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Montana Renewables, Calumet have pending tax appeals before state board – The Electric

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Montana Renewables, Calumet have pending tax appeals before state board – The Electric


Montana Renewables filed an appeal over their tax classification.

The biodiesel production company with a Great Falls facility asked the Montana Department of Environmental Quality to certify the plant as a pollution control facility.

Under state law, air and water pollution and carbon capture equipment certified as such by DEQ is tax exempt.

In November 2021, Calumet Montana Refining spun off some assets to create Montana Renewables, which is a separate company and taxpaying entity.

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Montana Renewables asked DEQ to certify the entire facility as an air and water pollution control facility, which would render the entire facility tax exempt, but DEQ certified only certain equipment, representing eight  percent of the facility, according to the appeal filed in April with the Montana Tax Appeal Board.

County board upholds state’s revised tax valuation for Calumet

Montana Renewables argued in its appeal that DEQ has made a “mistake of fact and failed to recognize that the MRL facility is a fully-integrated facility which provides identifiable and substantial environmental benefits that can be achieved only by operation of the biomass conversion plant and all of its equipment together as one emissions-reducing unit.”

Montana Renewables argued that the state law changes over the last 30 years showed legislative intent to make refineries that added pollution control equipment eligible for certification, as well as biofuels operations.

Dave McAlpin, chair of the Montana Tax Appeal Board told The Electric that the board recently set a schedule for the appeal.

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Unless the case is settled or a motion for summary judgment is filed by March 14, 2025, the board will heard the case May 6-9, 2025 in Helena, he said.

Calumet appeals county tax board denial to state [2023]

During an April hearing at the Cascade County Tax Appeal Board, Jennifer Sadler, sales and property tax manager for Calumet, said the company reported their property values to DOR in March 2022.

The company received and paid its assessments that summer.

DOR had initially valued Calumet at $165 million and Montana Renewables at $195 million, Sadler said.

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Calumet has two pending tax appeal cases before the state board and during a hearing last fall, Calumet officials said they weren’t protesting the Montana Renewables valuation or taxes.

Calumet asked the county board in April to reject a reappraisal issued by the Department of Revenue last fall for the company’s 2022 taxes after discovering that $79 million of assets had been missed in the initial appraisal.

Calumet settles with EPA over 2019 violations [2023]

The board voted 2-1 to accept the DOR’s revised valuation.

Kim Beatty, a lawyer for Calumet, told the board that Calumet had paid their 2022 taxes without protest though the company didn’t fully agree with the assessment, but said it had been in range with the 2021 agreed upon value.

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Phil Murphy for Calumet said that the company agreed to a $355 million valuation in May 2021 for the entire Great Falls facility.

That case has a scheduling conference set for July 2, McAlpine said.

County tax appeal board denies $189.5 million Calumet protest [2023]

Calumet also has a pending tax appeal before the Montana Tax Appeal Board, asking them to override the county tax appeal board’s denial and lower their taxable value for 2023 by about $189 million.

DOR valued Calumet’s land at $118,944; and the buildings, equipment and improvements at $299,428,094 for a total of $299,547,035.

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During a November hearing, Calumet asked the Cascade County Tax Appeal Board to lower their valuation for the buildings, equipment and improvements to $109,881,000 for a total of $109,999,944.

That’s a reduction of $189.5 million.

City beginning budget process

The county board denied the request.

In mid-December, Calumet appealed the decision to the Montana Tax Appeal Board as they did in 2018.

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McAlpin told The Electric that Calumet is scheduled to update the board by June 18 on this appeal.

The scheduling conference was vacated by stipulation and hasn’t yet been rescheduled since Calumet and DOR are discussing narrowing the issues, settling the case or consolidating the cases, McAlpin said.

County Commission adopts budget [2023}

According to the appeal filed with the state board in December, Calumet is asking for their total valuation to be lowered to $110,000,000.

In their appeal, Calumet states that the county board and the DOR used the incorrect methodology to determine their valuation and that they’d be prepared for a hearing by Sept. 30, 2024.

