Is Helena home? Gianforte residency ‘at seat of government’ questioned

The historic Samuel T. Hauser Mansion, 720 Madison Ave., in Helena. On Jan. 8, 2024, Gov. Gianforte and First Lady Susan Gianforte announced private purchase of the home and that it will be gifted to the State of Montana. (Photo courtesy of Big Bear Aerial Productions)

The governor, along with the other five highest-ranking officials elected to lead state government, is supposed to “ reside at the seat of government,” and Gov. Greg Gianforte clearly spends time in Helena.

But, it doesn’t appear he’s made the capital city his regular residence , according to public records and interviews with neighbors.

Public records show the governor votes absentee or by mail in Gallatin County, and he lists a Bozeman address for his Fish, Wildlife and Parks hunting licenses.

Gianforte’s wife, Susan Gianforte, electronically signed for a property tax rebate for their Bozeman home, and Gov. Gianforte is listed as a taxpayer. The law provides rebates for a “principal residence,” or one where a taxpayer has lived for at least seven months of the year.

In January this year, the Governor’s Office announced the Gianfortes had purchased the historic Hauser House in Helena’s mansion district, and MTN News said they planned to move into the 720 Madison Ave., home this summer.

Gianforte and his wife, Susan Gianforte, previously had a residence down the street at 618 Madison Ave.

Neighbors who live on the same block or had a line of sight to the 618 residence said this weekend the Gianfortes moved out roughly three weeks ago, and they generally spent Mondays and Tuesdays there, a scenario that aligns with a year of the governor’s calendar.

In an email last week, Republican Gov. Gianforte declined to answer questions about his residency through a spokesperson.

But questions about residency requirements have come up before in Montana and elsewhere. In West Virginia, Gov. Jim Justice was sued at least a couple of times for not residing at the seat of government, as that state’s constitution also requires.

Justice eventually agreed to live in Charleston, but not before the West Virginia Supreme Court said “‘reside’ means to live, primarily, at the seat of government,” and requires a physical presence “for the duration of his or her term of office,” according to the Charleston Gazette-Mail .

Last year, the Montana Supreme Court found a county attorney in Roosevelt County wasn’t eligible to run for office when he won his election because he hadn’t been a resident at the time. In 2020, the Commissioner of Political Practices found a political candidate with ties to Helena in Lewis and Clark County was, nonetheless, a resident of Beaverhead County.

In Montana, a Great Falls lawyer with a practice that focuses on ensuring even the powerful “play by the rules” said delegates to the Montana Constitutional Convention understood how to write a residency requirement, and they did so.

But she said “there is compelling evidence” that Gianforte doesn’t meet it.

“I view this as yet another example of how this governor thinks basic rules don’t apply to him,” said Caitlin Boland Aarab, with the Boland Aarab law firm.

Records show Bozeman, Gallatin County addresses

The Montana Constitution requires members of the executive branch to “reside at the seat of government,” a requirement that applies not only to the governor, but to the lieutenant governor, secretary of state, attorney general, superintendent of public instruction and auditor.

Montana law also says a person may claim “only one residence,” unless a statutory exception exists.

Jayson O’Neill, who worked for the administration of Gov. Brian Schweitzer, a Democrat, for six years starting in 2007, requested the records related to Gianforte’s place of residence and provided them to the Daily Montanan.

The state of Montana owns a mansion that governors live in, but the house at 2 Carson St. is reported to be in disrepair. The Montana Legislature appropriated $2.3 million for renovations, first in 2019 , but the state postponed the work .

O’Neill said he first became curious about Gianforte’s place of residence after learning renovations there had stalled.

He said he also wondered if Gianforte had taken advantage of his own tax rebate. He saw the First Lady had signed for it, so he decided to look at conservation hunting licenses and voting records to learn more about the governor’s own actions.

“Is he making any good faith effort to reside in the capital city as required by the law and the constitution?” O’Neill said of the question prompting his inquiry. “All evidence I’ve found shows Gianforte is not.”

O’Neill also requested a calendar of all of the governor’s activities but narrowed the request to the 2022 year because of the high cost for the entire record. He paid $265.83 for the 2022 calendar, of which most was redacted.

However, the calendar does indicate Gianforte held events on Madison Avenue on many Mondays and Tuesdays.

O’Neill is involved in separate but related litigation against Gianforte. In that case, he alleges the governor is illegally claiming a special but nonexistent privilege to withhold from the public forms his office used to track proposed legislation.

The Montana Constitution protects the right to know, and a district court judge ordered the governor to turn over the documents to the court for a private review and possible disclosure.

Gianforte appealed to the Montana Supreme Court, and oral arguments are scheduled for September.

Neighbors see governor, activity, on Mondays and Tuesdays

In an email last Friday, the Governor’s Office declined to answer questions about how much time Gianforte spends in Helena. Gianforte is a multimillionaire and has multiple residences.

During the weekend, however, neighbors on the same block as 618 Madison consistently said the Gianfortes were present Mondays and Tuesdays. A couple of them also said they were exceptional neighbors.

