Shanica Knowles, Anna Maria Perez de Tagle, Miley Cyrus, Cody Linley, Jason Earles and Moisés Arias attend the premiere of Disney’s ‘Hannah Montana 20th Anniversary Special’ on March 23, 2026 in Los Angeles, California. (Brianna Bryson/WireImage)
Montana
Everyone agrees Montana needs more state psychiatric beds, no one in Laurel wants them there • Daily Montanan
LAUREL — To understand the controversy surrounding locating a psychiatric hospital in Laurel, city officials have heard hours and hours of testimony objecting to the concept — even though nothing formal has been proposed and it’s nearly impossible to find a single public official willing to offer opinions on the record.
Part of that is because nothing has been formally proposed to the Laurel City Council — and on advice of the city’s attorney, the eight council members have remained silent because if and when a proposal is submitted to build the 32-bed facility there, those council members will decide whether to accept the annexation not (currently the land is in the county).
For years, the Montana State Hospital has been over capacity, forcing the state to do something about just having 53 psychiatric beds for criminal justice holds in a state of 1.2 million.
What spurred on a flood of negative comments and rallied the community was notice of the state entering a buy-sell agreement for 114 acres at the western edge of town, along Old U.S. Highway 10.
Since the state purchased the acreage, residents have implored the city council to stop the project. State lawmakers and administration officials have budgeted for, and repeatedly outlined, the need for more psychiatric beds, and a location that isn’t deep inside the western side of the state.
Laurel residents have already organized, split up public comment time and led an effort to recall the mayor, Dave Waggoner, saying his treatment for cancer has made him unable to devote enough attention to the psychiatric facility and other council business, a charge which he denied.
During a Jan. 27 meeting, citizens packed the small city council chambers in Laurel, and dozens of residents had their objections read into the record, even though city officials repeatedly reminded them there was nothing official to comment on.
“While mental health treatment is important, this is a forensic mental health facility that serves individuals who are in the criminal justice system. That reality must be acknowledged,” said resident Bailey Dempster, who lives near the potential project site. “This is not a sigma or fear. It is about responsibility and a facility of this nature should be located in areas designed to support secure operations and public safety, not next to children, schools and family homes. Once the facility is built, the the impact is permanent. The consequences will be carried by residents long after this vote is taken. Please reconsider this location and look for safer alternatives.”
Limited to a three-minute time period, the comments lasted for nearly two hours. Residents have banded together, with an extensive list of questions they took turns reading. As one person’s time limit expired another would begin reading so that more than 100 questions were read into the record, including demands to know whether city staff had been disciplined for speaking to state officials about the project.
City officials acknowledge that the chief administrative officer did reach out in August to offer a suggestion of a different site, one that was ultimately not chosen. Irritated residents wanted to know who authorized the conversation, and accused city officials of orchestrating the deal before the public had any chance to comment. During the meeting, city officials pointed out other cities had made similar inquiries and proposals.
Residents have decried the project, ticking off a litany of concerns ranging from its proximity to an elementary school to a strain on the Laurel Police or the municipal water system. Furthermore, they say building a state psychiatric facility so close to residential homes will lessen the value of current property and put owners at risk in case of an inmate escape.
“I got grandkids going to school here,” said resident Rich Holstein. “And there’s just nothing good that really comes out of this. And in the end, I think that we really need to be looking at that: What would benefit Laurel? If there’s no benefit to Laurel other than we sold them some land, then why are we doing this? It’s really simple. Why we are doing it, and it just doesn’t make sense.”
But they’re not the only ones objecting.
Laurel Public Schools has passed a resolution calling on the city council to reject any proposal from the state to build the facility, with school board members and even Superintendent Matt Torix testifying at a council meeting, urging council members to vote against a proposal that doesn’t exist yet.
In a legislative update earlier this week, officials briefed the Child, Families, Health and Human Services Interim Committee about the possible siting, noting that while the parcel of land spans 114 acres, the actual location of the building will be more than a half-mile away from Laurel Elementary School. The state also provided maps of other Montana communities, including showing that the current Yellowstone County Detention Facility remains closer to an elementary school than the proposed psychiatric site.
One of the vocal opponents to the Laurel site is the chairman of the Yellowstone County Commission, Mark Morse, who has criticized the state for taking advantage of the largest county’s residents because they have invested in facilities and programs that help those getting out of prison while receiving little support from the state itself.
“The devil is in the details. Without details, I can’t support this facility being in Yellowstone County and that is ashamed, because Montana is in dire need of additional mental health resources but without details, I am concerned that they are building this facility not for additional space for these mentally ill folks, but as a replacement for the current forensic facility … which the state has admitted they struggle to staff,” Morse said.
