Archives and Special Collections Mansfield Library, University of Missoula MT 59812-9936 Email: [email protected] Telephone: (406) 243-2053

This transcript represents the nearly verbatim record of an unrehearsed interview. Please bear in mind that you are reading the spoken word rather than the written word.

Oral History Number: 396-022 Interviewee: J. Michael Pichette Interviewer: Bob Brown Date of Interview: May 5, 2005 Project: Bob Brown Oral History Collection

Opinions expressed are those o f the interviewee and not Northwestern Energy.

Bob Brown: We're visiting today with Mike Pichette on the fifth of May, 2005 in his offices in Helena. Mike works for the Northwestern Corporation, but he's also worked for Montana Power Company and as the executive director of the Democratic Party in Montana, for Congressman , for Senator John Melcher, and Governor Ted Schwinden. He has a long history spanning decades of involvement in public service and politics in the state of Montana. Mike, what got you interested in following a career of public service and involvement in politics?

J. Michael Pichette: I guess at the very beginning it was a political family I came into in Great Falls and my high school years. One uncle was an elected official for the city, the treasurer. Another uncle had been deeply involved in politics through his life and worked for the Public Service Commission. So I listened to a lot and we became involved in minor elections to some extent. So I had that background. Didn't intend to be in politics as a career at any point until the spring of 1970. I was returning home to Great Falls from Peace Corps service in Brazil and decided to visit a few friends in Washington, D.C. Walking around the capitol, I spotted Arnold Olsen, who was a congressman from Montana. I thought, "Well heck, I'm a Montana kid. I can go up and talk to my congressman." So I went up and introduced myself and that was it as far as I was concerned. Except when he found out I was from Great Falls, he said, "Well my secretary is from Great Falls, up in my office. She never sees anybody from Great Falls. Go up and talk to her." I said, "I don't know who she is." He insisted, so I went up to meet her and in the course of standing there met his executive assistant, who wanted to talk for a while, and it resulted in a phone call a month later saying, "Would you like to come back and go to work in Washington for Arnold Olsen?" That started a series of job moves that have just led to where we are now, just because we ran into each other in the basement of the capitol.

BB: You know, Mike, I remember you were an outstanding high school student and you were elected to become a delegate to Montana Boys' State and then the Boys Staters elected you to Boys' Nation. You were there in the same Boys' Nation class with President Bill Clinton. I believe you met him, didn't you?

MP: didn't realize that until Governor Clinton was running for president and when he used commercials showing footage from Boys' Nation, I recognized that it had to be the same time, even though I was a year older than he was. The way the Montana Boys' State program worked is that you went a year late instead of the same summer. So yes, it turns out we were there. I

1 J. Michael Pichette Interview, OH 396-022, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. don't remember meeting him at Boys' Nation, but we did exchange Christmas cards, which I subsequently found in my files.

BB: Well that's exciting and interesting and it shows that you were interested in politics also, even as a high school person.

MP: That's true.

BB: So you went to work for Congressman Olsen, lived back in Washington, D.C. How would you describe Congressman Olsen?

MP: I thought first off that he was a great gentleman and he was treated that way by others that came into the office and people who talked about him. He seemed to be very confident about what he was going to do in terms of legislation and voting. He didn't need to sit around and talk to anybody and think it out ahead of time with staff. Of course, I would have been a junior staff member and he might not have chosen to, but those days the congressional staffs were smaller. There were only probably eight or nine of us on the whole staff. I think it would be generally noted that he was in the shadow of the giants of Montana politics at the time he served—Mansfield and Metcalf—and followed their lead probably in a lot of things that went on in Congress. He seemed to me to be a perfectly great guy to work fo r—heart in the right place and doing his job. But 1970, when I joined in the spring, turned out to be the year that he got beat after serving ten years and so I didn't have a long history with his office. It was about nine or ten months.

BB: That was regarded as somewhat of an upset too, wasn't it?

MP: Quite a great upset. Mayor Shoup from Missoula had been the candidate running against him. I remember on the morning after the election I came into the office and the staff said, "Well, Arnold's two thousand votes behind but we think he's still going to pull it out," but of course, that didn't happen. He lost the election and tried again to return but never made it back.

BB: Was there an issue, what happened? Was he just over-confident?

MP: The only issue I can recall Arnold himself mentioning afterwards was a gun control measure that was in the congress that year which —also on the ticket in that election—had supported for his own good reasons. Arnold had gone along in the House on the same issue and he thought that while Mike's stature was enough to carry him through that controversy that the vote for Arnold was too much.

BB: Yes, could be. Now he served on the Post Office and Civil Service Committee, I think, didn't he?

2 J. Michael Pichette Interview, OH 396-022, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. MP: Right.

BB: And was that his only committee?

MP: Boy, I'd have to just go check a directory. That's the only one I remember.

BB: You remember issues he was particularly involved in?

MP: No, I don't because it seemed my assignments didn't involve working on legislation with anyone. The occasional lobbyist would come to the office and I'd visit with them about their issues, but I don't recall him having a big program going on that year, so no, I don't know.

BB: So then you returned to Montana and went to work for the Democratic Party?

MP: No, I started in the fall o f'71 for the Superintendent of Public Instruction Dolores Colburg, working in her office in the research and planning department. I did have a degree in education from college and I had intended—except for that chance meeting in Washington—to come back to Great Falls and look for a teaching job, which I've never actually done. My mother, until her death, insisted that I had pretty much wasted my education and maybe not quite my life by never teaching, which she wanted me to do. In the course of working for Dolores, she asked me to be her campaign manager when she ran for reelection in '72, so that was the next step into the political world that pretty much kept me on track since.

BB: And you had no real background as a political campaign manager but you were just a young guy, politically savvy and interested and so she...

MP: Willing to do the work and she was a strong candidate that was going to be re-elected and basically didn't need a savvy campaign manager, just needed someone to do work.

BB: So you were in her office for several years, then?

MP: Until spring o f'74, when I was offered the chance to be the then-executive secretary, now executive director, of the Montana Democratic Party.

BB: I see. Now Dolores Colburg I think went on to serve as a faculty member at Harvard, didn't she?

MP: I think so. She went back to Maine after her term andspent time there and studied some more and then taught back in the New England area.

BB: And so then you, in '74, which was a great landslide year for Democrats, you were the party's executive secretary during that election. Did you take credit for the massive Democratic victory?

3 J. Michael Pichette Interview, OH 396-022, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. MP: I gave more credit to Watergate.

BB: You couldn't have done it without Nixon, huh? [Laughs]

MP: Right. But the result of that election was stupendous in terms of change. The Democrats ended up with sixty seven members of the Montana House and thirty members of the , which is a two-thirds vote in one and strong control in the other, which made for pretty heady times in the '75 Legislature for the members that had such a large majority and felt they could do what they wanted.

