Question - What good is it...

Sounds like the Lake County judicial system from the cops up through and especially the Prosecutor's Office and Judges is a cesspool of corruption from the bottom to the top. That should bring the Office of the AG into play for a complete investigation of allegations that have been mentioned.

Someone just sent me a Department of Labor & Industry report for FYs 12 & 13 to show that outfitters did not have more complaints than any other industry. Yes and no.

PDF pages 9 and 10 show the 2 years listing the occupations and various data columns. While outfitters had 63 complaints in 2012 to nursing's 161; and 55 to 159 in 2013, you can't just compare straight numbers. Nursing has 10X more licenses than outfitters.

2012: Nursing licenses 19374, 161 complaints for .83%. Outfitters 1876 licenses, 63 complaints for 3.35%.
2013: Nursing licenses 19319. 159 complaints for .82%. Outfitters 2050 licenses, 55 complaints for 2.68%.

Interestingly, there were more investigations into nursing for the smaller percentage of complaints, yet a higher percentage of sanctions for outfitting.

I just heard the Board of Outfitters meeting today delayed the legislative discussion of outfitter records reporting to the December meeting.

Unfortunately, one of the members was gone. Even tho he is a public member, he votes in a block with Moga and they needed him to be there. We were duped on this public member as he is a booking agent for outfitters.
Joe

I think the whole record keeping push is to keep law enforcement from doing their job and to hide compliance issues.
J

I don't entirely follow what the issue is, but if the name of Tabor's lawyer, Quentin Rhoades, sounds familiar he comes from the Dark [money] Side...
http://montanafreepress.org/2016/02...tions-in-lead-up-to-wittich-corruption-trial/
http://mtpr.org/post/political-practices-commissioner-declares-atp-violated-mt-election-laws

Small World

I received my Forest Service FOIA on Swan Mountain Outfitter, Pat Tabor, complaints the other day, have to followup with some questions to find out what the results of the complaints were.

And I just received my FWP Public Information Request on the statistics on Game Warden citations issued per year, per region from 2010-2015. I would also like to know for the same years and regions the number of those that go to court and/or are dismissed, as well as those that are convicted.

There are nearly 25,000 of these. I can see sorting the excel columns for specific queries, information that would be helpful to conservation hunters/anglers all over the state, to help identify potential problem areas, this is broken down by county, violation type, violation code as well. I am getting a copy of the code descriptions for reference.

Just taking sorting by result, I can see where the "Dismissals" are, then subsort by counties to see if we have problematic counties routinely dismissing FWP Game Warden citations.

The data here, will be beneficial for hunting/angling conservation groups, FWP CAC members, during legislative sessions, FWP Commission meetings, EQC meetings, County Commission meetings, etc.

Kat, please continue to fight the good fight. Your efforts are appreciated!!!

katqanna said:

What are we paying for? Why the double standard?

Click to expand...

I depends on whose ox is being gored. Failure to prosecute one crime is bad, but failure to prosecute another crime is good. It is my understanding though, that if you can get away with it, it's okay. Especially if the DA/establishment tells law enforcement to stand down.

Sorry for the last minute notice, packed for the month long stay in the tundra of North Montana and arrived, set up computer shop here, finally got the Forest Service Pat Tabor complaints scanned, so here they are.

Forest Service complaints pdf.

As you will see, the complaints cover the following: For years Mr. Tabor had been dumping manure from his corrals onto FS land, which was not only producing many noxious weeds (including Canada Thistle and St. Johnswort), but included a large amount of bailing twine, over 2 large garbage bags worth, near a riparian area. Swan Mountain Outfitters reportedly had a large cache stored in the wilderness up Lion Creek,; access to the trail is not user friendly to the public as it is almost exclusively used by SMO guides and clients with a negative attitude to the public; parking and stock containment minimal at best as students, guides, clients and employees of SMO dominating utilization; horse manure in the stream running into Pony Lake, the trail up to Lake heavily used with SMO wranglers stating a crew, in association with SMO "improved" the trail, widening it with stumps and trees sawed out of the way, rocks pried from the tred and narrow spots pulaskied back into the hill to make the tred wider at a site designated as proposed wilderness.

The FWP Citations cover:There are 5 FWP Game Warden citations against Patrick Tabor, license number 11300, for violations of MCA 37-47-344, 37-47-201 and ARM 24.171.2301 (1b) involving subcontracting business, utilizing State DNRC lands/waters without a commercial license (4 different dates) and failure to keep true and accurate reports. Lake County dismissed these citations without going to trial. Per a conversation with Warden Bowen, there were more Tabor violations than they issued citations for.

Tabor's appointment ended in October and is up for re-appointment, so I wrote Governor Bullock, Tim Baker, Tracy Stone-Manning and Stacy Otterstrom stating, As a president and as a Board of Outfitters member, I feel Tabor should hold himself to a high standard of ethics, an example to other outfitters and guides in Montana. Unfortunately, I do not feel that he has upheld this standard and is not worthy of re-appointment for the reasons above and included the pdfs. I feel that the Tabor citations (additional violations) and FS complaints show a pattern of viewing and utilizing our public lands/resources as private, rather than respecting them as public. Mr. Tabor's failure to keep true and accurate records is more disconcerting in view of MOGA's proposal to amend ARM to remove a variety of reporting data, one of which is proposed by Tabor involving operations plans and outfitter records. Re-appointing Patrick Tabor to the Board of Outfitting will not only reflect poorly on the ethics and standards the Board should be representing, but also give a black eye to this administration for the appointment.


The Board of Outfitting is meeting the 12th-14th. Click on the agendas to see the particular business. They are holding elections for the chair and vice chair, which Tabor has held, so I included the information to the Board of Outfitting as well and Commissioner Pam Bucy, Department of Labor and Industry.

Since changing a number of the Administrative Rules of Montana are being proposed, involving records reporting, I concluded - Mr. Tabor's failure to keep true and accurate records is more disconcerting in view of MOGA's proposal to amend ARM to remove a variety of reporting data, one of which is proposed by Tabor involving operations plans and outfitter records. Electing Patrick Tabor will reflect poorly on the ethics and standards the Board should be representing.

Additionally, these Tabor citations (attached) are a perfect example of why the Operations Plans and Outfitter Records ARM should not be amended to remove the required data. Public lands/waters and public resources (fish & wildlife biology data for example) are involved, requiring transparency and accountability, not increased privatization (of records). Records data, inclusive of hunting districts, species and sex, date, location of harvest data, client logs, contact information and outfitter operation plans should be freely available to FWP, DNRC, and federal agencies, such as US Forest Service and BLM.
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Remember that Outfitter map debacle, with the Board of Outfitters saying it was inaccurate, yeah, well we need that data reporting, not less reporting. At least in my opinion.

Hopefully, some of y'all will take a few moments and send public comments.

I have been sorting all this 2010-2015 citation information, just getting finished with the Dismissals reports.

Of the 2273 dismissals for the 6 years, by Region, Region 1 had the most at 618, 416 were from Flathead County. The next largest amount was what they label Region 3 & 4, which is just Lewis and Clark County, at 201. For Region 7, the highest county was Bighorn, at 77, Rosebud was only 20. You nailed that one Antlerradar.

Prairie County was the only county with 0 dismissals.

What is interesting is that the bigger cities, which have higher case loads, are not the highest dismissal counties, a number of the more rural counties are. And based on percentages of citations issued to those dismissed McCone and Pondera are in 40%, which is interesting when I factored in total acreage for a county and the percentage of public lands. McCone has almost 20% public lands and Pondera has almost 16%. Interestingly, often the higher the percentage of public lands in a county, the lower the dismissal rates were.