Some of the claims, including Morse’s, have become almost accepted as gospel, which led the state to create a fact-and-myth, question-and-answer style presentation for lawmakers and the public in Helena earlier this week. One of the slides addressed the concern that Laurel was just opening the door to a larger facility, but officials from Montana DPHHS detailed millions of dollars of investments at Galen and Warm Springs, including staffing, saying, “DPHHS has invested more than $75M in MSH and Galen since 2021, signaling no intention of shuttering either facility.”
City officials aren’t commenting on the concept on the advice of the city attorney who has expressed concerns that weighing in publicly on the issue could prejudice the project and lead to a protracted legal fight.
Other state government officials are as conspicuously silent as Laurel residents are vocal.
During the hours of testimony reviewed by the Daily Montanan, two of Laurel’s legislative delegation — Sen. Vince Ricci and Rep. Lee Deming, both Republicans — have been invoked frequently as staunch opponents of the project. They wrote a letter to Gov. Greg Gianforte stating their public opposition to the state project.
When contacted by the Daily Montanan, Ricci said the letter spoke for itself, while Deming said he wasn’t even willing to talk about the letter.
Ricci and Deming oppose the project for several reasons. Both reference meetings that were originally planned and scrapped, including one which was going to be hosted by the Laurel Chamber of Commerce which was cancelled after members of the public were invited, but the press prohibited, something that would be a violation of the state’s open meeting laws and constitution.
“We maintain that the meetings should have proceeded. If only to respond to legitimate community concerns. The state has a responsibility to engage directly with the Laurel community on an issue of this importance and long-term impacts,” the letter said.
Laurel residents have also targeted other leaders, including Gov. Greg Gianforte, to try and halt the project. However, the governor’s office did not respond to inquiries sent this week about whether he had concerns with the project or the location siting in Laurel.
Other sites had been in the running to host the new facility, including Hardin and Miles City. The state has said repeatedly that Montana — a huge state geographically — should have two facilities to serve the east and west portions of the state. Demand is certainly a part of that driver — currently Yellowstone County is housing 18 prisoners who are being held because there’s no availability at the state’s only facility in Galen.
Moreover, nearly three-out-of-every four people needing admission to the psychiatric facility east of the Continental Divide are from Yellowstone County, with officials saying without the facility being located there, it may just re-create one of the current concerns: The travel time transporting prisoners back and forth from the eastern half of the state to Galen, located between Butte and Missoula, along Interstate 90.
One official who is working on the project told the Daily Montanan that both the governor’s office as well as officials from the Department of Public Health and Human Services both agree that because of huge demand for services in Yellowstone County, locating the psychiatric hospital anywhere else would be a misuse of state resources.
“Finally, it is abundantly clear that our constituents do not want this facility built anywhere near our town,” the letter from the two Laurel legislators concluded. “This issue is splitting Laurel and causing bitter divisions that we believe will be long-lasting. The fight over placing this facility in Laurel is just getting started. We believe that the fight against the facility will continue and the costs to the state and money will continue to increase.”
After Miley Cyrus reunited with her alter ego for the Hannah Montana 20th anniversary special in March, one of her co-stars is explaining his absence.
Mitchel Musso, who played Hannah’s friend Oliver Oken on the Disney Channel show, noted he had a scheduling conflict, but he would have made time for the reunion if it was a new episode of the 2006-’11 series or a movie.
“The kid in me was banking on it, like ‘I can’t wait for us to all be on set again,’ and it just didn’t work out that way,” he said on the Joe Vulpis Podcast. “Do something other than what was done. Like, do an episode. Do the show. The set’s still there. Or it can be dressed very quick with somebody who’s a pro, and they did that for that and just did it differently.”
Musso continued, “It is what it is. But it wasn’t the right thing and I was busy doing something that was more important, right? But it would have been way more important if it would have just been an episode, or a movie, or a whatever. Of course, that would have been more important.”
The actor said he would have “dropped everything” if it meant getting back into character as Oliver. “It would have been everything,” he said.
“It didn’t turn out that way… Of course they asked me. But like I said, it wasn’t presented correctly,” added Musso. “And I’ve been waiting 10 years. You know, the people they say 20. My break’s been 10. So, it’s too long of a wait to do it in a way that isn’t even close to, in my opinion, correct.”
Emily Osment, who played Miley and Oliver’s friend Lilly Truscott, was also absent from the reunion special, noting she was busy filming Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage but feels “lucky to have been a part of this once-in-a-generation goliath of a television show” like Hannah Montana.
The Big Hole River, a blue-ribbon fishery that’s become a focal point in a years-long debate over nuisance algae growth, is poised to receive an impairment designation.
