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Set sights higher than yoga pants

The Daily Inter Lake | Hagadone News Network | UPDATED 9 years, 11 months AGO
by The Daily Inter Lake
| February 11, 2015 8:33 PM

When we send our legislators to Helena, we expect them to take up weighty issues: taxes, budgets, state services etc.

We don’t expect them to worry about whether yoga pants should be outlawed.

But that particular digression confronted the Legislature on Wednesday in the form of a bill to toughen Montana’s indecent exposure law with a particular emphasis on prohibiting provocative clothing.

Seriously, this was real legislation proposed by a Missoula Republican.

“Yoga pants should be illegal in public anyway,” Rep. David Moore said of his bill.

Moore apparently was offended enough not only by the scourge of yoga pants but also a naked bicycling event in Missoula last summer that he decided there ought to be a law against it.

Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed in Helena. On Wednesday a legislative committee tabled Moore’s prudish proposal (although  committee members giggled about the bill before their vote).

While observers may have varied opinions about the appropriateness of yoga pants in public, this is not a critical issue that cries out for legislative intervention.

Perhaps Rep. Moore should be more concerned about the impact of the Salish and Kootenai Water Compact on Missoula County, one of 11 counties that would be explicitly affected by the far-reaching proposal.

We are pretty sure that if Moore were to devote himself to mastering the intricacies of the water compact and its hundreds of pages of appendices, he would not have any time to be studying either yoga pants or laws to ban them.

Is there any chance that Moore would have even been sent to Helena had he campaigned on a “Ban Yoga Pants” platform? More likely, he would have been ridden out of town on a rail.

Don’t forget, in Montana the Legislature only meets for 90 days every two years. We have matters of major import that need to be discussed and voted upon such as Medicaid expansion, tax reform, property reappraisal, the proposal to transfer federal lands to the state, and much more.

Not everyone agrees about how the Legislature should vote on these vital pieces of legislation, but we can all agree they are more pressing than that which Rep. Moore has on his mind.

Our advice to him is that he should put on his “big boy pants,” look past the leggings, and focus on staying focused.  

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