My family has had a cabin up at Georgetown Lake for decades, and watching what’s happened to property taxes over the last ten years has been sickening. Working-class Montana families who inherited modest family places are getting taxed off their own dirt, either forced to sell out or watching properties go back to the bank. Meanwhile, out-of-state investment groups and corporate builders are buying up thousands of acres across the state, dropping massive spec mansions, and hiding behind LLCs while driving the tax base through the roof.

The system is fundamentally broken when a 900-square-foot lake cabin gets assessed like luxury real estate just because an out-of-state developer dropped a 7,000-square-foot compound down the road.

If out-of-state corporate builders want to pave over Montana to build luxury vacation compounds, they should be paying through the nose for every single foot over a standard footprint. We should put a steep, tiered impact fee on residential new construction over 3,500 square feet, scaling up aggressively for anything built under an LLC or corporate entity without verified local ownership. If you’re building an 8,000-square-foot private resort for speculative profit, that impact fee should hit hard enough upfront and annually to make developers think twice.

More importantly, every dime collected from that excess square-footage penalty should go directly into a dedicated fund to offset property taxes for Montana residents and long-held family recreational properties. If a property has been in continuous family ownership for 20-plus years and stays under a modest square footage, it should have an assessment cap that decouples it completely from surrounding luxury sprawl. Local families shouldn't be penalized for keeping a piece of family history intact while out-of-state entities treat the state like an unregulated playground.

Help sign this petition to bring attention to the Montana government for real change and protection against these corporate giants.