BB: Mike, Tom Judge was governor during this period. I guess Forrest Anderson was early in your political involvement and then Governor Judge was during the time that you were the party executive secretary. Any thoughts or impressions? Any meetings with or anything with Governor Anderson as you first started out? Ron Richards, I think, was prominent on his staff.

MP: When I came to Helena in the fall of '71 Governor Anderson was in office and then Tom Judge ran in '72, so by the second year I was there Governor Anderson was already basically gone and I did not have any dealings with their office. We did work the Constitutional Convention from Superintendent Colburg's office on education issues and that was quite interesting.

BB: Oh, I bet that was interesting. So you probably...I think the delegate Rick Champoux from Kalispell chaired the Education Committee?

MP: Right.

BB: And probably most of your business was before that committee?

MP: I remember there were two assignments that we worked on. One was to retain the superintendent as a constitutional office and the second... You just remarked at the beginning of this tape, yesterday was a meeting of the School Funding Committee for coming up with a basic quality system of education. And the second insistence that Dolores Colburg had at the Con Con was to get the word quality in the definition of what the state school system should include—a basic quality system. So that's coming back now forty years later to be a major issue.

BB: It's become a major issue, and of course the courts have ruled that the Legislature hasn't done an adequate job of funding our system of schools because it hasn't, in the court's opinion, done so in a way that would bring about quality education in Montana. So the definition of the meaning of the word quality is critical to what's going on right now.

MP: Right, it is.

4 J. Michael Pichette Interview, OH 396-022, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. BB: And that word was placed in there, importantly, because of her.

MP: I think so. I can remember her testifying and insisting that basic education could easily be interpreted as minimal education and that that wasn't good enough and that the word quality had to appear in there somewhere to give a sense of excellence being the goal.

BB: Well, I think that's how it's turned out. Any delegate or any impression from the Constitutional Convention stand out in your mind?

MP: Oh, it's sort of fuzzy I guess. I remember meeting at the time, who was on the staff of the Constitutional Convention and dealing more with the staff than the delegates in the role I had. Dale Harris worked there also on the staff. I didn't spend my days watching the session because I had my regular job to do when we weren't working on a specific issue. I remember it being quite a—you could tell at the time it was a momentous thing going on that the state was changing its constitution, and as a person who had taken history in college and [was] interested in government, it was quite an exciting time.

BB: Do you remember, did you happen to be there when Jeanette Rankin spoke?

MP: No. I had forgotten, frankly, that Lindbergh spoke too. I don't know whether I was gone that day or what, but I'm reminded lately that he was there addressing the delegates and I'd forgotten that.

BB: And I think Senator Burton K. Wheeler also made an appearance and spoke to the delegates.

MP: He may have been.

BB: So then you worked as the Party's Executive Secretary and did that bring you up to the legislature during legislative sessions?

MP: Right. There hadn't been very many executive directors of the party at that point. Ron Richards, you mentioned a moment ago, was one of the first. In '72 and that time it was Evan Barrett, who now works on Governor Schweitzer's staff. The way, basically, transition worked in those days is one executive director worked until he was worn out and then he had to find a replacement. I ended up with that simply by having the experience of dealing with the Democratic parties and dinners and officers and so on during Dolores Colburg's reelection and knowing Evan through that and him deciding it was time for him to get out and had to find a victim. The chair at the time was John Bartlett, a wonderful man from Whitefish.

BB: Whom I knew very well.

5 J. Michael Pichette Interview, OH 396-022, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. MP: And he agreed that he would hire me. So that's how that started. But then he asked—the party in those days was very big on writing platforms and developing positions. The platform conventions went on for three days. Now they take a morning. If something was in the platform they wanted the party to be up there testifying on it and working it so the executive director since then has done a lot of work at the legislature.

BB: Were you a delegate to the '72 or '76 National Conventions?

MP: I got to go to '76 as staff to the delegation, by virtue of working at the headquarters. That's the only one I've ever been to.

BB: What do you remember about the '75 legislative session?

MP: I think the realization I had at the time was one I wasn't prepared for. Given so many Democrats were in the legislature, which in Montana necessarily means a variety of philosophical range and they aren't all agreed on everything. I found myself, instead of being the spokesman for a highly partisan operation, that I was more of a mediator and trying to find statements and positions and work that would get people of opposing views within the party together. That was an eye-opener. I felt like I was in a position where I was free to take one side of an issue and then found out that just some of the Democrats were talking to me. I wasn't in charge of anything, but just to have the Party position be represented well took more mediation than it did proselytizing.

BB: Were there any Democrat legislators that stand out in your mind?

MP: Lots. Pat McKittrick for one

BB: From Great Falls.

MP: From Great Falls. Actually, I probably right then developed the respect that keeps me interested in the job I have now for legislators. The lengths they go to leave behind what they're normally making their living at for the length of time it takes to serve...to run, first, which takes longer, and then to serve. And then their willingness to really try to do a good job, both sides of the aisle. Virtually every legislator I've met, with a handful of exceptions, have been outstanding people that were worthy of remark and catching me cold with that question is going to leave a lot of people out, because I did have respect for a lot of them. I can think of Chet Blaylock. If I had a seating chart I could go through and do more justice. Fred Van Valkenburg, of course, of the later years, was one of the most outstanding legislators, I thought.

BB: Now the coal tax was a big issue then.

MP: Right. The '75 legislature, if I'm not mistaken, imposed the 30 percent severance tax on the extraction of coal from Montana. That sounds like a high number now; it sounded like a high

6 J. Michael Pichette Interview, OH 396-022, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. number then, to tax anything at a third of its value. But that was part of what the party had run on and what the individual legislators believed in and it was in the context of coal mining projected to explode in Montana.

BB: In the context of what?

MP: Coal mining expecting to expand in Montana.

BB: So the idea was that since there's this huge demand for coal in Montana, the likelihood that it's going to expand greatly and we might as well collect a high tax off of it.

MP: That, and also the not distant context of copper mining in Montana, where a lot of wealth was extracted without the state feeling it had received its due for it being here. There was a strong feeling that that wasn't going to happen with coal.

BB: We were going to get some money for the general public.

MP: Well, not only were we going to get some money but there was a substantial feeling among legislators and public officials that it shouldn't be mined at all and that a high coal tax might discourage that expansion.

BB: So maybe the thinking was, we'll impose a high tax, high enough that it might discourage the development of the coal, but if the coal is going to be mined then we're really going to get some real money from it.

