In July of 1987, Butte earned a new moniker.

Things were finally starting to look up in the Mining City after the closing of the mines led to an economic depression in the 1980s. The Our Lady of The Rockies statue had been sitting atop the East Ridge for a year and a half, playground equipment from the Columbia Gardens was being fitted into Clark Park, Emma Park was being built, and the Northwest Little League field was receiving a makeover.

Unemployment was down, people were building, and the tax base was once again growing.

“A couple of years ago, people had written Butte off as dead,” Butte-Silver Bow Chief Executive Don Peoples said at the time. 

That summer, we were finally lifting our head above water and looking toward better days.

That is when Peoples did an interview with a reporter from KBLG Radio in Billings. The reporter, who seemed surprised to learn the resilient community had rebounded so well from the economic disaster, referred to Butte as the “Can Do City.” 

Peoples loved that, and he turned that into a slogan that seemed to perfectly embody the spirit of Butte. Then, Peoples used that motto for the local government.

Nearly four decades later, Butte’s local government has apparently changed that motto to “Let’s let Helena handle it for us.”

Now, we have legislators scratching their heads and referring to legislation in front of them as the “Butte mess.”

That is because our local government allowed one of Butte-Silver Bow’s biggest in-house disputes to be punted to the Montana Legislature, letting elected representatives from the other 55 counties make an important decision for us.

That is what is happening with House Bill 547. The bill, which has passed the House and is now in the hands of the Senate, would basically change Montana law to strip power from our volunteer firefighters and give full authority to the county’s director of fire services.

This is not to say that House Bill 547 is a bad bill. It is not to say it is a good bill. It is just complicated, to say the least.

Officials and firefighters on both sides of the dispute have made strong cases as to why the bill is either an absolute necessity or an unmitigated disaster.

The Butte-Silver Bow charter currently gives full power to the director of fire services. However, state law gives more autonomy to the volunteer fire departments, which are all led by their own chief.

This has led to some problems.

Many volunteers say they will quit if the bill to change Montana law passes, and it seems like we could see as many as 30 percent of the volunteers resign immediately after the bill hits the governor’s desk.

We could be talking about hundreds, if not thousands, of years of firefighting experience walking out the door.

The bill, which likely would be better if it was worked on with input from both sides, very well could be a good thing. It will probably fix some problems, but it could also cause many new problems. 

It is the process behind the bill that stinks. It is the continued lack of transparency from our local government that has eroded the trust and confidence.

That lack of transparency has made an already contentious issue many times worse.

This dispute should have been settled in Butte. It could have been settled in Butte. It would have been settled in Butte if only it was given the chance for some good-faith negotiation and compromise. 

We all know about the rift between volunteer and career firefighters that has existed for as long as there have been volunteer and career firefighters. Lately, though, the battle among leaders has made the feud between the Hatfields and McCoys seem like a minor disagreement.

That is a shame because, unlike in Charlottesville, there really are very fine people on both sides of this argument.

There are heroes on both sides of the dispute.

Our career firefighters leave work and say goodbye to their loved ones knowing in the back of their mind that they might not come home when their shift is over. We almost lost one of our firefighters at a house fire a couple of years ago.

Likewise, our volunteers go to bed every night with the realization that they could be awakened to battle a deadly blaze.

When that fire does strike, those career firefighters work well along with the volunteers to protect the people of Butte and Silver Bow County. They might not always agree, but they work together to get the job done.

Time after time, they get the job done.

Now, House Bill 547 is giving all those heroes a black eye.

“It’s a Butte mess,” said Anaconda Representative Scott DeMarois, who carried the bill in the House. “Is it ever,”

This is not fair to the volunteer or career firefighters. It is not fair to the volunteer chiefs. It is not fair to the leaders of the Butte-Silver Bow Fire Department.

It is also not fair to our commissioners.

During Friday’s Senate hearing, a Democratic senator from Missoula referenced a letter she received from a Butte-Silver Bow employee on the subject. Then, the senator berated Commissioner Trudy Healy over the letter that Healy and other commissioners present had not been allowed to see.

Commissioners keep getting varying accounts of the issues behind the bill, too. Whether it’s safety, liability, accountability to taxpayers or something else, we seem to be denied those answers because the whole process lacks transparency.

The truth is that this mess was caused by a vacuum of leadership and openness by our local government.

What we do know now — thanks to a Republican senator asking questions — is the process that led to this bill started in secret America Rescue Plan Act committee meetings in 2022 and 2023.

Who is at fault for the mess, and who is in charge? Well, it depends on who you ask. The fingers are pointing in all directions.

At a heated meeting of the Butte-Silver Bow Council of Commissioners last October, Commissioner Jim Fisher practically ordered Chief Executive J.P. Gallagher to step up and solve the problem, and Gallagher said that he would.

That meeting ended with the understanding that, among other things, both sides would work together. But that, of course, never happened.

House Bill 547 was introduced in November, and the members of the council did not hear about it until the bill was being read in the House in late February.

At a heated commission hearing last week, Gallagher responded to accusations that he helped plan this bill in “secret meetings” by saying he did not know about it until right before its first hearing. Then, almost as a last-minute thing, he decided to testify for it in the House.

He testified for the bill again Friday during the Senate hearing, where angry arguments carried out into the hallway.

Fisher wondered if not knowing that the bill was coming — even though Butte-Silver Bow has at least one lobbyist in Helena — was any better than knowing and keeping it a secret. Fisher replied that either way it was an example of poor leadership.

Whether or not Fisher’s statement is correct or fair is beside the point. That is for history to decide.

No matter what, this issue should have been worked on long before it got to this point. That it was allowed to fester, even though many on both sides have long been vocal about the problems, is unacceptable.

Hopefully the Senate makes the decision that will work out the best in the long run for Butte and Silver Bow County. It is just too bad that Butte-Silver Bow was not allowed to solve a Butte-Silver Bow problem.

Right now, the rest of the state is laughing at us.

They must be wondering what in the heck ever happened to the “Can Do City.”

 — Bill Foley, whose heroes have always been firefighters, can be reached at foles74@gmail.com. Follow him at twitter.com/Foles74 or Bluesky at @foles74.bsky.social. Listen to him on the ButteCast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.