Letters to the editor May 2

What is Zinke’s solution?

I have read several articles on Congressman Zinke’s concern over Glacier Park’s reservation system. I agree that it is not ideal. The days when you can wake up to a beautiful day and decide to spend it in the park are sadly gone. The park has been discovered and there is no going back.

I have been a volunteer at the park and have watched as the visitation rate has increased dramatically. Before the reservation system, there were issues with traffic jams, many of which could take up to three hours to unsnarl. Had there been a need for an emergency vehicle, it would not have been able to reach its destination.

The park does have a shuttle bus system. Because access to Going-to-the-Sun Road between Avalanche Lake and Logan Pass is limited to the smaller shuttles, more buses and bus drivers would be needed to make the shuttle system more robust. At present, the shuttle system has trouble getting enough drivers for the buses they do have. Where would more drivers come from? Where would all the visitor cars park. Where would the funding for all this come from?

Glacier is only one of nine overcrowded National Parks that have implemented the reservation system. The reservation system and the company that runs it should be re-evaluated to see where problems can be rectified and improvements made.

However, until these solutions can be found and funded, I believe that the reservation system is the best way to provide visitors with a safe and enjoyable experience. Congressman Zinke should address the funding and logistics. Until then, he should refrain from criticizing the Park Service. They are doing the best they can. As the saying goes, if you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem.

— Bonnie Bushman, Kalispell

House Speaker

Speaker Regier has a gavel. He can declare members of our state’s Legislature out of order but without depriving them of their rights as members. Members have Mason’s Manual of Legislative Procedure, clearly setting the way each should be treated to ensure ideas become law in a correct manner. Masons Manual equally protects every member, including Rep. Zooey Zephyr, against the whims of a supermajority.

Speaker Regier has unbound himself from Masons and substituted his own capriciousness. Now he is appealing to his base. Members of the Montana Bar must now have to question the procedural foundation of this session’s statutes.

Catholics feeling closer to God than they perceived their fellows called it excommunication, and in my time it meant being as doomed to Hell as Protestants. It has taken centuries for the enlightenment of Vatican II to surface with this year’s publication of Siblings All, the Signs of the Times.

Don’t let Speaker Regier and his smug excommunicators capture our word freedom. Tuesday, I heard Montanans say trans persons are not human. Let’s lock arms with Rep. Zephyr to keep all Montanans out of pompous darkness.

— John Brian Driscoll, of Helena, served as Montana House Speaker from 1977 to 1979