MP: I wouldn't say that was a consistent position held by everyone, but it was a combination of positions that resulted in enough votes to pass it.

BB: Yes. And then the coal trust. I think legislation creating the Montana coal trust emerged from that session and was on the ballot, or was that from the preceding session?

MP: It seems to me there were a couple of different parts to it, but I know that in the '76 election there was a public vote on the coal trust, or maybe it was on the percentage going into it. I'd have to go back and check, but basically not only did we have the tax but we wanted to save it for future generations and not have it be current spending by the government. By 'we' I mean the state.

BB: You mentioned Senator Fred Van Valkenberg, although I think he came along later.

MP: We should probably talk about him a little later. When you asked for outstanding legislators that came up.

BB: Then also any thoughts or impressions of Governor Judge during that period of time?

7 J. Michael Pichette Interview, OH 396-022, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. MP: Sort of. Despite the position which people would think made you an automatic insider, the chair of the state party, John Bartlett, was much closer to the individual office-holders than the staff in headquarters was. So I didn't spend a lot of time with Governor Judge. W ith his people, yes. John did a lot more and if he were still alive would have been a wonderful interview for your program. So I think my impressions of Tom Judge are probably the same as a lot of other people would say, that he was a popular campaigner, energetic, and pretty successful. Every time he tried something, until he tried to come back in '88, was known correctly for having wonderfully talented people work for him and run his departments and be on his staff.

BB: Are there any of those folks that stand out in your mind, Mike?

MP: Yes, Ron Richards himself. Evan had gone on from the position when I moved into to work for Governor Judge.

BB: Evan Barrett.

MP: Evan Barrett. Jim Flynn, Gary Wicks. Again, we'd have to see a list not to leave people out, but I thought they were a sharp group of people.

BB: Now this has been referred to by some historians, this period we're talking about now, as the second progressive era in Montana politics. The first one, perhaps, was a little longer from somewhere maybe in the 1890s to somewhere up into the 1920s, perhaps. The second one was probably confined mostly to the middle 1950s, maybe the '72, the '78 period, something like that. And you were the party executive secretary of the progressive political party during that period of time.

MP: My service was spring of '74 until January o f'79. No, people think about that as a Democratic decade, but when you go back and take a look, after that '74 election, reducing those large numbers in the '75 legislature, Democratic control disappeared in the next election and the Senate was tied. From that point on, we went through a series of split houses, split control between the executive and legislative, throughout the time until Governor Racicot and the Republicans managed to consolidate control. So I don't know whether you call it backlash to what was going on immediately before or just reversion from the Watergate anomaly back to more centrist politics. But the era has a reputation for being progressive, I think because of the executive branch, because of Governor Judge's program.

BB: And Governor Judge has a reputation for being quite a progressive governor during that period of time. It's also commented that that was a period of high inflation and so generally government had a fair amount of revenues just because of the elasticity of the expansion of the different taxes in place. So he was able, perhaps, to do some—he had more flexibility to do things than other governors.

8 J. Michael Pichette Interview, OH 396-022, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. MP: It seemed like there was money there to spend on things that he wanted, like the Warm Springs facilities and the Boulder School, which needed an awful lot of attention and got it under his leadership. The other thing that sprung up in those days that was not a money matter but part of progressive politics was the campaign regulation. The election laws changed drastically during the seventies. Reporting requirements that are pretty much what we have now came into play. It was kind of the transition between the old way of doing politics and gathering cash for your campaign as you would all hear about in the old days, to the modern rule of limits and disclosure.

BB: Well, and there was an issue involving 64,000 dollars [actually 94,000 dollars] or something or other that was unaccounted for in one of Tom Judge's campaigns, maybe the '72 campaign. That was probably before you were executive secretary, but that was an issue throughout the seventies.

MP: Of course, we had the national impetus from Watergate, but even in the state, right, most states didn't have strong election laws either, as far as reporting contributions and regulating contributions. I think I had an inadvertent and minor role in all of that, sort of by accident. You're right, the question in point was the financing of the governor's '72 election, which was under the old requirements, which simply required a report to the secretary of state at the end of the campaign without much detail, versus the '75 legislature which imposed the new campaign reporting requirements.

And then around Christmas o f'75, somebody in the administration was making a collection for some project, some private event or something—I can't remember what it was—and wanted contributions from people to fund this thing. When I asked, "Well, who do I make the check out to?" they said, "Make it out to 'Friends of Tom Judge,"' which was the name of his '72 campaign committee. I remember saying to the governor's counsel, "You guys don't still have that committee in existence, do you?" They said, "Yes." I said, "Well, January 1st the new campaign laws take effect. You should probably read them and figure out if you don't need a new committee." Then, trying to find out what the final report would be for that old committee, not because of me, but because they needed to do it, sort of resulted in the accounting that resulted in making the 96,000 dollars hard to find. [Laughs] I'm sorry if I was the only person who raised that question, but it was at the time when the new law was taking effect and they had to clean up their books from the previous process.

BB: Well the mystery of the 96,000 dollars I know was a... That maybe surfaced as an issue in the '76 campaign.

MP: Very much, because the Republicans used it to try to elect Bob Woodall instead of Tom Judge, who was running for re-election.

9 J. Michael Pichette Interview, OH 396-022, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. BB: And the issue was that the Governor Judge campaign in 1972 had collected contributions, as all political candidates do, but 96,000 dollars of those contributions somehow or another was unaccounted for.

MP: I think that was the issue, yes.

BB: That was the issue, so then the question that the Republicans raised was who got the 96,000 dollars and that sort of thing, to try to make a distinction between a contribution and a bribe, I suppose.

MP: Or somebody just taking the money as tax-free income. In all the time I was around the people that you asked me about, I never heard anybody who seemed to think they knew what happened to it. I really, in the end, chalked it up to really lousy bookkeeping and the fact that reporting and record-keeping was not required in any great detail and if you didn't pay attention to it, it was probably easy to lose track of. But it was still a sizeable amount.

BB: Did you ever become acquainted with a fellow named Dean Hart in all this business?

MP: Yes.

BB: Now he was staff member for Senator Mansfield, right?

MP: When I knew him he was the Montana staff person in Washington, D.C. for the governor's office. But I think he had been working for Mansfield before he took that.

BB: Your impressions of Mansfield?

