And by the way, never wrestle with him,” Trump said.

Guardian U.S. editor John Mulholland said Thursday night he was disturbed by the president’s message.

“The President of the United States tonight applauded the assault on an American journalist who works for the Guardian. To celebrate an attack on a journalist who was simply doing his job is an attack on the First Amendment by someone who has taken an oath to defend it,” Mulholland said. “In the aftermath of the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, it runs the risk of inviting other assaults on journalists both here and across the world where they often face far greater threats. We hope decent people will denounce these comments and that the President will see fit to apologize for them.”

Gianforte is running against Democrat Kathleen Williams. Before the rally Thursday, Williams released an ad saying Gianforte’s assault and lies are not Montana values.

“Gianforte has a history of attacking people, whether physically or by undermining their livelihoods. Gianforte does not represent Montana’s values,” the campaign said in a release.

Gianforte appeared briefly on the stage but did not address Trump’s comments. Rosendale told the crowd at the rally that Trump needs Republicans in Washington to support his agenda.

“President Trump and all his policies are on the line, so let’s make history and retire Jon Tester and send President Trump the help he needs,” Rosendale said.

Trump called Tester “super liberal,” which is not supported by the facts.

Tester has voted with Trump more than most Democrats and supported 62 percent of the president’s nominees. He has also bucked his party by supporting the Keystone Pipeline, carrying a bill to unroll some of the banking regulations put in place after the 2008 financial collapse and voting against Obama-era Wall Street and auto bailouts, the only Democratic senator to do so.

While Tester did not support Trump’s tax cut, he said it was because it added $2 trillion to the federal debt. He also opposed the appointments of Associate Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh because of concerns they would allow dark money to dominate politics and weaken privacy rights for Montanans

Trump said he needs Rosendale in Washington to help advance Trump’s agenda of appointing more conservative justices, protecting gun rights and building a wall at the southern U.S. border.

“The Democratic Party has gone so far to the left nobody knows what to do. It has become the radical resistance,” Trump said.

At an event with veterans in Butte earlier in the day, Tester told reporters he wanted the president to spend time in Montana learning about issues that affect the state.

“I’m always glad to welcome the President of the United States to the great state of Montana. You know there’s a veterans’ clinic in Missoula that’s critically understaffed. It would be great if he could go take a peek at that. It’s literally within a stone’s throw of the airport.

“For that matter, he could come here to Butte. It’s not that far from Missoula.”

Republicans nationally have pivoted in recent weeks to painting Democrats as an angry mob, a line Trump continued Thursday in his attack on Tester.

“The Democratic Party has become too extreme to be trusted with power,” Trump said. “If you want to drain the swamp you must defeat the Democrats and you must defeat Sen. Jon Tester … How the hell did you ever elect that guy?”

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Total Wages in Great Falls MSA (Cascade County) grew 11.4% over the 3 years ending 2017Q2, adding $153 million in annual wage earnings. Average weekly wages increased 11.9% over the same period. Moody’s projects personal income growth of 4.6% in 2017, 6.2% in 2018, and 5.0% in 2019. Manufacturing employment has averaged 6.1% annual growth over past 16 quarters. Great Falls ranked 4^th best small city in nation for Prime Workforce by Area Development. Creative Sector jobs in the Great Falls metro area increased 15.3% from 2011-2016.

FCR opened 35,000 square foot, 325+ employee customer service downtown;expects to top 200 workers by yearend.eHealth Care Service Corporation opened 120+ employee BCBS claims processing center. Centene continues to expand its Great Falls claims processing center.

Montana Specialty Mills broke ground on a 20-acre $20 million oil seed food-grade manufacturing plant in partnership with Columbia Grain. Four companies have purchased 110 acres in the new rail-served, shovel-ready, heavy industrial Great Falls AgriTech Park. Helena Chemical opened a 23-acre complex. FedEx Ground opened a 58,000 SF distribution center. Pacific Steel & Recycling purchased 57 acres for expansion. AgriTech Park certified as a BNSF Premier Rail Industrial Park.

West Bank Landing riverfront mixed-use development has started construction on 132-room Marriott Springhill Suites. The $65 million, 14-acre LEED riverfront development will include restaurants, offices and residential condominiums. The Peak Health and Wellness Center started construction of a 15,700 SF upscale fitness center. Great Falls’ first luxury boutique hotel, The Hotel Arvon, opened downtown. Town Pumpplans to start construction this fall on a 90-room dual-branded Sleep Inn & Suites/Main Stay. Hampton Inn just completed a $2 million renovation. Erck Hotels plans to build 101-room Hilton Home 2 hotel and conference center in 2018.

Montana Eggs opened new $9 million egg processing facility. Construction wrapping up on Cargill’s new $4 million canola research and development center. CHS’ nutrition unit expansion and AgFertilizer’s expansion were just completed. Anderson Steel announced expansion plans to add 50 jobs. Pasta Montana installed $6 million production line increasing capacity by 28%. Frieden Nutrition is finishing construction on its new 10,000 SF facility.