Lura Brown, who lives a couple of houses down, said the Gianfortes would hold meetings there Monday and Tuesday evenings, but she doesn’t know how frequently the governor was present at the residence.

“I don’t know how often he was actually there,” said Brown, in the neighborhood since 2017.

Pat Hunt, whose deck overlooks the 618 yard, also said the Gianfortes were at that residence Mondays and Tuesdays.

“When I talked to Susan, she said, ‘We travel the state the rest of the week,’” Hunt said.

Susan Gianforte declined to confirm or correct the statement through an email from the Gianforte Family Foundation; she directed questions to the Governor’s Office. The Governor’s Office did not respond to the question.

Hunt, who has lived in the neighborhood for more than two decades, said she hasn’t known the Gianfortes to have ever had the Madison house as a full-time residence, although while they were there, they were “great neighbors.”

Another neighbor with a direct line of sight also said the governor held events at the house Monday and Tuesday nights for roughly an hour or so. The neighbor said he wouldn’t typically see the governor there the rest of the week.

However, he said he believes Susan Gianforte might have been there more frequently. A neighbor who lives near the Hauser House, Randy Sibbitt, said he saw the First Lady at 618 as well and hopes to introduce himself to the governor.

“I used to walk my dog past his house and saw his wife not inconsistently,” said Sibbitt, whose pet recently died; he confirmed he saw Susan Gianforte likely more frequently than Mondays and Tuesdays and said he assumed the governor was close by.

A couple of neighbors said the governor held an event at the Hauser House last Monday for probably the first time.

In his email, the spokesperson for the governor pointed to a couple of other news articles from January 2024 for reference, one from the Montana Free Press and one from the Independent Record.

The Free Press said Gianforte had previously “split time” between Bozeman and the 618 Madison house, and the IR also reported the governor split time in Bozeman . In another story about the Hauser House purchase, MTN News said the Gianfortes enjoy hospitality.

“We tend to entertain people every night when we are in Helena,” Gianforte told MTN in January.

Joe Menden, who lives almost kitty corner from the Hauser House, said he has seen the Montana and U.S. flags flying at the 618 house during events and sometimes security officers on the porch. He doesn’t remember seeing the governor himself.

“I don’t think either of the houses on this street are their permanent residence,” said Menden, who works from home.

Lawyer: Gianforte ‘outside the bounds’ of Montana Constitution

Aarab, the lawyer from Great Falls, said delegates to the 1972 Montana Constitutional Convention clearly wanted the governor and other members of the executive branch to live in Helena.

They didn’t set the same requirements when they didn’t want them, such as for Montana Supreme Court justices, said Aarab, former editor in chief of the Montana Law Review.

Aarab reviewed the public records O’Neill provided to the Daily Montanan. She agreed the law must allow for some gray area and flexibility, but she said there are limits.

“There is no flexibility in the law in terms of where you register to vote, where you get your property tax rebate, where you pull hunting tags,” said Aarab, who has clerked for the Montana Supreme Court and the federal Ninth Circuit. “You get to pick one residence.”

“If you, the governor, live so full time outside of Helena that you pull tags, you register to vote, you get your rebate (outside of Helena), I think we’re well outside the bounds of what is reasonable,” Aarab said.

She also said Gianforte made the choice to run for governor. He took office in 2021 and is running for his second term this year.

“He’s the one who wanted to give up his life to serve the people of Montana. And I think you’d be hard pressed to find a governor of Montana of either party who hasn’t uprooted his life to serve the state,” she said.

In a phone call, former Gov. Schweitzer said he wasn’t the most popular person in his home when he told his children he was hauling everyone to Helena courtesy of the Montana Constitution.

“My kids had never lived in a town. My border collies had never lived in a town. And yet we did it because it was state law,” Schweitzer said.

Montana Supreme Court, Commissioner of Political Practices address residency questions

In 2023, the Montana Supreme Court found a man who was appointed county attorney in Roosevelt County was not in fact eligible to be a candidate for the job because he did not reside in that county for at least 30 days before the election.

Frank Piocos, who resided in nearby Valley County, filed to run for county attorney in Roosevelt County in January 2022 and won unopposed in November 2022, according to the supreme court order.

Piocos, however, had “continued splitting his time between Yellowstone County and Valley County.” He never felt secure in his own employment with Roosevelt County to “lay down roots,” the order said.

As a result, he lost his job as county attorney. A district court found the election was void because Piocos was “not a qualified elector of Roosevelt County” at the time, a state law requirement for county officers.

The Montana Supreme Court pointed to Montana Code Annotated 13-1-112’s residency requirements for voter registration in its decision. It describes a residence as a place where “habitation is fixed” and an individual “has the intention of returning.”

“An individual may not gain a residence in a county if the individual comes in for temporary purposes without the intention of making that county the individual’s home,” it says.

The order said the lower court relied on a more general statute, MCA 1-1-215, not applicable to voter registration. However, it found the court made the right decision in determining Piocos wasn’t a resident nonetheless.

The more general statute says a residence is the place where a person returns when they aren’t working or where they “repose.”