MP: I think—well, I'm quite sure since you triggered my memory—that when I was back in D.C. for Boys Nation as a graduate of high school at that point, part of the program was to have lunch with each state delegation for their two Boys Nation Senators, and so that took place with Senator Mansfield, Senator Metcalf, and Representative Olsen. I think there's somewhere a picture that they took and gave me that must be in my file. So that's the first time I met him. Of course, you're impressed with anybody that was in the headlines all the time. I was subsequently working back there twice when he was around and through the headquarters. I guess I had to say that I never felt personally warm to him. I admire his great accomplishments and his record as Majority Leader and so on. It wasn't, frankly, until a year ago now, after reading the biography of him that came out last year, that I really learned to respect what he was accomplishing behind the scenes and that his sort of humble, unassuming style wasn't hiding inaction. In fact, it was real and he was doing his best and probably accomplished an awful lot in regards to the Vietnam War. But I never personally gave him credit for it until I read [Don] Oberdorfer's book. So that I recommend as a read to anyone who wants to understand Mansfield because I think it's well documented what he did accomplish, and in those days people our age were—nothing could be done to stop the war soon enough and even though

10 J. Michael Pichette Interview, OH 396-022, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. Mansfield came to have a reputation generally as being opposed to the war, it wasn't clear that he had actually been trying to get anything done until Oberdorfer's book came out, at least in my experience. So I have more respect for him and fondness for him in retrospect than I probably did when we met.

BB: Senator Metcalf?

MP: Senator Metcalf was a much more accessible person and less formal when you were around him. Very emotional in the sense of didn't care to couch what he had to say in any tactful terms if he didn't feel tactful at the moment. In my position at the party headquarters I had occasion to deal with him. I guess I can say... Let's see, it would have been 1976. I would have been twenty, well, almost thirty years old. When you've been yelled at for twenty seven straight minutes by without a chance to get a word in edgewise, you're prepared to deal with most anything that could happen to you. [Laughs]

BB: That happened to you?

MP: Yes.

BB: What caused that?

MP: I set him off somehow. I was sent down to his Helena Senate office after the '76 election by John Bartlett, who said, "Lee Metcalf wants to see you." I didn't know what it was about. So Ruth Barrett, his secretary, showed me in and I remember saying something to the effect—just by way of greeting—that "Senator, I'm sure you're glad to be home after the hard year in congress and back in Montana to catch your breath"—something like that. That launched him into basically the line, "Do you think that I come back to Montana for vacation? I'm back here working every day of my life, twenty hours a day," and launched into that for well over twenty minutes of whatever followed and all I could do is sit there with my mouth shut and listen. [Laughs] But I had heard other stories of his temper.

BB: I have heard other stories of his temper.

MP: For some reason I set him off. I didn't know what it was. When we walked out he was calm, but I never knew why he... [Laughs]. But I figured, well, if you can take a chewing from the very best and know that it's not going to get any worse...

BB: But you didn't really know him that well?

MP: No.

BB: Any other experiences with him?

11 J. Michael Pichette Interview, OH 396-022, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. MP: Oh, same sort of thing. We were driving out in eastern Montana one time and I asked him a question that somebody else had asked me to ask him, if I ever got him alone, on something to do with vouchers in education. Not alone in the sense of secret, but just to have his attention. However the way it was that I asked the question set him off again because his answer began, "I would expect that anyone who has been paying attention to public affairs and my career over the past few years wouldn't need to ask that kind of a question," and got another little scolding for not knowing the answer because I hadn't been paying attention to his career. [Laughs] I don't mean that to say that experiences with Lee Metcalf were negative, because they're very positive. Once you got through that, the rest of the trip was very enjoyable. You asked what stands out—the times you get your butt chewed are the things that stand out. [Laughs]

BB: Sure. Now you probably also would have had some important contact with Senator Melcher—Congressman Melcher and Senator Melcher—during that same period?

MP: That kind of takes us to the next step, because in the course of Senator Mansfield deciding in '76 not to run for re-election, I remember being privileged to come along with John Bartlett when he met with Senator Mansfield right after that announcement and said, "I know I can't talk you out of it, senator, but I have to make an effort," and that was the end of the effort because Mike said, "Right, you can't talk me out of it." But the immediate candidate on the Democratic side was John Melcher, the congressman from the eastern district. So I got to know him a little better. I met him back when I worked for Arnold Olsen in '70 because John was there already. Pat Williams was on John Melcher's staff and that's where I got to know Pat Williams. So we knew each other. Melcher, first of all, is not the type to shrink at the notion of picking up and calling anybody he wanted to and telling them what he wanted them to do. But of course, he was a strong candidate in that election and won the election to the U.S. Senate. As it turns out, subsequently in '78, he asked me to join his staff in Washington. That was the reason I left the Democratic headquarters and went back to Washington in January of '79 to work for Melcher.

BB: So you then lived back in Washington D.C. for two years?

MP: Close to five.

BB: Five years, and worked on Melcher's staff.

MP: Actually Alicia, my wife, had been involved in the '78 campaign for Pat Williams for congress and she had been offered a job by Pat back in Washington on his staff first. And when I had the offer from Melcher, it seemed like a great thing to do for a young couple with no kids and adventure ahead.

BB: So Alicia worked for Pat Williams at the same time that you worked for Senator Melcher, and they were both brand new members...

12 J. Michael Pichette Interview, OH 396-022, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. MP: Right. Well, John had two years in the Senate. He went back in '76.

BB: I see. Were you involved in issues, particular issues while on Melcher's staff?

MP: Some there, yes. On a senator's staff, there's really two things to do—work on the legislative issues or work on casework for people in the state who need help with the federal government. Offices are all organized according to the desires of the Senator, so they're all different. I remember at the time when John was talking to me about coming to work for him, I said, "What are your goals? What are the things that you're working on that I could either know something about or help?" The first thing he wanted at that point was...I can remember his words almost exactly, he says, "I want a fair chance for the Northern Tier Pipeline to get built." I didn't end up working on that, but that kind of tells me now, in retrospect, that his interest was really in energy development and economic development in Montana and jobs. The Northern Tier Pipeline—I don't even remember exactly where it went—but it seems to me it went from Seattle to somewhere in the Midwest and would have crossed through Montana.

BB: And it was a network for...

MP: Oil.

BB: For oil, for processing, refining, and transporting oil.

MP: Right. It seems to me it would involve unloading in Seattle and shipping east, but like I say, I didn't ever work on that project and I can't remember much about it.

BB: Now that never happened.

MP: It never came about, no. You need an awful lot of federal permits for land crossings and state permits. But his interest, as I saw working for him, was largely federal land issues, as far as development in environmentally conscious ways. Nobody probably described him as a great environmentalist, but that was a mistake because he wanted everything accomplished in a way that it would be a success. He didn't want something forced on anybody who would continue to argue that it wasn't a good project, et cetera, including the wilderness bills, which I did work on. He wanted wilderness designated but he didn't want it to be a lingering sore afterwards because the certain lands were included or left out. So generally, I think, those were the issues that he cared most about. He also worked a lot with the Indian tribes. That mattered to him what happened with them. I didn't work on those issues.

