The Blog at MSPC

The two-stairway requirement acts as a binding constraint on supply, especially for small and mid-size apartment buildings. It doesn’t just make construction more expensive—it makes many projects impossible to build at all. Entire categories of housing that would otherwise be viable simply never get proposed.

Across Idaho, citizens and journalists have faced inconsistent rules about whether they could film or record public meetings. In some cases, they were told to stop. In others, policies varied from one city or school district to the next. The result wasn’t transparency—it was confusion.

The growth of Idaho and Montana’s largest counties is not happening in isolation. It is part of a broader rebalancing across the West—one driven by policy, affordability, and opportunity.

Health care consolidation in a free market would only occur if patients saw benefits and if patients were the driving force to demand the mergers.

Idaho homebuyers have few attainable choices in the existing marketplace. These proposed policies deregulate the housing restrictions that are barring new entrants, creating more attainable choices in the marketplace.  

Let’s avoid the awkward situation of explaining to Idaho families why a program designed to help them ended up putting them on hold.

The Elevation Award is MSPC’s highest honor, awarded to individuals whose work has elevated public policy, strengthened communities, and inspired principled leadership across the region and nation.

The data suggests that the consequences are measurable—in dollars, in jobs, and in opportunity.

As Idaho’s application window for the Parental Choice Tax Credit has come to a close, the final numbers tell a powerful story. We now know the final numbers submitted to the state tax commission by the the March 15 deadline: 6,069 families applied, covering 13,568 students across the state.

The dinner is part of an MSPC flagship fundraising series which also includes the organization’s Fall Dinner and Montana Liberty Dinner. Collectively, these events are among the largest free-market policy gatherings in the nation, regularly drawing more than 1,400 citizens, business leaders, and policymakers each year.

By working together, educators and industry leaders can ensure that students gain the knowledge and skills necessary to participate in the future AI economy. Through thoughtful collaboration and forward-thinking policies, Idaho is working to prepare students not only to navigate the AI age but to lead it.

Allowing patients, in consultation with their providers, to decide which drugs are best clinically and financially for them should be the goal of health care reform, not damaging price controls.

Officials should be cautious of a bridge program that may be a “rent-seeking” opportunity for two transit agencies that have seen a decline in their usefulness to the traveling public. Instead, officials should look for practical solutions without light rail to build a new bridge that will last for another 100 years.

The people of Washington must now consider a question once familiar to Americans: what recourse remains when government refuses to listen?

Policymakers must now decide whether the overwhelming demand is worth additional investment. No bills this session have offered to expand the program, but there have been plenty of pieces of legislation by opponents wishing to cut it.

The impulse behind House Bill 542—the Stop Harms from Addictive Social Media Act (what lawmakers are calling the Shazam act) —comes from a legitimate concern: protecting kids online.

The agency has cost taxpayers more than $2.3 trillion. Yet despite this enormous investment, student performance has shown little meaningful improvement.

Transparency is high on the list of every politician’s priorities. They should follow them instead of opting to promote a more opaque government that gives unions a massive gift in the form of easy fundraising.

It is now far too late to challenge the constitution’s legality. However, Montanans deserve a constitution that is not under a legal cloud. A state constitutional convention could propose such a document.

With one single vote, lawmakers have decided to defy legal precedent, blow up the state’s business climate, and deny citizens their right of referendum. A trifecta of bad policy that firmly signals “Choose Washington” is a slogan and strategy of the past.