“There may be only one residence,” it says in part. “If a person claims a residence within Montana for any purpose, then that location is the person’s residence for all purposes unless there is a specific statutory exception.”

In Piocos’ case, the justices disagreed with his argument that a candidate could “simply sleep in a county” prior to the election to establish residency and meet the requirement of being a resident for at least 30 days.

“Merely sleeping in that county would not be enough to establish residency under 13-1-112(8) MCA,” the order said. “That potential candidate would have to show both an act of removal from the old county plus an intent to remain in the new county.”

The justices pointed to another residency case — with the Commissioner of Political Practices — as relevant, too.

In 2020, the Montana Democratic Party director alleged James Brown, a Republican candidate for the Public Service Commission, was a resident of Lewis and Clark County, contrary to swearing he was a resident of Dillon in Beaverhead County.

The Commissioner of Political Practices found otherwise, and the justices cited the case in their Piocos order:

“Brown was a Dillon resident while growing up there, but he lost his Dillon residency in 2013 when he relocated to Helena for several years.

“He then regained his Dillon residency when — although he continued to maintain a residence and a law office in Helena — he moved back to Dillon for a majority of his time, received his personal mail there, registered to vote there, listed his Dillon address in his passport, and registered his vehicle there.”

The Commissioner of Political Practices pointed to Brown’s voter registration change from Helena to Dillon as part of the evidence he had “gained” residence in Beaverhead County:

“Just because candidate Brown maintained business and personal ties to Helena after May of 2019 does not by itself mean that he remained a Helena resident.”

‘The rules don’t apply to him’

Aarab said enforcing the residency requirement for the governor isn’t a simple matter because there’s no enforcement mechanism.

She said a plaintiff could file a “writ of mandamus,” which essentially asks the Montana Supreme Court to require another member of government to follow the law.

A request for a declaratory judgment — for the court to state the meaning of the law — from a district court might be possible as well, she said. However, she said a person would need to show “standing,” or prove they’ve suffered as a result.

“This is a classic example of why we need elected officials to be in it for public service and not private benefit,” Aarab said. “This is just another example of him acting like the rules don’t apply to him. We (citizens) don’t have any recourse because we’ve never been forced to.”

Gianforte received a barrage of criticism, and still does, for vacationing in the Tuscany region of Italy when forecasted floods decimated communities near Yellowstone National Park in 2022.

At the time, his office identified the work he had done remotely, such as verbally authorizing a state disaster declaration, although Lt. Gov. Kristen Juras had served as acting governor in his absence. The governor also returned to Montana the same week.

In West Virginia, Justice’s lawyers had argued that the definition of “reside” wasn’t clear, and the governor needed flexibility to travel. They also said the people of the state understood how much Justice had accomplished despite multiple lawsuits about his residency.

“They know he’s on the job for them every day, either in Charleston or out among the 99 percent of West Virginians who don’t live in the capital,” said the statement from lawyers following allegations that Justice , a wealthy Republican , failed to abide by an earlier settlement to live in the capital.

The Supreme Court disagreed with Justice, but in Montana, Gianforte wouldn’t be the first statewide elected official to buck the requirement to “reside at the seat of government,” if public records and witnesses provide a sufficient account.

The Governor’s Office declined to provide evidence of his Helena residency. The 618 house appeared vacant, and knocks on the door of the Hauser House on Sunday afternoon went unanswered.

In 2019, the Legislative Audit Division found Secretary of State Corey Stapleton was inappropriately commuting between Helena and Billings. The audit dinged him for using a state vehicle to drive from Helena, where he was required to reside, to a “worksite” more than 30 miles away without authorization.

Stapleton gave up the state truck. However, then-Deputy Secretary of State Christi Jacobsen, now Secretary of State, told lawmakers Stapleton continued to “telework” in Billings, albeit on his own dime instead of the taxpayers’, according to reporting from Lee Enterprises .

In the case of Gianforte, O’Neill concludes the governor is “derelict in his duties to Montana,” and his absence from Helena is another example of Gianforte acting as though laws don’t apply to him, “like some sort of anointed king.”

The governor can’t lawfully claim residency in Helena for one purpose and residency in Gallatin County for other purposes at the same time, he said.

“Gianforte created the most expensive Montana in history because he’s been mailing it in from his mansion in Bozeman or wherever he jet-sets, like Tuscany,” O’Neill said. “Everyone is paying the price of Gianforte being derelict in his duties to Montana.”

If the governor is more frequently in Helena than it appears, he hasn’t made a wide impression he’s part of the community. A longtime Helena legislator remembers seeing Republican Gov. Judy Martz, of Butte, and Democrat Gov. Steve Bullock, of Helena, in town.

Rep. Mary Caferro recalls her little boy getting a haircut at JCPenney, and his surprise when Martz, governor from 2001 to 2004, sat down in the chair next to him. She remembers Bullock, governor from 2013 to 2020, walking into Walgreen’s where she worked.

Bullock was born and raised in Helena, but around as governor nonetheless.

“It really is a contrast from other governors,” said Caferro, of Helena.

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