At an open-house meeting in Divide on Tuesday, the Montana Department of Environmental Quality announced that the Big Hole, a mellow freestone river critical to southwest Montana’s outdoor recreation and agriculture economies, is struggling as a result of ecologically detrimental nutrient loading.
The term DEQ is using in its discussion of the Big Hole is eutrophication, which describes the link between algae growth and excess nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus. When there’s too much algae in a river or lake, dissolved oxygen falls, imperiling fish and the aquatic life they feed on.
Algal growth is also unpopular with members of the recreating public because it can make wade-fishing a slipperier — and therefore more perilous — endeavor. And it drives down biodiversity in the macroinvertebrate population, which has repercussions for fish and other species higher up the aquatic food web. Andy Ulven, who leads DEQ’s water quality division, told Montana Free Press on Tuesday that a eutrophication listing would “formalize that there is an issue on the mainstem” of the Big Hole. He added that the agency proposal is still in draft stage and he doesn’t anticipate a final designation for the Big Hole until 2027 at the earliest.
The pending impairment designation is notable for a couple of reasons. In addition to establishing a new regulatory framework for the Big Hole, the designation creates a template that DEQ can use to determine if other medium-sized rivers popular with wading anglers are eligible for a eutrophication impairment.
DEQ’s Darrin Kron, who oversees the agency’s water-quality monitoring and assessment, explained that a eutrophication impairment designation would trigger regulations to reduce the inputs that contribute to poor water quality. Those standards are called Total Maximum Daily Loads, or TMDLs, and they’re often likened to a “pollution diet” for a compromised waterway.
In the case of the Big Hole, DEQ could develop TMDLs for nitrogen and phosphorus, as well as temperature-related standards to minimize new introductions of unnaturally warm water, which suppresses dissolved oxygen levels and contributes to algae growth.
Ulven anticipates that a eutrophication designation will increase the public funding that conservation groups like the Big Hole Watershed Committee and Trout Unlimited can apply for and put toward river-restoration initiatives. Projects those groups could work on — and are currently working on, if at a smaller scale — could include planting willows to add shade cover and reduce streambank erosion as well as intercepting nitrogen and phosphorus before they reach the river. Fertilizer runoff and livestock manure are common sources of nutrient pollution in agricultural valleys like the Big Hole.
The river’s algae issues have been well documented. Groups like Upper Missouri Waterkeeper, Save Wild Trout and the Big Hole River Foundation (which has since merged with Save Wild Trout) have been taking water-quality measurements and photographing summertime algae blooms on the river for six years to spur DEQ to rein in the nitrogen and phosphorus that are contributing to the algal blooms.
Guy Alsentzer with Upper Missouri Waterkeeper says the agency is playing “political hot potato” with impairment designations instead of acting with urgency to improve conditions on the Big Hole.
“It seems to be very disingenuous because it’s trying to avoid in any way, shape or form admitting that the key issue is that there are unhealthy and unnatural nutrient loading into the Big Hole River,” Alsentzer told Montana Free Press in a Wednesday morning interview. “A world-class, blue-ribbon stream for wild trout is on its knees. It has 40-year historic lows for trout recruitment.”
Alsentzer has long argued that the most proactive and scientifically sound way to reduce algal growth is to use numeric standards for nitrogen and phosphorus. But the Montana Legislature and DEQ disagree with him on this point, insisting that narrative, more subjective standards will suffice.
Last year, the Republican-controlled Legislature passed House Bill 664, which prohibits DEQ from using numeric nutrient standards. Proponents of HB 664 argued that it will result in more achievable and more affordable standards for the entities — water-treatment plants, mines and refineries, for example — that discharge nutrient-laden waters into Montana rivers.
HB 664 is the subject of an ongoing lawsuit Upper Missouri Waterkeeper filed in federal district court in January, maintaining that it doesn’t comply with the Clean Water Act, an environmental law Congress passed in 1972 to clean up polluted waterways. Alsentzer told MTFP that he anticipates the court will order a hearing on the matter at the tail end of this year and issue a ruling sometime in 2027.
Judge Brian Morris’ decision could determine whether DEQ can continue working with the eutrophication designation or whether it will be forced to return to numeric nutrient standards.
Water-quality concerns are likely to be exacerbated by the meager water supply currently in the Big Hole basin. The region received one of its worst snowpacks on record, and anxiety over a dismal summer forecast is a rare point of agreement among those who attended the Tuesday night open house.
Erik Kalsta, who ranches in the Big Hole Valley and is a longtime member of the Big Hole Watershed Committee, said he doesn’t anticipate the eutrophication-related impairment designation will drive significant changes to how he manages his land and water.
