Departing state legislator to head Columbia Falls Chamber

It’s November, so that means Dee Brown is in her rural Canyon shop, cutting ornaments out of sheets of wood.

Every November and December she tackles a new wooden Christmas ornament project. This year it’s reindeer. Oh, they have saddles, too — this is Montana, after all.

Each animal consists of two small pieces of wood. After she traces a pattern on the wood, she carefully cuts out the pieces out using a power saw that’s hers, absolutely not her husband’s. Later, she will convert her dining-room table into a paint shop and hand-paint the ornaments before attaching the two pieces together.

No, you won’t be able to buy any of the reindeer at a local craft show; she just makes them to give to family and friends.

These reindeer were supposed to accompany the tiny cowboys she made a couple of years ago.

“But by the time I finished cutting all those little things, I’d had enough and just stopped,” she said.

Brown, who is in her waning days as a state representative from House District 3, squeezed a couple of days of ornament work in around her final committee meetings in Helena. She couldn’t seek re-election this year because of term limits.

Brown didn’t specifically answer a question about whether her days of holding elected office are finished, but did say she’ll soon throw herself into her newest semi-public office as president of the Columbia Falls Chamber of Commerce.

“I’m looking forward to spending more time in my community,” Brown said.

“I plan to stay involved,” she said. “I know the people. I go to a lot of meetings. I’ve always been interested in keeping abreast of what’s going on ... that’s how you build a good community.”

Lots of people have asked her if she’s going to run for something.

Her pat response? “I tell them I want to run to be the best grandma in Tucson, Ariz.,” where her daughter and family live.

Brown decided to run for the Montana House of Representatives in 2000 because “I didn’t think any of the men running knew enough about House District 3. They didn’t have enough background about the area.

“That’s not to say they aren’t good people,” she said, but she thought she brought a better background to the post.

Much changed during her time in office, but perhaps most noticeable is how easy it has become for people to keep up with what legislators are doing via the Internet.

“On your computer, you can listen to debates, you can listen to committee meetings and you’re one click away from giving your opinion on a bill,” she said.

Are there bills or projects she wishes she could have seen to fruition?

“I wasn’t much for carrying a lot of bills. My forte was in committee to amend a bill to make it better for Montanans,” she said. But if she was returning to Helena in January, she would work hard to tie development of the Otter Creek coal tracts to getting more money to schools and to property tax relief.

“I was excited when the governor opened up the Otter Creek tracts in Eastern Montana,” Brown said. But she worries that until Montana leaders “figure out the connection between development and cities, counties and schools, we’re not going to get very far.”

She’s pleased that the Montana recreation responsibility bill finally cleared the Legislature, but not so thrilled that it took three sessions to get the bill through. People who choose to participate in outdoor activities simply must assume some risk for their actions, she said.

She doesn’t like a new law that adds $4 to the fees assessed when people buy their vehicle license plates. The money is directed to state parks. “I don’t hate state parks,” she said. But too many people don’t know they can opt out of paying that fee, too few employees in county clerk offices tell people about it and that makes it all disingenuous, she said.

She’s worried about how the 2011 Legislature will deal with the fact some one-time money was thrown to schools.

“It is going to come back and bite them.” Federal recovery money won’t be around this session to help with budget issues, she points out. “This legislative session will be tough.”

Perhaps it was her teaching background, but Brown always knew that as a legislator she would be in the public spotlight and knew it would be important to have a “thick hide and the ability to take some criticism.

“If you’re not comfortable under the glass, you’re not going to run for office,” she said.

 She always was willing to explain her votes to people who questioned her choices: “People deserve to hear an explanation.”

Brown grew up in Columbia Falls.

After attending Montana State University and then the University of Montana where she earned a bachelor’s degree in elementary education, she married one of her Columbia Falls High School classmates, Steve Brown.

They built a home on land his grandfather homesteaded. Dee taught elementary school for 26 years while she and Steve started their own business — Canyon RV — and raised their children.

They bought undeveloped land, “got a Small Business Administration loan and started from the ground up,” she said. The RV park is a seasonal business — although they gave a bit of thought to making it year round — but the climate of the canyon just didn’t make sense for a winter RV park, she said.

The conversation turns back to those wooden Christmas ornaments.

Years ago, she and a friend decided they wanted to have a summer business, so their husbands made them “a barn on wheels. We’d go around to craft and art fairs and set up and sell our stuff,” she said. T

hey halted that business venture because of other work obligations, but the “barn,” minus its wheels, is still used as a utility shed at the RV park.

Brown didn’t abandon her creative side completely, but pared it down to just making the Christmas ornaments and still working a little with ceramics.

“There’s only so much you can do when you live off the grid,” she said, laughing.

Reporter Shelley Ridenour may be reached at 758-4439 or by e-mail at sridenour@dailyinterlake.com.