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Until that appeal is finalized, Calumet’s property taxes are held and unusable for the county and city. For the current fiscal year, which ends June 30, city finance officials have said that amounts to roughly $1 million in tax revenue not available to the city for operations.

Local officials waiting for details of potential tax appeal [2023]

During their November hearing, Philip Murphy for Calumet, said that their taxes have quadrupled since the company purchased the refinery in 2012.

He said that in 2012, their taxes were $1.4 million. In 2021, Calumet paid $5.5 million and in 2022, $6.2 million in taxes.

Calumet protested their taxes in 2019, which was a continuation of the 2017-2018 protest case that was settled in 2020.

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Dept. of Revenue files appeal over Calumet taxes [2018]

The Montana Department of Revenue set Calumet’s value at $538 million for 2017. In February 2018, the three-person county tax appeal board lowered the value to $312.5 million. Calumet had requested their value be lowered to $190.7 million.

Both Calumet and the DOR appealed that decision to the Montana Tax Appeal Board in 2018.

In 2020, the parties settled and according to DoR, of the roughly $17 million paid by Calumet under protest for tax years 2017-2019, about $9.5 million was released to the local jurisdictions and $1.5 million to the state.

Calumet protests taxes, county tax appeal board lowers taxable value by more than $200 million [2018]

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Once the protest was settled, the county issued a refund of $4.7 million to Calumet and milled a special levy to recoup $1.2 million of funds the school district had to pay back to Calumet since they accessed their portion of protested taxes.





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Montana Lottery Mega Millions, Big Sky Bonus results for June 23, 2026

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The Montana Lottery offers multiple draw games for those aiming to win big.

Here’s a look at June 23, 2026, results for each game:

Winning Mega Millions numbers from June 23 drawing

48-51-60-63-66, Mega Ball: 20

Check Mega Millions payouts and previous drawings here.

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Winning Big Sky Bonus numbers from June 23 drawing

06-21-22-31, Bonus: 13

Check Big Sky Bonus payouts and previous drawings here.

Feeling lucky? Explore the latest lottery news & results

When are the Montana Lottery drawings held?

  • Powerball: 8:59 p.m. MT on Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday.
  • Mega Millions: 9 p.m. MT on Tuesday and Friday.
  • Lucky For Life: 8:38 p.m. MT daily.
  • Lotto America: 9 p.m. MT on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday.
  • Big Sky Bonus: 7:30 p.m. MT daily.
  • Powerball Double Play: 8:59 p.m. MT on Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday.
  • Montana Cash: 8 p.m. MT on Wednesday and Saturday.
  • Millionaire for Life: 9:15 p.m. MT daily.

Missed a draw? Peek at the past week’s winning numbers.

This results page was generated automatically using information from TinBu and a template written and reviewed by a Great Falls Tribune editor. You can send feedback using this form.



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Man Driving Giant Banana Gets Pulled Over in Montana

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Man Driving Giant Banana Gets Pulled Over in Montana


We cover lots of hard news here at The Drive. Y’know, the stuff that keeps you updated on the automotive industry and enthusiast scene. Other times, we don’t. Other times, we write silly car-related stuff because it’s fun. This is one of those times. A giant banana recently got pulled over in Montana, and as the Cowboy State Daily put it, it wasn’t its first time.

According to the Montana State Police, the giant banana car and its driver, Steve Braithwaite, were pulled over near Billings because part of the license plate was blocked. He did not receive a ticket. Also, the plate reads “SPLIT.”

“We’ve stopped speeders, distracted drivers, and even a few unusual vehicles… but this one definitely stands out.
The Big Banana Car was stopped cruising near Billings today. While it may be apPEALing, traffic laws still apply to fruit. 😎 🍌
Safe travels, Montana,” said the Montana State Police’s Facebook page.

According to the report, Braithwaite has been pulled over hundreds of times over the decade he’s been driving his banana car across the country. In fact, he believes that during the first few years he had the thing, he was one of the most frequently pulled-over men in America.