BB: So your issues were more the natural resource kinds of issues.

MP: That seemed to be there, yes, and plus some administrative duties. I'd have to probably be asked something specific to remember many of them, but...

13 J. Michael Pichette Interview, OH 396-022, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. BB: Well, maybe it might be interesting if you'd kind of describe a day in the life of a staff person on the staff of the U.S. Senate in the 1980s when you were back there.

MP: Well, I'd say the same thing, that there were a hundred different staffs with a hundred different days, but for John, he liked to get in early. The two senior guys on the staff were usually there by 6:30 or so.

BB: Who were they?

MP: Ben Straughn and Jim Rock. Unless John had something else to do somewhere, he liked to be there early too. We actually lived on the same arterial, so on occasion we'd ride into work together. Usually he wanted me to pick him up, but occasionally I needed a ride too. [Laughs] So that would start early. And of course with the Montana time difference, you get into work at seven and it's already nine in Montana. No, I take that back. It's the other way around. I remember he liked to talk to Francis Bardanouve a lot, who was a legislator from Harlem. We'd be in the office around 7:30 or 7:15 and he'd yell out, "Get Francis on the phone," and I'd say- well, the first time I said, "John, it's only 5:15 in Montana. Are you sure you want me ringing his house?" He says, "Call now or he'll be gone," because Francis was a farm er and indeed you'd call and he was already done with breakfast and he had a few minutes to talk to John before he went out. Then, depending on what your daily assignment was, you mostly worked in the office.

Two or three of the staff had committee liaison assignments and that would take them to committee hearings or committee meetings or whatever, working on John's legislation. He did an awful lot of casework for people with social security, veterans' claims, Medicare and Medicaid issues that people had—frankly, I think the attitude of a U.S. senator was we'll move the world for everybody in Montana until we find out we can't. Whatever kind of problem they had. Alicia handled immigration affairs for Pat Williams and it was the same thing—we'll take on any task until we find out it's impossible. So the staff casework took an awful lot of the total tim e of people. Then John also did not have a lot of bills with his name on it that he was trying to pass. He did like to put amendments, which is the way it works in Congress—there are only for every 10,000 bills introduced there may only be two or three hundred that ever pass through under a number and a title and people put amendments on to get what they want from another bill. John wasn't too over-concerned with protocol when it came to that sort of thing.

One thing I do remember was there was an appropriations bill going through for some agency and John told me that morning, he said, "Get an amendment ready for that bill to do something about something else in Montana." Totally unrelated. I said, "John, do you think that's going to work?" He says, "Why wouldn't it work?" I said, "Well, it doesn't have anything to do with the bill. It's not going to be germane. All it takes is a senator to say, 'It's not germane,' and you won't be able to offer it." He said, "It will be germane if I and fifty other senators say it's

14 J. Michael Pichette Interview, OH 396-022, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. germane." [Laughs] And they did. So he had his votes rounded up ahead of time and nobody knows how. He just probably worked the floor with his own contacts with individual members and got what he wanted done that way.

BB: Now I think I remember a story somewhere back in my memory of Melcher calling staff people up at home, late at night or on the weekend or whatever.

MP: Well, to finish the rest of your first question, yes, it isn't like an eight-to-five job. Even earlier, when I'd been working for Olson, if you thought five o'clock was the end of your day, you were mistaken, basically, because there was plenty of work to do. You always had to leave something for the next day, but I could only get out of there by six if I didn't have my car, because that was the last bus that left to get out to Prince Georges County. So I could leave by six if I had to catch the bus. And then weekends.

John—I guess I'd stress the word personal when you describe John's personal staff, because he really felt your time was his and he'd given you this good job and when he had the time to think about stuff, it was that time he wanted to call and talk to you about it, whether that happened to be during the office hours or on a Sunday afternoon or whenever. So I think it was actually to the point of irritation of some staff members that you never really could know that you had two hours where you weren't going to be called about something and so you just made yourself unavailable. In particular, I can remember—this was before cell phones—there was this great sigh of relief around the office every Friday when he would get on an airplane to go back to Montana because we knew there were six hours where he couldn't phone anywhere except for the Minneapolis airport. [Laughs] That was an effect of an active mind. He was in Montana maybe driving around and it wasn't like he was looking at the scenery. He was thinking about what he was supposed to be doing, and if that meant he could think of something he needed from his railroad staff, that's when he needed the information. It went with the job.

BB: If I asked you just in a few sentences to profile John Melcher, to just describe John Melcher from your long association with him, how would you describe him?

MP: I guess the same thing I said earlier about Arnold Olson, in a way—that he happened to serve in Montana politics in the time of giants and although he was the successor to Mike Mansfield and Mike Mansfield was no longer in the senate, Mike Mansfield's shadow was still there. I think it was difficult for John to —I don't mean to sound psychoanalytical—but probably to deal with the same people that had dealt with Mike Mansfield and say, "Now I'm the senator from Montana and this is what I want to get done," and not having the automatic clout, obviously, that your predecessor would have had. So I think he dealt with that quite well by just getting his work done in the committees—Agriculture Committee, Energy Committee, Indian Affairs Committee—probably wanting to achieve some renown, but not being interested in doing it in a showmanship way. I think he'd rather believe that eventually people would understand everything he got done, he just did it through work and not through press conferences and speeches and being in the limelight.

15 J. Michael Pichette Interview, OH 396-022, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. He was kind o f—well, I w on't try to describe it with an adjective—but he had the kindest and most generous and gracious personal side to people, including families of staff members. Always very thoughtful and pleasant to be around. He'd have staff out to his house or we'd have Friday afternoon functions or whenever we'd be together he was very considerate of all that. At the same time, he could almost work you to death, as if the only thing you had to do in life was to be in that office. So it wasn't Jekyll and Hyde, but it was just two different sides of working for him that would keep you sort of, Which John am I going to run into today? sort of thing.

BB: I think he also had an undiplomatic side. He could be pretty abrupt, at least I've had that experience with him.

