Initiative 164. Support. The payday loan industry is a textbook example of usury in action. According to the initiative’s proponents, current Montana law allows lenders to charge annual interest rates of 650 percent for a 14-day loan, and 300 percent for a 30-day loan. I-164 would cap the rate at 36 percent, the rate currently set for military families.
This industry exists because a segment of our society earns too little to always meet expenses (and yes, a few get themselves into trouble with their feckless ways), and cannot or will not turn to commercial banks for help. But I think it amounts to legalized loan sharking, and it ought to be outlawed. The longer-term solution, of course, is raising wages to livable levels, and providing more financial education and legitimate loan options for help.
Initiative 161. No recommendation. If approved, I-161 would abolish 5,500 outfitter sponsored nonresident big game licenses, replacing them with 5,500 additional general nonresident big game licenses. That seems reasonable to me, as nothing would prohibit the holder of a license from getting in touch with an outfitter. But there’s a whiff of smoke from the outfitter versus independent hunters wars about this that give me pause, and it’s the kind of issue that should be settled by the legislature.
Constitutional convention call 2. Oppose. There is nothing wrong with Montana’s current constitution that cannot be corrected through the constitution’s amendment process. Therefore, there is no need for a new constitutional convention.
Constitutional Initiative 105. Oppose. This would prohibit a real estate transfer tax — a tax that does not exist in Montana. The Chicago based National Association of Realtors provided over 98 percent of the money to quality the initiative for the ballot, and continues to spend heavily promoting it.
Embedding this kind of prohibition in the constitution deprives the legislature of an option it might need to address a crisis. And one wonders what the real estate and farm lobbies have planned for big transfers of real estate since small transfers could be exempted to keep a transfer tax reasonable progressive. A lot of big transfers would involve out-of-state landowners, so one can reasonably infer that the initiative anticipates a booming real estate market for those able to afford a transfer tax. But whatever the motivation, the initiative is out-of-state meddling that voters would do well to reject.