{"id":21555,"date":"2018-02-22T08:25:08","date_gmt":"2018-02-22T15:25:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=21555"},"modified":"2018-02-22T08:25:08","modified_gmt":"2018-02-22T15:25:08","slug":"daines-tours-missoula-brewery-dodges-waiting-citizens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2018\/02\/daines-tours-missoula-brewery-dodges-waiting-citizens\/","title":{"rendered":"Daines tours Missoula brewery, dodges waiting citizens"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Daines\"<\/a>

Martin Kidston\/Missoula Current<\/p>

Two dozen Missoula residents gathered inside and outside Big Sky Brewing Co. on Wednesday, believing Sen. Steve Daines intended to meet with them, as a press release suggested.<\/p><\/div>\n

U.S. Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., stopped in Missoula for a quick tour of the Big Sky Brewing facility\u00a0on Wednesday, where he declined to meet with the two-dozen people who had gathered to participate in what the senator\u2019s office had billed as a meeting with \u201clocal officials, community leaders and constituents.\u201d<\/p>\n

Daines arrived early and privately toured the brewing plant before leaving through the back door, bypassing those who believed the senator would be meeting with them in an open forum.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was under the impression we were going to get to meet with him today, per the press release he sent out inviting conversation with his constituents,\u201d said Missoula City Council member Julie Merritt. \u201cThat\u2019s obviously being declined. I just saw him get in the car and drive away as he sneaked out the back door.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many of those who\u2019d come to meet with the senator were told by an employee at the brewery that Daines had no intention of meeting with them. No member of Daines\u2019 staff appeared to explain why.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe feel like he\u2019s dodged our request to meet with us for over a year now, and this is just another attempt to deflect,\u201d said a frustrated Tiffany Williams. \u201cI think he\u2019s reluctant to be accountable to Montanans for the decisions that he makes that aren\u2019t a reflection of our actual concerns. He\u2019s just part of the group over there in Washington that\u2019s doing what the lobbyists want.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those who came to meet with the senator included Missoula student Rowan Hopkins-Doherty, who left school to see Daines in person. While she wasn\u2019t sure what she would ask him, she said she was looking forward to the visit.<\/p>\n

\"CapreAir_Variable\"<\/a><\/div><\/div>Others came with more specific questions, some related to the national concern about gun violence. Just 30 minutes after Daines left the plant, hundreds of Missoula high school students\u00a0walked out of class<\/a>\u00a0demanding accountability from the state\u2019s congressional delegation.<\/p>\n

\u201cI came to ask him what he was going to do about the gun violence epidemic that\u2019s plaguing our country and make sure he knows students, right now, are walking out of our schools all across Missoula asking their officials to do more,\u201d said Pam Owen. \u201cWe thought this was our first chance to ask him direct questions, and he didn\u2019t show up, again. I don\u2019t know why you\u2019d do that as an elected official.\u201d<\/p>\n

After leaving Missoula, Daines tweeted, \u201cGreat tour of @BigSkyBrewing where with savings from tax cuts they are investing in new equipment and bonuses for employees.\u201d<\/p>\n

Julie Doyle, Daines\u2019 press assistant, said the event was never scheduled as a town hall. She added that he planned to leave directly after touring the plant to provide extra travel time for bad weather.<\/p>\n

\u201cToday we ran ahead of schedule. We try to avoid being late and having folks wait,\u201d said Doyle. \u201cWith that being said, the Senator held an event today in Missoula with constituents. He is making stops in 17 counties this week and will be meeting with constituents in all of them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those who\u2019d come to meet the senator were left to speculate on what the senator meant by \u201cconstituents.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI would say this was promoted as a lie,\u201d said Glenn Hladek. \u201cThe press release doesn\u2019t say town hall meeting, but certainly it says meeting with constituents. I think the implication is broader than just the people who work at the brewery.\u201d<\/p>\n

Daines has declined to meet in person with voters for more than two years now, opting instead for so-called \u201ctele-town-halls.\u201d Some have panned such forums as a sham that protects Daines from having to answer difficult questions.<\/p>\n

Merritt, who represents Ward 6 on the Missoula City Council, intended to ask the senator in\u00a0Wednesday\u2019s\u00a0scheduled forum about his efforts to prevent the City Council from adopting a citizen-initiated ordinance calling for background checks on gun sales and purchases.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs you may or may not recall, the city of Missoula was working to adopt an ordinance requiring background checks for all gun sales within the city limits,\u201d Merritt said, reading her question outside the brewery.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou sent a letter to the council requesting that we not hold a public hearing on the ordinance. Can you explain to me why you felt it was appropriate to stop public dialogue about an issue that was important to the people of our community?\u201d<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on\u00a0Missoula Current<\/a>, an independent online newspaper, of which\u00a0Martin Kidston is the founding editor.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

U.S. Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., stopped in Missoula for a quick tour of the Big Sky Brewing facility\u00a0on Wednesday, where he declined to meet with the two-dozen people who had gathered to participate in what the senator\u2019s office had billed as a meeting with \u201clocal officials, community leaders and constituents.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":97,"featured_media":21556,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,14],"tags":[1627,528,1237],"class_list":["post-21555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-montana","category-news","tag-big-sky-brewing","tag-steve-daines","tag-u-s-senate","prominence-category-featured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/97"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21555"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21555\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21557,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21555\/revisions\/21557"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}