ADF Group continues growth at new fabrication plant; tops 210 jobs; expects to grow to 340. The international leader in structural steel fabrication chose Great Falls for its expansion into western North America. ADF has invested $40+ million in 100,000 SF fabrication building and 42,000 SF paint/coating plant on 100-acre complex.

Walmart Supercenter opened in new 26-acre Upper East End Retail Center. Town Pump opened its block-long redevelopment on 10^th Avenue South. Hobby Lobby, Petsmart, City Brew, Big Mouth BBQ, TJ Maxx, Super 1, Sears Hometown, McDonalds, Mattress Firm, KFC/A&W, Sleep Number, Apricot Lane and Teriyaki Madness opened. Ulta Beauty, Panda Express, Auto Zone, Batteries & More, Mountain View Coop, Eagle Beverage new warehouse, and T-Mobile under construction.

Calumet Montana Refining completed construction on $450 million expansion, adding 50+ new jobs. Cypress Creek Renewables is finishing up the 3 MW Black Eagle Solar Farm with over 10,000 solar panels. Loenbro opened new fabrication plant and headquarters on 52 acres; new complex includes 28,000 SF headquarters, 30,000 SF fabrication shop and 7,500 SF machine shop.

Farran Group announced plans to build a 216-unit upscale apartment complex in the west side of the City in 2018. Farran is under construction on a 72-unit addition to its recently opened 216-unit Talus Apartment Homes. GMD Development and NeighborWorks announced the 124-unit Rockcress Commons rental development. The new 38-unit Voyageur Apartments, the 16-unit addition to the Cascade Ridge development, and NeighborWorks’ 12-unit apartment First Avenue Estates opened. HUD fair market rents for Great Falls increased 16.5% over the last 3 years for two-bedroom units; 36.5% for four-bedroom units.

Great Falls Clinic opened new 19-bed, 60,000 SF hospital. Elkin Family Dentistry, DaVita Dialysis and Fresenius Dialysis Center opened facilities. Benefis Health System started construction on $12.5 million emergency department expansion.

Voters approved $98.8 million in bonds to improve Great Falls Public Schools facilities. Work is starting on improvements to all of its schools. City recently secured 1906 Missouri River industrial water rights of 6,335 acre feet at a flow rate of 6.0 cubic feet per second. City’s fire insurance rating improved from 4 to 2. Construction underway on $28 million upgrade of City’s water treatment plant.

GTF airport passenger traffic increased 24% over past 6 years; completes construction on $13 million crosswinds runway project. United started new seasonal direct flights to Chicago. Glacier National Park continues to set visitation records. First Peoples Buffalo Jump named National Historic Landmark.

Providence St. Joseph health announced plans to grow University of Providence – Great Falls into major distance learning center; continues to expand its health care programs. Great Falls College MSU created new welding, fabrication, industrial technology, health, and computer programming and coding programs.

The $8.6 million Cameron Family Center opened downtown. Hi-Line Climbing Center, Fire Artisan Pizza, Klover, Cory Block bakery, Wines by Wednesday event center, Al Banco, Zero Escape Room and two new office buildings opened. Downtown streetscape improvements completed. Dunn-Brown building renovation and Lithia Motors under construction. Play N Learn Academy announces new 120-child center.

NAHB ranks Great Falls as 19^th best housing market in country. Great Falls named one of the Top 25 Best places in U.S. to retire by Forbes. New housing subdivisions include the 155-acre Thaniel Subdivision with 88 homes in phase 1 and the West Ridge Subdivision with 171 new homes. NeighborWorks Great Falls announces Beargrass Village 14-home pocket neighborhood.

US Air Force adding 216 positions at Malmstrom AFB; Montana Air National Guard adding facilities. Hangars have been completed at the Montana National Air Guard base at Great Falls International Airport to house the unit’s new C-130 mission. USAF announced that the 819^th Red Horse Squadron will remain and grow at MAFB.

Contact Jolene Schalper, 1-406-750-4481 or [email protected] or Brett Doney, 1-406-750-2119 or [email protected]

At the Great Falls Development Authority

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HELENA (AP) — Montana’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate held steady at 4.3 percent in September while the national rate moved up a tenth of a percentage point to 5 percent.

Labor Commissioner Pam Bucy says Montana’s rate falls in the ideal range that provides a balance between good job opportunities and increasing wages for workers while businesses are still able to find the employees they need.

Just over 22,000 Montana residents were unemployed in September.

