Kalispell’s duck debate may be resolved for now, but the discussion continues over whether fowl in general should be living inside city limits.

The city council voted against changing the current animal ordinance to allow ducks on Nov. 7 after hearing from angry residents who complained about the fowl being a nuisance. For the last year residents have been able to keep up to 15 female chickens, but no ducks.

 

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Since its inception in 2009, Kalispell’s DUI court has graduated 20 of its 39 participants, and six are still working toward finishing the program. While those stats are important to founder and municipal court Judge Heidi Ulbricht, there is one number that stands out above the rest: zero.

“Of the 20 that have graduated, none have been rearrested for a driving-under-the-influence violation,” Ulbricht said in an interview last week.

 

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HELENA — A Montana judge abdicated his responsibility when he dismissed a lawsuit by six gay couples seeking the same legal benefits as married couples, the American Civil Liberties Union said Monday in an appeal to the state's highest court.

The six couples, barred from marrying under the state's voter-approved constitutional definition of marriage as between a man and a woman, aren't asking for the right to wed. Instead, they say they want to be able to make decisions like married couples about their families' health care, finances, inheritance and burials.

They say the state is unconstitutionally denying them those benefits even though they are in committed relationships. They asked a district judge earlier this year to declare the current state law unconstitutional and order the law fixed.

The state attorney general's office had argued Montana can't extend spousal benefits to gay couples because those benefits are limited to married couples by definition since voters in 2004 approved the marriage amendment. The Legislature is free to create a new, separate class for couples regardless of sexual orientation, state prosecutors said.

 

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LINCOLN, Neb. — Canadian pipeline developer TransCanada will shift the route of its planned oil pipeline out of the environmentally sensitive Sandhills area of Nebraska, two company officials announced Monday night.

Speaking at a news conference at the Nebraska Capitol, the officials said TransCanada would agree to the new route, a move the company previously claimed wasn't possible, as part of an effort to push through the proposed $7 billion project. They expressed confidence the project would ultimately be approved.

Alex Pourbaix, TransCanada's president for energy and oil pipelines, said rerouting the Keystone XL line would likely require 30 to 40 additional miles of pipe and an additional pumping station. The exact route has not yet been determined, but Pourbaix said Nebraska will play a key role in deciding it.

The announcement follows the federal government's decision last week to delay a decision on a federal permit for the project until it studies new potential routes that avoid the Sandhills area and the Ogallala aquifer as the proposed pipeline carries crude oil from Canada to Texas Gulf Coast refineries.

Debate over the pipeline has drawn international attention focused largely on Nebraska, because the pipeline would cross the Sandhills — an expanse of grass-strewn, loose-soil hills — and part of the Ogallala aquifer, which supplies water to Nebraska and parts of seven other states.

Company officials had claimed that moving the route was impossible because of a U.S. State Department study which found the Sandhills route would leave the smallest environmental footprint.

Pourbaix said he was confident a new route would also avoid the parts of the aquifer that sit closes to the surface, which was a major concern cited by environmentalists and the region's landowners. He said moving it out of the Sandhills region would likely ease many of the concerns posed by landowners.

 

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HELENA — Montana lawmakers said Monday they are uncertain whether they should come up with a backup plan should their crackdown on medical marijuana be struck down in the courts or rejected next year at the ballot box.

The state's tough new medical marijuana law is under attack by the industry both in the courts and with an initiative asking voters to reject the new law at the ballot box in 2012.

A legislative interim committee decided Monday that it will continue to monitor both before making any plans to draft backup legislation in case the new law is struck down.

Republican state Sen. Jason Priest of Red Lodge said there is too much uncertainty around the issue at the moment to draft firm plans. Priest said he thinks most, if not all, of the law will withstand the challenges.

Priest pointed to a recent poll that found 62 percent of respondents favored the overhaul of the pot law adopted by the Legislature earlier this year. That followed news that opponents to the law had been able to collect enough signatures to place a referendum vote on the ballot.

 

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After a long delay, Flathead Electric Cooperative is preparing to begin drilling in the Hot Springs area to explore the possibilities of geothermal energy.

In 2009, Rep. Denny Rehberg secured $491,000 for Flathead Electric Cooperative to use in pursuing geothermal exploration. At the time, the cooperative hoped to start drilling on a piece of land near Hot Springs by the following year, but the project was put on hold after the landowner died.

 

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WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court said Monday it will hear arguments next March over President Barack Obama's health care overhaul — a case that could shake the political landscape just as voters are about to decide if Obama deserves another term.

The decision to hear arguments in the spring allows plenty of time for a decision in late June, just over four months before Election Day. This sets up an election-year showdown over the White House's main domestic policy achievement.

 

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A few years ago, Phil Guiffrida III worked for a technology company that wanted to transfer him out of Kalispell. As a way to stay in his hometown, he quit the job.

“I love this place that much,” he said.

The 1997 Flathead High School graduate has kept his roots intact and hopes to help other residents do the same as the new city councilor for Ward 4.

 

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