Public Comment. Volume III - Montana Legislature

that are enmeshed with our value systems. Our grandparents homesteaded in Montana and we've
lived within communities shaped by ranching and farming all of our lives. You might say that
Perry and I are residuals of ranching and farming.
Together, Perry and I still hold out the dream that we'll have a place on which we can
live, work and run a horse. But the eminent domain laws that affect farmers and ranchers will
also affect us. Perry and I consider our selves to be part of "the public" for whom these laws
were meant to provide "good." Ranchers and farmers have preserved the "public good" for a
longer period of time than Montana's 123-year-old eminent domain laws.
As they now stand eminent domain laws unfairly give private and public corporations
permission to ovemde our "public good." Today's legislature is dewg
the "public good" as
being synonymous with the "corporate good." We want to challenge this association. If "public
use" is, as the representative of Northern Border Pipeline and Montana-Dakota Utilities, attorney
John Alke has stated, "anything that the Legislature says it is," then we need to let the legislature
know how public opinion defines the "public good" that our legislators have sworn they'd
represent.
. We, who are not farmers and ranchers, reap cultural and historical benefits fiom those
who do live with the land. Those of us who do not work the land need to voice our opinions
because we are part of the "public good." We need to strongly support ranchers and farmers,
especially, because companies can move onto, change and destroy lands that have not yet been
legally condemned. Our voices should promote the rights of private landowners, rather than the
self-aggrandizing private big "corporate good." Private landowners should be able to maintain
and use their property, right up until the time their land has finally and absolutely been
determined necessary for the true "public good."
-68- Volume Ill: Public Comment