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Costco is looking to build a new 154,000-square-foot wholesale superstore on West Broadway, west of Reserve Street, and wants the city to annex the land into city limits. The project is expected to generate 10,482 weekday trips from customers, as the site will also have a gas service station with 24 pumps. The property, which is on the south side of West Broadway about 4,500 feet west of North Reserve, is vacant. The new design, which would include a store about 30,000 square feet larger than the present Costco, would include a massive parking lot. Under the terms of a development agreement with the city, Costco would be required to construct a portion of Mary Jane Boulevard from West Broadway to Camden Street to accommodate additional traffic, including bike lanes and five-foot sidewalks. A new traffic signal at Mary Jane Boulevard and West Broadway also would have to be built. Drew Larson with the city’s Development Services staff said the new roadway would provide “additional egress and ingress” for the additional traffic, some of which would be routed through the Pleasant View Homes subdivision. There are several different options on the table for how the streets around the new development would be constructed to accommodate traffic. Several City Council members expressed concerns for the way traffic would increase in the area. “I don’t want that neighborhood to be inundated with traffic,” said council member Julie Armstrong. “I would request that we have multiple meetings with neighborhood councils to see what they want, because there are so many kids in this neighborhood and bringing more traffic into that would be a nightmare for those families.” David Rogers, a representative with Costco Wholesale, traveled from Washington state to make the request for annexation to the City Council’s Land Use and Planning Committee on Wednesday. He said Costco has been looking for a number of years to relocate its existing warehouse on Reserve to a site that would allow the company to build a Costco “with all the bells and whistles that Missoula deserves.” Rogers did address the fact that there have been rumors that Costco had been looking at other sites in Missoula. “Though I won’t go into where that site is, we had been looking at another site in the city and it was a parcel assemblage and we were not able to come to terms with one of the property owners, which caused us to come back to the site we’re looking at today,” he said. Rogers brought a traffic engineer with him who provided the committee with background on the traffic impact work that has been done to date and how it plays into the annexation element that’s related to the construction of Mary Jane boulevard. He said the company has developed a transportation impact study, which has been submitted to the Montana Department of Transportation, which then accepted it as long as the new traffic signal is constructed. Committee member Michelle Cares wanted to know if a roundabout was a possibility rather than a signal, and the traffic engineer responded that an evaluation showed that the signal was the recommended option because there are already two other signals to the east and another one to the west. Also, the size of the roundabout would have to be large in that area, and there would have been right-of-way issues. Officials from Costco did not say what would happen to the old Costco or whether it would remain open, but they termed the project a “relocation.” The City Council will hold a public hearing on the matter on Monday, Nov. 14.

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Economic Index — a measure of one’s satisfaction, freedom, and progress with respect to finances, job, home ownership and health care.

Well-Being Index — a measure of the extent of one’s contentment, health and prosperity in life.

Societal Index — a measure of the extent to which the government, businesses, and people are fair and trustworthy.

Diversity Index — a measure of the attitudes toward assimilation of differences.

Environmental Index — a measure of the extent of pollution in the air, food, water and land one encounters on a regular basis.

Data gathered calendar year 2012 was compiled and presented in the 2012 American Dream State Ranking Report. (Download the full report.) 

The state ranked as #1 by residents as “Living the American Dream” is Montana. That’s no surprise to many Montana residents who have always known that the Treasure State is truly a hidden gem.

Other states ranked in the ADCI study include (in rank order 2 – 10): New Mexico, Idaho, District of Columbia, Virginia, Delaware, Colorado, Utah, Texas, Minnesota.

A second study that measures the “state of well-being” in given U.S. states, is the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index (WBI). This index is based on real-time well-being data collected from 1,000 interviews a day during calendar year 2012 across six sub-indices: Life Evaluation, Physical Health, Emotional Health, Healthy Behavior, Work Environment and Basic Access. Over a 5-year period, the WBI has gathered opinions from over 1.7 million respondents.

Results of the Well-Being Index also include Montana in the Top 10, this time ranked at #6 overall. Other states comprising the Top 10 in the WBI (in order 1 – 10) include: Hawaii, Colorado, Minnesota, Utah, Vermont, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Iowa and Massachusetts. For further results on this study, click here.

Overall, these two studies are consistent in conveying that Montanans are largely satisfied with their life in Montana. For those businesses looking to provide a desirable living environment for its employees, Montana should be placed high on the consideration list of potential expansion locations.

To assist with all your residential and commercial real estate needs — in Missoula and other major Montana cities — contact Real Estate Montana & Co. It would be our pleasure to be of service to you!

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Companies looking to develop their businesses often turn to geographic expansion. In the process of determining where to expand, there exists the need to evaluate potential locations for suitability.

Beyond looking at tax implications, workforce quality, and other standard criteria, many of today’s business leaders are factoring in the benefits of establishing business in a location that offers an overall quality of life.

What constitutes “quality of life”? We recently came across an article on the website, SiteSelection.com, discussing two studies that attempt to measure various aspects of quality of life.

The first study, called the American Dream Composite Index (ADCI), measures the extent to which people in a given state are achieving the American Dream. The ADCI is survey-based and considers responses to 139 statements pertaining to various aspects of the American Dream as reported by respondents from all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Responses from people living in each state are used to create the ADCI and the 5 sub-indexes that comprise it.

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