MP: That's correct. In my dual history of having worked for both Schwinden and Melcher, both of whom are that way, it's a very comforting sort of trait in a boss because you don't have to really worry about what he's thinking—they'll tell you and it'll be straight. But getting the two of them, or two people of that same ilk, together makes for interesting scenes. [Laughs] I remember an incident where John was headed out to the AFL-CIO convention in Montana and for some reason a guy then—a business manager for one of the unions named Bill McColley— had been making fairly strong statements in the paper, anti-Melcher, for some reason. I can't even remember what the reasons were. And Bill McColley, on top of that, was quite renowned informally for his settling of problems with his fists. He'd made some strong remarks about Melcher and that he better not show his face in Billings and this is what's going to happen if we (McColley & Melcher) talk. So I was with him (Melcher) when he went out there and he gave a speech or whatever in the main hall and came out the side door and there was Bill McColley in the hall and I thought, "Oh my God, what's going to happen here?" Melcher just looked at him and said, "McColley, why are you being such a son of a bitch?" It took him by such surprise, you know, that the guy he was going to show one way or another just caught him up short, that Bill had to answer the question and they ended up standing there and talking for a while. John wasn't going to be backing down on anything: "If you've got a problem with me, what is it?" [Laughs]

BB: Now you mentioned that the outspokenness of Melcher and the outspokenness of Schwinden resulted in some direct conversations between the two of them? Were you were ever a witness to anything like that?

MP: Well I only remember one incident—well, I remember two incidents, actually. One was Ted Schwinden was coming back as governor, which would have been the early '80s, to meet with a delegation on perhaps a series of issues, but it struck me that it was on the Wilderness Bill in particular at that time. In so doing, had called Stan Kimmett, who was secretary of the U.S. Senate, and asked for a meeting room, then called and told the delegation members, this is what we've got. I remember Melcher starting the meeting, when we walked in, by saying, "This is Washington, D.C. If we're going to have a meeting, if we're going to have any rooms, I'll be

16 J. Michael Pichette Interview, OH 396-022, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. the one to set it up," which is a fairly icy start to what they were going to talk about and the meeting didn't turn out to be very productive. Then from Ted's side, later, talking to me, it was, "Why would I put the Senator and his staff to the trouble of setting that up when I wanted the meeting. I thought it was the courteous thing to do is to get the room." So, miscommunication, but on the other hand, it wasn't something that...if it was going to irritate him, he was going to tell him about it. [Laughs].

BB: You say there was another similar incident?

MP: In—what year would it have been—'88, I was then working for Ted back in Montana and John was up for re-election in the Senate. A guy from Missoula that knew everyone came over and asked for an appointment with Ted. Ted always had some staff member sit in on appointments, either for a reason or just whoever was available and I was sitting there that day. The guy says, "Well, I'm here to ask you a question, Governor." Ted says, "Well what's that?" He says, "John Melcher wants to know if you're thinking of running against him in the primary." Ted says, "There's my phone. If John Melcher wants to know, he can call me." [Laughs]. There wasn't much left to talk about after that and the guy left.

BB: Do you think he might have been considering running for the U.S. Senate ever?

MP: No.

BB: I never heard that.

MP: He made it very clear, actually, and said so to anybody that asked, that it was beyond him to imagine why anybody who had served as an executive would ever leave the governorship and go to be part of the legislative process with a hundred other people all trying to run the place. [Laughs]

BB: Mike, I want to talk to you about electrical deregulation, but I also want to talk to you about your experiences with Governor Schwinden. We've got, oh, twenty, twenty-five minutes left of the interview. So maybe we can begin by just maybe your describing your duties with Governor Schwinden and some of the main issues that surfaced in the legislature during the period of tim e that you were on his staff.

MP: Oh boy. I think that latter part is better left to somebody that actually looks at the record. Ted hired me in the summer of '83, which was a good time for... By then we had three children in Washington, D.C. and were looking for a better place to be with the kids getting close to school age. So I was delighted to come back and work for Ted. One of the things I liked a lot about that job was coordinating the State Capitol for a Day program, which in essence was a pretty simple idea where one day a month he would move for a full day out to another outlying town in M ontana—county seats, usually—and set up shop and conduct the day's business there, largely centered around the local people and their issues. So that gave me a chance to

17 J. Michael Pichette Interview, OH 396-022, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. travel around Montana, places I'd never been, and meet mayors and county commissioners that I'd never had a chance to because I'd do the advance and then accompany [him] on the day.

Got to be the office liaison to the first Flathead Basin Commission, which was interesting work, talking about preserving the Flathead water quality in the face of the growing possibility of coal and oil development in Canada, and decided to protect that resource. Got to serve with him as a liaison to the Mansfield Foundation. The Governor was chair of the board of directors and that was fascinating to watch that develop and to see the appropriation come through from congress to get it off the ground and to work with all the people who had an interest in Mike Mansfield and also had an interest in the center that would be established in his name and the problems of finding real estate and building a center, which was part of the plan then and has never happened, except for, of course, the buildings on campus. And even got to serve for six months or so as executive director of the (Mansfield) Foundation when they were between staff, and so that was a good assignment.

BB: Were you in Missoula at that time?

MP: No, the headquarters for the Foundation were actually in Helena at the time. That was nice. Working for Ted—the man's integrity and honesty were so unquestioned that for staff to come to work every day it was like fresh air. You'd come to work knowing that whatever you were going to work on was going to be real and it was going to be worthwhile and you were never going to be asked to do anything that you thought would be questionable. The atmosphere was just so good that way that you knew he would trust you to keep your nose clean and we could all trust him to never consider anything that would be unethical or anything. That so pervaded all the work we did that it was a real delight to work there. Also helped out as sort of a fallback speechwriter when the main people got busy, and that was fun to do. He was a pretty easy guy to write speeches for. He liked them short and he liked them informative. Of course, he didn't use a lot of them. [Laughs] He liked a written speech prepared but then he would work it over and give it his own way. But it was fun to see some of that come to fruition.

BB: I remember him as—and I don't know if this is a contradiction or not, it probably isn't—as someone who was not particularly liberal, but a very partisan Democrat.

MP: Yes, I think that's true. He never had the luxury in his four legislative sessions as governor to have a Democratic legislature. The closest was one House Democrat and the other one tied. But the rest of the time he worked with Republicans. So I don't think as a practical matter he allowed his partisanship to dominate very much because he had to get everything through a Republican legislature, at least one house, all the time. But I think he cared very much about the Democratic Party and what he could do for it and how it was better to have Democrats in office than Republicans.

18 J. Michael Pichette Interview, OH 396-022, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. BB: You think of the Judge years as years when there was money to spend and the Judge administration as spending money and creating new programs and saving the environment and doing progressive kinds of things, many of which cost money. And then of course the economy turned in a different direction. And so during the period of the Schwinden years, you think of austere budget management, you think of—at least I think of—Schwinden as being a pretty conservative governor in terms of fiscal matters, which I think Republicans generally expected and supported, and which sometimes dismayed Democrats, especially the education community. But there was never any mistaking the fact that Schwinden was a partisan Democrat, at least that was always my impression.

