Thanks to Rick Hill’s letter to the editor, 3/31/11, I see the election year mudslinging is upon us a full nine months early. Thank you Rick Hill for dispensing half truths and lies in the great American tradition of negative campaigning. Rick Hill’s half truth on coal: “ while coal power plants are safer and new technology has reduced the environmental impacts of coal.”

Fact: Scientific American 12/30/08 “In fact, the fly ash emitted by a power plant—a by-product from burning coal for electricity—carries into the surrounding environment 100 times more radiation than a nuclear power plant producing the same amount of energy.”

Rick Hill’s Otter Creek coal lie: “ Attorney General Steve Bullock, who most Democrats predict will be their gubernatorial candidate next year, has sided with those opposing Otter Creek.”

Fact: Attorney General Bullock was the only State Land Board member to ask for a higher bonus bid over the state request of $.25 a ton, from Arch Coal. He never got a second on his motion from the other board members, so they settled at $.15 a ton bonus bid. Even though just across the border in Wyoming, BLM records show the average bonus bid was $.79 a ton. Bullock’s concerns, like mine, were/are economic.  No one bothered to tell the public that Great Northern Properties, the holder of the Otter Creek leases and Arch Coal, the bidder, have been under the same corporate structure called Natural Resource Partners for nine years. That’s right, the lessor and lessee are in the same bed together. Has Rick Hill ever questioned that cosy relationship and whether the bid might have been rigged? I did at a Land Board hearing when I made the above fact about Natural Resource Partners public.