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“Driving around in a banana and having all these people, all these smiles and waves, affects me. It actually does something fantastic,” he told the outlet.

He even claims to have been pulled over once for “peeling out,” which was, of course, a joke.

Another report claims that Braithwaite began working on the fiberglass banana in 2008 and finished it in 2011. It’s based on a 1993 Ford F-150 and is a bout 23 feet from tip to tip.

Keep on keepin’ on, Steve.

Got a tip? Email us at tips@thedrive.com

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As deputy editor, Jerry draws on a decade of industry experience and a lifelong passion for motorsports to guide The Drive’s short- and long-term coverage.




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The Latest ‘Sustained Yield’ Scam Will Devastate Montana’s National Forests

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The Latest ‘Sustained Yield’ Scam Will Devastate Montana’s National Forests


Log landing, western Montana. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.

Way back in 1995 Bob Brown, the Republican president of the Montana Senate, called me into his office.

He had co-sponsored a bill with a pro-logging Missoula Democrat to establish a “sustained yield” level of logging on Montana’s state trust lands – and he was worried it wasn’t working out the way he hoped.

Bob was right to be worried then and Montanans are right to be worried now because Trump’s Forest Service Chief and former timber industry lobbyist Tom Schultz, has just unleashed the “sustained yield” scam on Montana’s National Forests.

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To appreciate Brown’s concerns, it’s important to understand that the 1995 Montana legislature had two-thirds Republican majorities in the House and Senate and Republican Marc Racicot in the Governor’s Office.

Those majorities put Montana’s environment in the cross-hairs with a raft of industry-friendly deregulatory bills.  That included the timber industry, which was losing the “timber wars” in large part because Plum Creek Timber, one of the largest private forest landowners in the West, had decided to “liquidate” its “timber assets” – also known as “forests.”

That decision resulted in massive clearcuts since there were virtually no regulations on logging private land.  Plum Creek scalped the forests of northwest Montana, including the lands around Bob’s home in Whitefish, leaving barren, knapweed infested stumpfields that remain to this day. His goal was to protect the lands around the trout streams he’d fished growing up and hoped the bill would do that.

It was the closing weeks of the session and Bob wanted to know if it was possible to reduce the environmental impacts of his bill since it had been heavily amended to favor extraction, not “sustained yield.”  My advice was to let the bill die because he didn’t have the votes to remove the amendments the timber industry lobbyists stuck on the bill.  But he didn’t take that advice, the bill passed, and the logging level for Montana’s state forests was set at 52 to 55 million board feet per year.

Two years later, Tom Schultz went to work for Montana’s Department of Natural Resources and Conservation, heading the trust lands timber division and earning the sobriquet “Chainsaw Tom” for his pro-logging zeal.  Like the stumpfields, his dedication to the timber industry remains to this day – only now he’s in charge of the United States Forest Service and bringing chainsaws to millions of acres of our remaining intact forests.

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If you believe that “sustained yield” is supposed to be a carefully calculated determination of how many millions of board feet of timber can be logged every year on a sustainable basis that means limiting logging to the pace at which the forests can regrow – regardless of the demands of the rapacious timber industry.

In the “old days” loggers liked to refer to forests as “100 year gardens.”  But of course forests aren’t gardens, they’re complex ecosystems – and the timber industry doesn’t wait a century for forests to regrow.

It’s unlikely that quaint misnomer is even applicable in today’s climate with hotter, longer summers, minimal snowpack, and extreme drought.  Yet, Montana’s “sustained yield” is now nearly 10 million board feet a year higher than when Brown’s bill passed, defying logic and science and justifying his concerns from 30 years ago.

“Chainsaw Tom” Schultz has now reappeared and demands that 350-500 million board feet of Montana’s national forests be logged over 10 years. Schultz’s timber industry lobbyist background offers a clue as to where that “sustainable yield” number came from — and the reason we will likely be left with nothing but stumpfields and knapweed from his “landscape scale” logging of our remaining intact forests.

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