PSC waffles on allowing public comment at ‘atrocious’ meeting

A lawyer for the Public Service Commission argued Tuesday against allowing members of the public who are part of 350 Montana to testify about a proposed and controversial merger.

Then, the PSC didn’t discuss the merger, which was on its agenda.

“There was no explanation given by anybody,” said Jim Parker, one member of the public who drove to Helena from Missoula for the meeting.

In August 2025, NorthWestern Energy announced plans to merge with Black Hills Corp, a South Dakota utility, for a potential $15.4 billion combined enterprise.

350 Montana is participating in that docket, and members of the organization showed up to the PSC’s public meeting Tuesday to give public comment.

The organization has a mission to reduce carbon dioxide concentrations to 350 ppm by advocating for policies to end fossil-fuel burning.

The meeting resulted in a PSC tug-of-war about whether to curtail public comment, the disappearance of an agenda item of significant public interest, and the arrival of a Montana Highway Patrol officer.

As the meeting started, PSC interim chief legal counsel Amanda Webster argued 350 Montana members should not be allowed to give testimony about the merger and should only speak through their lawyer.

Initially, PSC President Jeff Welborn said he would allow limited testimony from them, but PSC Vice President Jennifer Fielder stressed that it would be “unlawful” for a party in a contested case to have dialogue with commissioners.

Fielder asked Webster if the lawyer agreed with her interpretation, and Webster largely did.

However, Webster said “some wiggle room” exists for people who wanted to testify on their personal behalf, as opposed to as a member of the group.

Welborn subsequently said Fielder made a strong point, and he said it would be safer to disallow comment from those members to protect the integrity of the case — an open docket.

But Commissioners Brad Molnar and Randy Pinocci urged Welborn to allow the public to testify.

“There is a public right to participation, and belonging to an organization does not take away the right to be a member of the public,” Molnar said.

He said if the PSC needed to err on one side, it should err on the side of public participation and work on clarifications later.

Welborn eventually agreed to allow members of 350 Montana to testify, but he said the state has strict laws about the way organizations that are parties to a case participate.

As such, Welborn encouraged people to speak in “generalizations and platitudes,” and not offer any comments that could be part of direct testimony in the case.

Parker, a member of 350 Montana, said he was speaking as a citizen, and he asked the PSC to stop or slow the merger, which he described as moving along at a “feverish pace.”

He said NorthWestern Energy was not answering questions about the case, and the public and Public Service Commission needed to have the facts first, especially about the effects of data centers on other customers.

“I believe there’s no good reason for Montana ratepayers, nor your commission, to continue this merger process until NorthWest Energy comes clean and shows us all the hidden truths and consequences to ratepayers in Montana,” Parker said.

After his comments, Fielder asked Parker if his lawyer had helped him with his statement, and he said the lawyer had not.

Jim Roach, another member of the public, said he had only identified himself as a member of 350 Montana because the PSC’s signup sheet had a space for an affiliation. But Roach said he was speaking as a captive ratepayer.

Roach said the reason for the merger wasn’t clear to him, and he wanted to understand it, especially the interest NorthWestern has in data centers; the utility is working with three developers and in conversation with 11 others.

Roach, however, said he did understand the law of supply of demand, or “Economics 101.”

“If you boost the demand for power, and the supply is not there, prices are going to go up,” Roach said. “I don’t see how NorthWestern Energy can say that our prices aren’t going to go up. So that’s a real concern for me, and I’m sure it’s a concern for a lot of people.”

Two other members of the public raised concerns about the merger, and it was an item on the agenda posted online, but the PSC never discussed it.

“We couldn’t even find an agenda when we got there,” Parker said; he said usually, the PSC provides copies.

Parker also said no one explained the reason the meeting ended before the PSC discussed the merger. He described the situation as “atrocious.”

“We were surprised and wondering what happened, but we never found out. Nobody seemed to know what was going on,” Parker said.

However, the meeting did result in a visit from the Montana Highway Patrol, according to two eye witnesses who were surprised to see it.

David Sanders, a candidate for the Public Service Commission and former executive director of the agency, attended the meeting to observe.

He said when he was leaving the meeting, a highway patrolman walked in the front door, and a PSC staff person took the officer to the meeting room.

In a phone call after the meeting, Sanders said about five people who appeared to be retired citizen activists were in the room, and no one there could have been considered a threat.

“To deny them their constitutionally protected right to participate in a public meeting — or to try to — is just over the top,” Sanders said.

After the meeting, Commissioner Molnar said he too was dismayed that a call had been made to law enforcement.

“What did they fear a bunch of geriatric 90-year-olds were going to say?” Molnar said.

Molnar said he had requested the merger be placed on the PSC agenda, and the item was canceled at the untelevised 1 p.m. scheduling meeting that precedes the public meeting.

PSC spokesperson Jamey Petersen did not answer a question about the agenda item, but in response to a question about the statutes the PSC was relying on to potentially limit public comment, Petersen pointed to administrative rules and a PSC policy.

The rules and policy generally prohibit ex parte communications, or conversations by decision-makers with an involved party without notice to all parties.

Petersen also said the PSC offers a “robust and accessible public comment process.”

“Allowing oral argument from a party to the merger docket, such as 350 Montana, outside the established procedural framework, puts other parties, who were not notified and able to be present, at an unfair advantage,” Petersen said in an email.

The PSC had sent its regular email last Thursday about its publicly posted agenda with the merger as an item.

Since NorthWestern announced the proposed merger, Molnar said, significant issues have come up that could affect the utility landscape, such as expanded transmission possibilities that he said might affect the Colstrip power plant.

He said he wanted a chance for commissioners to discuss those issues.

“They raise a whole new host of questions,” Molnar said.

The agenda item was to “discuss progress in intervention and discovery process, information flow and possible needed adjustments.”

In August, NorthWestern announced it expected the merger to be completed in 12 to 15 months.

But Molnar too said the merger process is careening along, it’s difficult to keep up with all the information that’s been filed, and NorthWestern still isn’t answering questions to the satisfaction of some intervenors.

In the meantime, he said there’s a push to wrap up the docket in six months, the windows for intervenors to press for answers are closing, and he wanted to get a sense of the timeline the PSC is facing with the merger.

In other business, the PSC voted unanimously to deny an application from L&L Site Services for a certificate requesting authority to transport garbage from a portion of Broadwater County and a portion of Jefferson County.

A staff recommendation said applicants need to show “an immediate and urgent need” and that no other carrier is capable of meeting it, and L&L didn’t present such evidence.