“I think the bigger worry for me is the messaging around this, especially on a bad drought year,” Kalsta told MTFP at the open house. He said he wouldn’t be surprised if the Big Hole goes dry in the next four or five weeks. That hasn’t happened since the late 1980s, and it spurred local irrigators to form the Big Hole Watershed Committee in search of cooperative water-management solutions.
“Our (irrigation) ditch right now is running about half of what it can carry,” Kalsta said. “That’s already forcing us to make choices about where we’re putting water, what kind of crops (we plant), what kind of summer we’re going to have.”
Brian Wheeler, executive director of Save Wild Trout, said the Big Hole is currently flowing at about one-quarter of its usual volume for this time of year. “It almost peaked in March, which is insane,” he added.
“If you can’t make more of it,” Wheeler said, “you can at least make sure what you have is clean.”
Montana
‘Hannah Montana’ Alum Mitchel Musso Reveals Why He Missed 20th Anniversary Special With Miley Cyrus
Hannah Montana star Mitchel Musso was noticeably absent from the show’s 20th anniversary special earlier this year — and now he’s revealing why.
“Of course they asked me [to be in it],” Musso, 34, revealed on the “Joe Vulpis Podcast” on Wednesday, June 24. “But, it wasn’t presented correctly [to me].”
Musso appeared in more than 70 episodes of the classic Disney Channel comedy series, playing Miley Stewart’s (Cyrus) best friend Oliver Oken alongside Emily Osment’s Lilly Truscott.
The star explained to host Joe Vulpis that he truly valued the opportunity to play Oliver again since he’d mostly been living outside the spotlight for the past decade. Instead, Disney opted for a retrospective look back at Hannah Montana.
Mitchel Musso, Emily Osment and Miley Cyrus on “Hannah Montana.” Joel Warren / Disney Channel / Courtesy Everett Collection
“I’ve been waiting ten years,” he stressed. “The people, they say, 20. My break’s been 10. It’s too long of a wait to do it in a way that isn’t even close to, in my opinion, correct.”
The Hannah Montana 20th Anniversary Special aired in March and featured Cyrus, 33, looking back on memorable moments from the show, alongside host Alex Cooper and celebrity guests such as Chappell Roan and Selena Gomez.
In his new interview, Musso said he would relish the chance of actually getting to play Oliver again in a proper Hannah Montana episode.
“I need a wig,” he joked. “I’d want the hair, which is fine. I’ve worn [wigs] plenty of times on Disney. I’ve worn plenty of wigs. … I’d want to feel the part again. I’d want to put on that little polo again, and wear the … plaid shorts with the goofy shoes.”
The actor went on, “I’d want to play the character, yeah. Once I saw myself doing it, I’d say, ‘Oh, there you are!’ Let’s get out there and let’s do it.”
Musso was not the only major Hannah Montana cast member missing from the anniversary special, as Osment, 34, could not appear due to her filming obligationa on CBS sitcom Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage.
“We’re at Georgie & Mandy … and that’s why I was not able to be part of the 20-year reunion, because we are here shooting our show,” she said in a social media video at the time. “But I wanted to say hello and thank you to everybody that has stuck by us for all these years. I’m so grateful that you guys all still love the show. I’m so proud to be a part of it.”
Ahead of the Hannah Montana 20th Anniversary Special airing in March, Musso paid tribute to the show with his own Instagram post.
Miley Cyrus is still fielding questions about Hannah Montana more than a decade after its end — and she has some hilarious memories to share. During the Thursday, June 19, episode of her mom Tish Cyrus and sister Brandi Cyrus’ “Sorry We’re Cyrus” podcast, the Grammy winner, 32, opened up about a moment that never […]
“Hannah Montana wrapped around my heart and never really let go. We literally grew up with ya’ll — long days, crazy schedules, learning lines, cracking up between takes, and figuring out life while the cameras rolled,” he wrote. “It taught me so many wonderful values, but the most important ‘to me’ is that laughter can get you through the tough days. That confidence still sticks with me every single day.”
He also shouted out his costars, writing, “Miley, Emily, Jason [Earles], Billy Ray [Cyrus], Moises [Arias], and the whole crew at Disney — you became my family through all the real, messy, beautiful moments. Thank you for believing in a goofy kid from Texas who wore some questionable outfits with a haircut like that. To all of you, thank you for welcoming me into your homes and hearts 20 years ago and still allowing me to be here today. I’m honored we get to share all of this together.”
Hannah Montana originally aired for four seasons between 2006 and 2011. Classic episodes, as well as the Hannah Montana 20th Anniversary Special, can be streamed via Disney+.
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