How Misinformation - and One Facebook Group - Threatened a Federal Investment in Montana

The New York Times describes a six-year grass roots effort to fund historic preservation and natural resource conservation in Montana — and how it collided with Rae Grulkowski, a 56-year-old businesswoman who had never before been involved in politics, and her very influential Facebook group:

Ms. Grulkowski had just heard about a years-in-the-making effort to designate her corner of central Montana a national heritage area, celebrating its role in the story of the American West. A small pot of federal matching money was there for the taking, to help draw more visitors and preserve underfunded local tourist attractions.

Ms. Grulkowski set about blowing up that effort with everything she had.
She collected addresses from a list of voters and spent $1,300 sending a packet denouncing the proposed heritage area to 1,498 farmers and ranchers. She told them the designation would forbid landowners to build sheds, drill wells or use fertilizers and pesticides. It would alter water rights, give tourists access to private property, create a new taxation district and prohibit new septic systems and burials on private land, she said.

None of this was true.

Yet it soon became accepted as truth by enough people to persuade Montana's leading Republican figures and conservative organizations, including the farm bureau, Gov. Greg Gianforte and Senator Steve Daines, to oppose the proposal and enact a state law forbidding the federal government to create any heritage area in Montana.

It is a ban that the state has no authority to enforce.

Some comments on the episode (via the New York Times):

Ellen Sievert, retired historic preservation officer for Cascade County:
'We've run into the uneducable. I don't know how we get through that.'
Bob Kelly, the mayor of Great Falls:
'Misinformation is the new playbook. You don't like something? Create alternative facts and figures as a way to undermine reality.' (In fact, it's now become an issue in the mayor's race.)

The episode was especially distressing for Richard Ecke, who spent 38 years at the town's local newspaper until being laid off in 2016 — and is also vice chairman of the proposed heritage area's board. The Times reports that 'In the paper's place, information and misinformation about the heritage area spread on Facebook and in local outlets that parroted Ms. Grulkowski.'
And meanwhile, 'Ms. Grulkowski now has ambitions beyond Montana. She wants to push Congress not to renew heritage areas that already exist.' [There are 55 of them, in 34 different states.]


Finally the Times interviewed Ed Bandel, who'd led the Montana Farm Bureau's opposition to the Montana heritage area. When asked for his supporting evidence, 'Mr. Bandel said he trusted Ms. Grulkowski.'

And when asked about the argument that it in fact posed no threat to property rights, Bandel remained unconvinced. 'They say, 'Don't worry, we're going to do it right. Don't worry, we'll take care of you. I think Adolf Hitler said that, too, didn't he...?'

Read more of this story at Slashdot.