MP: Yes, I think that's true. You didn't hear him giving speeches at Democratic dinners assailing the worth or the rights of the Republicans to have their views, but he would be very strong on why what the Democrats stood for was right. For one thing, he just didn't have personal animosities towards people, so he isn't going to give a speech assailing Republicans when so many of them were his friends.

BB: How would you characterize—during your period of time you were the party executive; you worked for Congressman Olsen, who would have been a mainstream Democrat during that period of time; Senator Melcher, who probably was, Tom Judge, who was, Ted Schwinden, who was, maybe to a lesser degree because of the situation he was placed in. If you could encapsulate Democratic Party philosophy during the period of time that you were involved in politics as a Democratic Party person or working for these important Democratic officials in Montana, how would you encapsulate that?

MP: I think it changed during that time and I didn't particularly see it as it was happening but looking back in the last few years as to the Party's coming in and out of favor, I think the Democratic Party changed in my earliest days, like I said, with the family in Great Falls and on into the time I started working for it, I always thought of the Democratic Party as being of the interests of organized labor and unorganized workers who needed a fair shake. The VFW and veterans, urban officials and voters, largely, except for Billings and that coalition with senior citizens and the Farmers Union being sort of broad enough to be the party that could win enough votes and also stood for a lot of things that needed to be done. Over time, I think the party—everybody could argue whether it changed or not—but certainly the perception of the Democratic Party changed to being more interested in environmental issues and sort of fringe social issues and other things that were not that original group of mainstream workers, veterans, farmers, seniors, and the Party sort of lost the confidence, I think, of a large number of the voters, which the Republicans quickly jumped on, for good reason. So that transition was going on all this time that I was working there and like I say, I didn't see it happening, but looking back I think it did happen.

BB: Then you left the Schwinden administration at the end of Governor Schwinden's term in office in 1988 and you went to work for the Montana Power Company at that time?

19 J. Michael Pichette Interview, OH 396-022, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. MP: Right.

BB: How did that happen?

MP: Ted came into the staff spring of '88 and announced that he was not going to seek the third term, which at that time he could. Term limits had not been imposed yet and he was so strong, he was probably favored to run again and win. But he said eight years was enough and he wasn't going to run. Of course that was before the primary, so the rest of the election season unfolded and people on the staff necessarily had to start looking for work, which I didn't really get around to doing until about November. But when I'd been working for Melcher, on a couple of occasions officers and people from the Power Company would be in D.C. and a guy named Jack Burke had on more than one occasion to some of us on the staff said, "You know, you people should be looking to your future because the jobs you have now are stepping stones to better things later, including working for the Power Company." And in the course of that time, the guy I mentioned earlier, Jim Rock, did, when Melcher got beat, go to work for the Power Company. So there was a friend who had made that transition.

Over the course of all those years, I'd had occasion to be around John Lahr, who was the head lobbyist for the Power Company at the end of the '80s and appreciated and liked him. So we just started talking one day—well, I had actually... Paul Schmechel had been on the Mansfield board of trustees and I'd sort of worked for him as that interim executive director. So I had asked him one day to keep me in mind if they ever needed someone and then once the term was ending I said the same thing to Lahr and it just ended up that they thought that was a good idea and so I came to work on a temporary basis and ended up going on permanent.

BB: And you were involved in various issues, of course, beginning in 1988 up through the time when we're talking now, when Montana Power Company has ceased to exist under that name and have been taken over by the Northwestern Corporation. But the big issue, I think, Mike, during the period of time that you have the job you have now, was that the so-called electrical deregulation. Talk a little bit about that.

MP: Okay. The basic situation, which I think can be verified in the record because the Public Service Commission was holding meetings concerning it, was the question of whether monopoly utilities could continue to be the model for supplying electricity to all customers. The specific question was whether industrial customers could continue to compete in their industries without a choice of energy supply, because a monopoly supplier didn't offer any choice. The notion spreading around the country was that this last bastion of protected monopoly was about to fall and that certainly large manufacturing companies in California paying high rates there would be better off, and their workers would be better off, and the state would be better off, if they could buy their electricity from Nevada. That choice wasn't allowed under the monopoly system. So the large industrial customers were seriously, for the first time, looking at ways to get cheaper power.

20 J. Michael Pichette Interview, OH 396-022, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. It had always been cheap in Montana. One of the things that constantly is thrown up about that whole debate is that Montana had the sixth lowest priced electricity in the country at the time. But what they forget to mention that four of the other five are our neighboring states, because the northwest had lower priced power than practically anywhere. So the industrial customers in Montana had low rates on a national basis but they weren't as low as their competitors in Idaho, the Dakotas, and Wyoming—particularly Idaho, which is an entirely hydroelectric system. Stone Container, for example, hypothetically at least, because I don't want to say I know which customers were the prime movers in the debate, but just as an example, if Stone Container, with all the electricity it uses, could buy it for ten or fifteen percent cheaper from Idaho Power, they'd want to. But under the system they couldn't. So the basic movement was our customers—Montana Power's customers—trying to get off our system and saying the option is seriously that we might not be able to continue in business, or we might have to generate our own, or we're just going to figure out a way to get off your system, monopoly or not.

The situation that put the Montana Power Company in was kind of difficult. First of all, why would Montana Power want to lose its customers, which is what you'd get if you go to customer choice. They've had a monopoly with guaranteed customers, guaranteed sales until somebody went out of business, a good chance to earn a profit—it had worked for a hundred years, and now all of a sudden we want to give away our customers. And so it took a lot of change in the cultural thinking in the company say, well, no, we don't want to lose our customers, but if they're going to go anyway, what's going to happen? Under the rate structure in Montana, the large companies argued that they paid too much in order to subsidize the residents. Of course, you have that argument every time there was a rate case, the representatives of the residential would say, no, the big companies aren't paying enough of their share. But the bottom line was the big companies thought they were paying too much and were trying to get out from under it.

So without any change, the company that successfully left would cease to pay its share of the continuing costs of the whole system, which are considered long-term, things like Colstrip power plants. You don't pay them off the first year, you pay them off in the recovery of rates over decades. If a customer that's paying a huge chunk of that leaves, that's not being paid off and one of two things would happen: the customers that are left pay for it, or the Public Service Commission denies the company the opportunity to recover it at all and you take a loss, neither of which the people in Montana Power Company thought was acceptable. So that's the atmosphere that brought us into '96, when the PSC started holding forums on this question and the U.S. Congress was dealing with legislation. Other states were doing it, and basically the notion was, okay, the large customers have made their case to us—they need to have choice— how can we organize this so it doesn't devastate other customers or the company and provide a way for the costs they're leaving behind to be paid by the large customers after they leave, which would take legislation. So that's the context of where that started.

21 J. Michael Pichette Interview, OH 396-022, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. BB: And so from your understanding of it, it really didn't come from Montana Power Company as much as it came from the large customers of Montana Power Company who were interested in taking advantage of this trend that was already going on nationwide to bring about more choice in purchasing electrical power.

MP: Yes. It took a lot of—especially for the older employees and officers, mid-level managers at Montana Power—they just thought it was crazy that we should be supporting the system that was going to take away our customers. Why would we do that? But the top management was convinced we were going to lose them anyway, one way or another. The one mistake I will attribute there was the insistence by the management that, okay, if this choice is such a good deal for you big guys, then everybody ought to have the choice, including the small customers and the residential. One of our assignments in lobbying was to make sure the legislation provided for a choice for residential customers too, all in the notion that there was going to be all this competition and people would be able to get cheaper electricity. I think if we hadn't insisted on applying it to residential customers that the whole thing would have worked smoothly and not been such a big issue.

BB: Well, of course, it surfaced as a big issue in two or three elections in the latter part of the nineties and the early part of this century. There's a feeling that the electrical power, the deregulation—because I'm not even sure how we understand that—I think what we're talking about here, the deregulation] bill has been referred to as that but there's still some regulations, I think, that remain in place.

MP: Yes, I chose the words I did to call it a customer choice bill because that's what it was about was that customers would be able to choose their seller of electricity. What was deregulated was the generation of electricity. Anybody with a dam or a power plant or company building a new one would not be under the state regulation.

BB: And after that happened and the legislation passed and was signed into law by Governor Racicot, then as I remember, didn't the Montana Power Company stock increase in value in the aftermath of that?

MP: I don't know the answer to that specifically.

BB: Where I'm going with this is that not long after deregulation—and I think the resulting increase in Montana Power Company stock—then Montana Power Company sold its generation assets to Pennsylvania Power and Light Company and its transmission assets to Northwestern Company. So of course there's some heartburn about how well that worked out and whether it did and that sort of thing and I think there's a feeling on the part of some people that this was a conspiracy from the beginning to do this.

MP: Oh, I see. In the legislation in '97, there were a number of people who said, okay, if this existing monopoly [inaudible] utility is going to continue to be a player in the future where

22 J. Michael Pichette Interview, OH 396-022, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. people have choice, it can't be allowed to maintain a natural advantage. They wanted to require in the legislation that the utility sell its generation so there would be other parties offering to sell and not the utility itself. We had instructions to resist that at all costs and successfully fought to keep those amendments out of the bill because the company did not want to sell or be forced to sell its generation because, as it turns out, spring of '97 after the legislature leaves, immediately we announce a marketing plan to start selling our power in the west in the open market. Now not only were our customers free to buy from someone else, we were now free to sell to someone else. We sent people to California and Arizona, probably Nevada, to go down and market our power. By the fall, I can remember the people that had been down there came back with their tails between their legs and said, "We have 1 percent of the generation in this market and we can try to make deals, but as soon as Southern Edison or PG&E or Pinnacle or any of the big companies decide to squash us, we're going to be dead." We called back all of our marketers, closed all the offices, and the management said all of a sudden not only are we not a major player in selling power in the west and going to make a lot of money, two-thirds of the capital assets of this company are in generation and if the other competitors decide to squash us it's going to be worthless, we're not going to be able to sell it to anybody. That panicked them, I think—maybe panic is a strong word, but they immediately said, "How can we prevent the loss of these assets?" The only way they could come up with is to sell them. Right or wrong, that's how that happened.

I think the spiral afterwards is familiar to everybody. The difference, I think, in the argument that's generally now legend about dereg, as opposed to what really happened, is people blaming the legislature for what happened afterwards when in fact I think the triggering thing that happened afterwards that hurt Montana was the company's decision to sell the generation. As it turns out, competition hasn't developed to the point where those assets couldn't still be producing for Montana under the ownership of the utility instead of PPL. But at the time, management thought they were a liability instead of an asset. But that wasn't the fault of the legislature, that was the fault of the Board of Directors.

BB: The company made its decision, and it could have made that decision regardless of whether dereg passed.

MP: Sure. It didn't need the dereg law to sell those assets. It still needed PSC approval, but they could make the decision to sell it. So people blame the legislature when—as an employee, I don't tout this an awful lot—but they really should blame the company.

BB: We've got just a couple of three minutes left. Maybe talk just a little if you can, Mike, in conclusion, about—you mentioned the case that the other lobbyists for Montana Power Company made in the legislature, provided they needed to do this. Do you remember much about the arguments on the other side?

MP: I think the tough part was that the other side could clearly paint any number of alternative scenarios about what would happen and be equally justified as we were in what we thought

23 J. Michael Pichette Interview, OH 396-022, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. would happen. We were dealing with the unknown, and the question of would it work was being argued 'yes' by our side and 'no' by others. To tell you the truth, at the time it didn't seem like the biggest deal going on in that session.

BB: And it passed by a pretty lopsided margin, didn't it?

MP: Oh sure, large numbers. Carried on the floor by both parties. It wasn't as difficult, frankly, a bill to lobby as some others we've dealt with over the years because the Public Service Commission had voted in favor of it, there had been weeks of meetings with all the parties that wanted to participate in planning and writing the thing, which is why it got introduced late. There were meetings out at the Colonial [hotel] every week trying to hammer out the details to make it acceptable, so by the time it came in, the forces that would have obstructed it had pretty much had their say in designing it, with the exception of those who didn't participate in the design.

BB: How do you respond to this allegation that the deal was finally done at a late, last minute, secret sort of quick development in the legislature?

MP: It's a fair charge, but it could be leveled against anything that happens the last week of every legislative session.

BB: Yes, but the issue had been alive before then.

MP: The issue had been alive since whenever the PSC had its first forum, in '96, and anybody that wanted to attend all the meetings—

BB: Was that a part of a strategy or how would you —

MP: No, because by comparison, take this year, all our bills, that we carried, were introduced in January and through one house before transmittal and done before the other house even got up to other things. I mean, everybody's strategy is get your stuff in early and get it done. So there wasn't any reason to wait until the last minute. That makes it easier to kill, in my mind.

BB: So that wasn't a part of the Northwestern or Montana Power Company strategy?

MP: No, it just didn't get ready until it got ready.

BB: Anything you want to say in conclusion? We're about at the end of the tape.

MP: No, just thanks for taking this project on. I know you and I both would enjoy doing this and you get the opportunity and I don't. [Laughs] Good luck with it.

BB: Thank you so much, Mike.

24 J. Michael Pichette Interview, OH 396-022, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. [End of Interview]

J. Michael Pichette Interview, OH 396-022, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula.