This piece is part of MTFP’s 2026 poll week, where we’re exploring data on how Montana voters feel about their elected officials, environmental concerns, immigration enforcement and other issues.

A majority of Montana voters said they see cost and insurance as significant barriers to accessing mental health care — a larger share than those who named physical distance as a major hurdle.

According to a new Montana Free Press-Eagleton Poll, conducted in late 2025 and early 2026, 67% of respondents cited “cost of services” as a major problem when it comes to accessing care. A smaller share, 42%, cited the stigma associated with receiving care as a major problem, while 47% said the same about the travel distance necessary to access services.

Mental health and addiction crises are not uncommon in Montana, with experts describing their causes as complex, entangled and difficult to solve. The state had the second-highest suicide rate in the country in 2023, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Additionally, residents who live in rural areas must often travel hours to reach health care services, and some behavioral health services aren’t available within Montana’s borders at all. Given the state’s strong bootstraps mentality, many mental health care advocates also commonly say stigma deters Montanans from speaking up about mental illness.

That perception breaks down differently between genders. According to the poll results, 35% of men said they saw stigma as a major challenge for mental health access, while that percentage was substantially higher, 50%, for women.

Poll respondents overall, though, named cost and insurance as major problems in greater numbers.

In another part of the poll, 43% of respondents said they had health insurance coverage through their employer or their spouse’s employer, while 29% said they were insured through Medicare. Just six percent of respondents said they were covered through Medicaid, the health insurance plan for low-income adults. 

According to a 2021 state-level overview by KFF, a national health policy research firm, Montanans with mental health issues insured through large employer health plans had higher average health spending compared to enrollees without those diagnoses, paying roughly $8,800 annually compared to $3,800. 

Brenda Kneeland, the CEO of the Eastern Montana Community Mental Health Center in Miles City, said she’s not surprised that cost and insurance coverage are perceived as major barriers for Montanans seeking mental health care. She said her organization often helps patients navigate insurance gaps, especially if they’ve been disenrolled from Medicaid coverage because of paperwork or documentation errors. People with employer-based insurance, she added, are also not immune from cost struggles.

“Just because they have health insurance through an employer, that doesn’t always mean that there are strong behavioral health benefits tied to the plan,” Kneeland said.

Matt Kuntz, the director of NAMI Montana, a mental health advocacy coalition, said he thinks stigma has been gradually decreasing around mental health issues over the past decade. Kuntz linked some of that change in sentiment to the fact that many military veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, as well as their friends and family members, have become well-acquainted with the need for accessible mental health care treatment.

“We’ve been having a lot more conversations about mental health in the last decade or two. And I think it’s a more positive conversation,” Kuntz said. 

In recent years, high-profile public officials in Montana have launched projects aimed at destigmatizing mental health and addiction treatment, and advocated for policy fixes to make that type of health care more accessible. 

Since taking office in 2021, Gov. Greg Gianforte, a Republican, has rolled out a series of initiatives aimed at improving access to treatment for mental health issues and substance use disorder. One of those efforts, a roughly $300 million funding scheme dubbed the Behavioral Health System for Future Generations, held a statewide listening tour about filling treatment gaps for mental health and addiction. Another, the Angel Initiative, works with local law enforcement departments to help route people to addiction treatment services. 

At an October meeting between Gianforte and local law enforcement officials, Sweet Grass County Sheriff Alan Ronneberg described mental health as an issue at the root of many people’s struggles, including those with substance use disorder.

“When we’re talking about mental health, not everybody with mental health problems has an addiction problem, but everybody with an addiction problem has a mental health problem,” Ronneberg said. “We need to recognize that.”

The MTFP-Eagleton poll surveyed 801 registered voters through telephone interviews and text-to-web questionnaires. Data was collected from Dec. 23, 2025 to Jan. 3, 2026. The poll, which was weighted to reflect the demographics of the state’s voters, has an overall margin of error of plus or minus 4.1 percentage points.

This piece is part of the Montana Insights project, which commissioned a poll to help MTFP readers understand public sentiment on key Montana policy issues. 

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A federal appeals court on Tuesday sided with railroad giant BNSF Railway in a case filed by the estates of two Libby asbestos victims who died from cancer after living near the company’s contaminated rail yard decades ago.

In the unanimous finding, an Oregon-based panel of three judges from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a 2024 Montana federal court ruling that asbestos contamination at BNSF’s rail yard had contributed to the 2020 deaths of Joyce Walder and Thomas Wells. BNSF shipped asbestos-tainted vermiculite products nationwide from the 20-acre site in downtown Libby throughout much of the 20th century. 

The decision, authored by Judge Morgan B. Christen, cited federal “common carrier” laws that broadly shield railroad companies from liability related to the products they are contracted to transport.

“We conclude that BNSF is protected from strict liability by the common carrier exception. Plaintiffs’ claims arose from activities BNSF engaged in while pursuing its statutorily imposed duty as a common carrier,” the opinion read. “We therefore reverse the district court’s judgment and remand with instructions to enter judgment for BNSF.”

The appellate court decision dealt a victory to BNSF Railway, a Texas-based subsidiary of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway empire since 2010, and delivered a blow to plaintiffs who sought to establish for the first time in federal court that the railroad company is liable for its part in the broad public health disaster in Libby. Public health experts have estimated that hundreds of people died and thousands were sickened from asbestos-related illnesses related to widespread vermiculite mining operations.

In the lead-up to the court’s decision, legal experts said the fate of the Libby case at the 9th Circuit could bolster or undermine hundreds of other asbestos cases against BNSF pending in Montana courts. 

Speaking to Montana Free Press about the case in October, state District Court Judge Amy Eddy, who oversees the state’s Asbestos Claims Court, said that a victory for BNSF at the 9th Circuit could lead the railway to “move to dismiss all pending cases in the Asbestos Claims Court related to its activities in Libby during this period of time.”

A BNSF spokesperson declined to comment to MTFP about the ruling.

In a written statement to MTFP, an attorney for the estates of Wells and Walder criticized the court’s ruling and said they were considering next steps.

“We respect the Court but disagree with its decision and believe it misapplied Montana law,” said Jinnifer Mariman, an attorney with the Kalispell-based McGarvey Law Firm. “We are talking with our clients and evaluating our options for an appeal.”

BNSF spent much of the 20th century shipping asbestos-tainted vermiculite products from Libby to locations nationwide — materials that had been extracted from a vermiculite mine owned by W.R. Grace. The plaintiffs’ attorneys argued in court in 2024 that the byproducts of those materials, also contaminated with asbestos, built up in the soil around the company’s rail yard.   

In legal filings, BNSF attorneys strongly denied that the railway knew of the toxic effects of asbestos until after journalists and federal health regulators unveiled Libby’s widespread contamination in the 1990s. The Environmental Protection Agency designated much of the town and the surrounding area a Superfund site in 2002. 

W.R. Grace filed for bankruptcy in 2001, establishing a trust for injured residents sickened by asbestos. The company emerged from bankruptcy in 2014. 

BNSF Railway’s liability has been argued extensively in Montana courts, where the company has faced waves of lawsuits from former Libby residents. But the question of the extent of the federal common carrier protections had been largely untested until the Wells and Walder case was filed in 2021. 

During the case’s 2024 trial, the jury rejected the claim that the railway company had acted negligently in the management of its rail yard, but agreed that BNSF was “strictly liable” for the harm caused by that contamination. The jury awarded each of the plaintiff’s estates $4 million in damages. 

In its appeal, BNSF argued that the lower federal court had incorrectly interpreted the “common carrier” protections afforded to railroads. The condition of its rail yard, attorneys said, was inherently connected to its transportation duties protected under federal law.

In its Tuesday ruling, the panel of judges from the 9th Circuit endorsed that part of BNSF’s argument.

“Federal law defines ‘transportation’ broadly to include ‘delivery,’ ‘storage,’ ‘handling,’ and ‘services related to [the] movement’ of property. Plaintiffs’ theory of liability thus stems directly from BNSF’s statutory duty to transport vermiculite concentrate,” the ruling said. 

The lower federal court opinion from U.S. District Court Judge Brian Morris in Montana concluded in 2024 that BNSF’s failure to maintain its rail yard was an action taken in its own corporate interest, rather than as a part of its duties to the public as a common carrier. But the panel of 9th Circuit Court judges found that attorneys for the plaintiffs offered no evidence to prove that point — an argument of wrongdoing that would have veered closely to prior claims about the company’s alleged negligence, which a jury rejected.

Federal and state caselaw, the appellate court concluded, supported the finding that BNSF is entitled to federal common carrier protections. 

“[I]t is uncontested that the asbestos dust that accumulated in BNSF’s rail yard leaked or escaped from rail cars during BNSF’s required transportation of vermiculite concentrate. The fact that the dust accumulated gradually along the railroad tracks and in BNSF’s rail yard, rather than spilling abruptly, does not alter our analysis because the gradual spillage still occurred during BNSF’s shipment of vermiculite,” the ruling said.

Attorneys for plaintiffs and BNSF could file new motions in other state and federal asbestos cases in the coming weeks based on the 9th Circuit Court ruling. 

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After minimal snowfall across Montana most of the winter, the arrival of a heavy storm this week has led avalanche forecasters to warn recreators about “considerable” slide risks across several mountain ranges.

The Flathead Avalanche Center on Thursday issued a special avalanche warning that lasts through Sunday for several northwest ranges around Whitefish and Glacier National Park, anticipating that “dangerous avalanche conditions will persist through the weekend,” and that human-triggered avalanches are “likely.”

In particular, the Flathead forecasters cited the presence of weak layers in the snowpack “buried two to three feet deep” that “remain sensitive to the weight of a person or snowmachine.” 

They also said recreators in northwest Montana have reported four accidents in the past week where skiers, snowboarders or snowmobilers were partially or fully buried in slides released from those weak layers.

“Slabs can be triggered from long distances away,” the Thursday bulletin said. “Avalanches may connect across terrain features like ridges, releasing multiple start zones at once. The layers — and the likelihood of triggering an avalanche — are most widespread on slopes facing west through north to east.”

Blase Reardon, the director of the Flathead Avalanche Center, said in a Thursday email to Montana Free Press that the long period of dry conditions this winter has contributed to the current avalanche risk.

“Long dry spells create persistent weak layers, often right at the snow surface. Once the snow returns and loads the weak layers [or] snow surface with a slab of new and drifted snow, the structure can be unstable,” Reardon said. “The weak layers are porous — lots of air space between large, angular crystals — and easily collapsed by the slabs, or the weight of a person on the slab.”

Reardon added that, in winters where snowfall is more steady, snowpacks tend to hold together better. “[P]ersistent weak layers don’t form as easily, or become so widespread,” he said.

Avalanche forecasters in the Missoula region have forecasted “considerable” risk at middle and upper elevations, while those in the Gallatin area have also noted “considerable” avalanche dangers at low, middle and high elevations around West Yellowstone and the southern parts of the Madison and Gallatin ranges. 

Similar to the Flathead forecasters in the northwest part of the state, the Gallatin Avalanche Center pointed to a persistent weak layer two to three feet deep, dating back to January snowfall patterns. They also cited wind-loaded sections at higher elevations driven by high-speed gusts on Tuesday.

According to a condition summary from the Gallatin Avalanche Center, a snowmobiler was uninjured after being partially buried in a slide Tuesday in the West Yellowstone area. A separate field observation from the area this week reported that slides were triggered even though the snowpack had not been showing signs of instability, such as collapsing layers or visible cracking across a snowy surface. 

“This can lead you to believe conditions are stable when they aren’t,” the Gallatin forecast said.

Until conditions improve, the Gallatin forecasters advised traveling on low-angle slopes and avoiding treacherous terrain. 

“The best option for now is to ride slopes less than 30 degrees in steepness that aren’t steep enough to slide and avoid being under steeper slopes,” they wrote.

The heightened forecasts in Montana come days after a deadly avalanche in California made national headlines. As of Thursday, eight backcountry skiers from the group of fifteen had been reported dead, with another six surviving the slide. One additional skier was still missing and presumed dead, authorities said. 

Montana has not had as many deadly avalanche encounters as other western states, such as Utah, Colorado and California, in recent years, according to summaries from the National Avalanche Center. 

In 2024, a backcountry skier was buried and killed after triggering an avalanche in the Bitterroot Mountains near Lost Trail Pass. In 2021 and 2022, several snowmobilers were killed in avalanches near West Yellowstone and Cooke City.

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Just after Theresa Gardner’s clock told her Monday night had turned into Tuesday morning, she opened the phone app she uses to book rides with Capital Transit, Helena’s public bus system.

She requested a pick-up time shortly before 9 a.m. the next day to get to her part-time office job near downtown.

Gardner, 51, has cerebral palsy and uses a powered wheelchair. She doesn’t want to have to book her next-day ride in the early morning hours. But the city’s system limits when riders can reserve rides more than 24 hours in advance, and Gardner says staffing shortages sometimes cause rides to run out if she tries to book any later.

“I want to go to bed sooner than midnight,” Gardner said in a December interview.  

Waiting for the bus to arrive outside her north-side apartment on a frosty Wednesday morning in December, Gardner acknowledged that Capital Transit provides an essential service. And for people with disabilities, it’s often the only ride in town. But she and other users of Helena’s bus system say that service has significant limitations, including constricted hours and staffing crunches that impact whether rides are available at all. 

Unlike every other major city in Montana, Helena does not have a two-pronged, publicly funded transit system that features both door-to-door transportation for people with disabilities and fixed-route buses that run on regular rain-or-shine schedules. Helena has only Capital Transit, a fare-based bus and van service designed to pick up commuters — sometimes several at a time — directly from their doorsteps and ferry them to requested destinations. 

City leaders have said Helena’s budget is supporting a transit system that prioritizes people with disabilities while being accessible to everyone. But, three years after Capital Transit’s introduction of door-to-door service, users say the system is strained by existing demand, and needs an infusion of funding to expand service and increase reliability.

In a December interview, Helena’s recently elected Mayor Emily Dean, a longtime City Commission member, acknowledged Capital Transit’s shortcomings. Among other issues, the buses run only on weekdays, and generally cease service by 6 p.m.

“I think all of us want to get the system to a point where you really can get transportation at more convenient hours, consistently,” Dean said. 

Dean said the most obvious path to expanding Capital Transit’s hours or instituting a fixed-route bus system would be “transit district” funding. That strategy, deployed in Missoula and Bozeman, as well as other Montana cities, uses property taxes from homeowners and businesses in a specified area to support public transit services. 

In Helena, Capital Transit’s roughly $2 million annual budget is mostly funded by federal grants and the city’s General Fund. Dean said there is no active effort to create a transit district — a proposal that could be pushed by city officials but is typically implemented at the county level. That lack of momentum, Dean said, partly stems from uncertainty about voters’ willingness to support such a system. 

“If it is a priority of the community’s, hopefully it would be a success if it was placed on a ballot,” Dean said. “But, you know, there are obviously always competing demands about what folks are willing to vote ‘yes’ or ‘no’ on.”

THE ROUTE TO CURB-TO-CURB

Helena’s curb-to-curb system launched in 2022, replacing the city’s previous fixed-route bus system, which transit officials had said was serving an unsustainably low number of riders. In the following years, the annual number of rides provided by Capital Transit climbed, peaking at 54,571 from 2022 to 2023. But ridership dipped to about 44,000 in the most recent fiscal year. City officials attribute the dip to driver shortages. 

“The majority of that year we were down staffing by, like, not just one or two. By almost, like, half,” said David Knoepke, director of Helena’s transportation department. “We were running there for a while with only four or five people.”

During that driver shortage, Knoepke said the department heard concerns about riders not being able to schedule a bus when they needed it. Since then, the department has moved money around to raise driver wages — from about $19 per hour to roughly $25 — and staff up its driving team without increasing the department’s roughly $1.7 million annual operating budget. 

Knoepke said the transit system receives part of its operations budget from federal grants. The remainder of the system is funded by the city’s General Fund and ticket fares paid by riders. 

As of December 2025, Knoepke said, the department was fully staffed with ten full-time drivers. 

Even with more robust staffing, the Capital Transit app has limits on when and how users can book a ride. Knoepke said the department’s call center tries to troubleshoot access issues to help people get to where they need to go, but he acknowledged that limitations on hours and routes inevitably affect users. And scheduling hurdles, he said, can create a perception that the system isn’t equipped to meet demand. 

“We’ve always contemplated extended hours during the week, and then what does weekend service look like?” Knoepke said. “I think there is a need there. We just need to try to identify a funding source for that.”

Gardner, a frequent user of Capital Transit, said the limited schedule complicates her process for attending social events and prevents her from running errands or meeting friends on the weekends. In the summer, she likes to go to Alive at Five, a free downtown music and food event that starts at 5:00 pm. If she can’t schedule a bus to transport her and her wheelchair home, that outing can be out of reach. The same goes for weekend events. If the distance, or lack of usable sidewalks, impedes her ability to travel in her powered wheelchair, Gardner said, it would be nice to be able to access public transit.

“I mean, come on,” Garnder said. “I’m not the only one in Helena, Montana, who wants to go somewhere on the weekend.”

“EITHER-OR” FUNDING PROBLEM

On a Friday morning in November, a purple Capital Transit bus bounced along Helena’s busy early morning streets, carrying 37-year-old Jacob Krissovich and his guide dog, a black Labrador retriever named Fife. 

Krissovich, who is blind, uses Capital Transit to get around town most weeks. Like Gardner, Krissovich said commuting on his own schedule would be significantly easier if Capital Transit rides could be scheduled on the same day a ride is needed. Another option, Krissovich said, would be for the city to re-establish a fixed-route bus system that runs on a reliable schedule — a backup option for when he wasn’t able to book a pick-up from Capital Transit in advance. 

As it currently stands, Krissovich said, his best transit option is also his only option.

“There’s no alternative,” Krissovich said. 

City officials say the current budget can support just one version of a transit system — not additions or expansions. 

The either-or funding dilemma applies to other infrastructure challenges that affect disabled residents, Krissovich reflected. The city also has limited funds for fixing crumbling sidewalks, modifying curbs to accommodate wheelchairs, and installing sidewalks where none currently exist — critical pathways for disabled residents to commute around Helena.

On that front, Krissovich said he and other disability rights advocates support some kind of local tax policy that can raise money to install and replace sidewalks in specific neighborhoods — a “sidewalk district” strategy that would operate similarly to a transit district funding an expanded bus system. 

On both issues, Krissovich and others said, improvements won’t happen without a new funding source. Dean, the city’s new mayor, agreed that the city’s budget currently can’t cover wide-ranging existing needs.

“There are lots of competing interests. And our General Fund is limited,” Dean said. “Do we want to invest more money into, for example, funding our sidewalk loan program to improve connectivity there? Or do we want to invest more General Fund dollars into expanding our transit services?”

Scott Birkenbuel, the CEO of Ability Montana, a nonprofit that advocates for independence for people with disabilities, said that other Montana municipalities, including Bozeman, have created new revenue streams by establishing transit districts and other tools that draw funds from a regional tax base.

“In our service area here in Bozeman, we just finally grew to the point where they have an urban transit district, which unlocks a lot more funding,” Birkenbuel said. 

That model could help the public transit system grow to connect rural residents around Bozeman to services in the city, including health care appointments. Many people, including those with disabilities or with routine medical needs, are “transportation dependent,” Birkenbuel said. “They have no other way to get into [the city]. And their life depends on it.”

Dean said there are positive indications that Helena might be poised to embrace creative ways to fund public transit systems and improve citywide accessibility for residents with disabilities. She said she’s pleased that Capital Transit ridership is rising, and that the City Commission voted in 2025 to put more money toward a loan program that helps homeowners replace sidewalks in front of their houses — an effort to tackle a backlog of properties waiting for new infrastructure.

“It just highlights that there is a demand,” Dean said. “But if we want systems that are maybe similar to Missoula’s or Bozeman’s, we’d have to put it to the voters to make those considerations. I don’t know where the community is on that yet.” 

Knoepke, the transportation director, had a more blunt way of describing the political cost of pushing for an expanded bus system. New transit districts could be an option, Knoepke said. “But that’s all additional money on everybody’s tax bill.”

This article was updated Feb. 20, 2026, to correct descriptions of Capital Transit’s funding sources and ride-scheduling policy.

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Editor’s note: This article contains references to sexual assault and harassment.

The CEO of St. Peter’s Health, the longtime hospital in Helena, on Wednesday described recent sexual abuse reports against two former staff members at the hospital as “deeply troubling” and pledged that, after a federal inspection, the facility has changed how it documents sexual misconduct complaints.

Montana Free Press on Monday reported on the existence and outcomes of the federal inspection, a publicly available document completed more than a year ago that St. Peter’s, a nonprofit that employs more than 1,700 people, had not previously acknowledged. 

The 26-page survey by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services described more than a dozen instances in 2023 and 2024 when staff members had not formally documented or properly investigated sexual abuse complaints against two nurses, leading the federal agency to place the hospital in “immediate jeopardy” status in January 2025, until it approved St. Peter’s plan for corrective changes a week later.

One account detailed in the report about the actions of a former employee matches the criminal complaint and licensing inspection against Aaron Gams, a nurse who was fired by the hospital in October 2024 for assaulting an ICU patient and later inappropriately accessing her medical records. Gams has pleaded not guilty to the felony charge against him and is scheduled to appear in court later this month.

In his first public remarks about the report in his Wednesday interview with Montana Public Radio, CEO Wade Johnson, who has led the local hospital since 2017, acknowledged that St. Peter’s had previously kept information about sexual abuse allegations in many uncoordinated locations, rather than the hospital’s centralized reporting system.

“[O]ur staff members will keep notes as they’re working through things,” Johnson said. “There may be email communications between staff members or between leaders to address this. We had an additional system that works within our compliance space. So, we have a couple of different locations, and that was honestly — again, that was part of the problem that we have to own as an organization, and did own and did correct. And that is, we need a single source of where this information goes, in a timely fashion.”

Montana Public Radio reached out to St. Peter’s for comment after featuring MTFP’s original reporting in its broadcast. In response, Montana Public Radio noted, the hospital asked the station to interview the CEO about the 2025 inspection. When contacted by MTFP about the findings of the federal inquiry in late January, a hospital spokesperson had declined to make Johnson or other administrators available for an interview for almost two weeks.

Asked by Montana Public Radio why the hospital had declined interview requests from MTFP, Johnson attributed the decision to an issue of “timing” and the need to address outstanding, and unspecified, litigation details.

“Fortunately, now we’re in a position to be able to have that conversation with you and others as we move forward,” Johnson told the radio station.

Among the alleged assault instances highlighted in the federal report, inspectors flagged an April 2024 complaint against “staff member A,” the individual whose timeline and incident details align with Gams, made by a 51-year-old oncology patient. Inspectors said that, after the patient and her family informed other staff members that a male nurse had inappropriately touched her breasts, at least four hospital employees failed to document the report in an official complaint. 

Higher-up officials at the facility were not notified about the April complaint until roughly nine months later, the report said, days after MTFP reported Gams’ arrest. 

In his public radio interview, Johnson pushed back against the report’s depiction of that event for the first time. Without specifying dates or details about the hospital’s response, Johnson said that the patient who originally made that complaint later “withdrew” the allegation, leaving the hospital with no complaint to investigate. 

“Our policy respected patient choice, and we would not pursue an investigation further without a patient’s consent in the matter,” Johnson said. 

The 2025 investigation did not state that the oncology patient, who died later that year, had withdrawn her original grievance. Federal hospital inspections about patient safety standards and protocols typically do not assess the merits of a specific allegation. Rather, inspections evaluate how a hospital’s actions align with or depart from its internal protocols and federal regulations intended to prevent patient neglect and abuse. 

In the case of the oncology patient, federal regulators flagged St. Peter’s lack of formal documentation and investigation as evidence that the hospital was not sufficiently protecting patient rights.

Pressed by the public radio interviewer about whether the hospital had taken any action at the time to investigate the employee or suspend them while the incident was reviewed, Johnson said no.

“The patient withdrew their concern relative to the interaction that they had had with a staff member. So at that time, there was no further investigation that was done relative to employees in that area,” Johnson said.

According to the federal report, the employee identified in the April complaint was fired roughly six months later, after another patient accused him of assaulting her in the ICU in 2023. Johnson said that, when that report came to light, the hospital removed the staff member from patient care and placed him on administrative leave.

In another circumstance outlined by federal inspectors, a male patient on the Behavioral Health Unit made a written sexual assault and harassment allegation against a female nurse. Within days of the patient delivering his written grievance, at least five staff members read or learned about his allegations against the female nurse, federal investigators found, but none documented the patient’s complaint in an official incident report. Despite that documentation gap, the hospital said it investigated the complaint, removed the traveling nurse from patient care and ultimately terminated her contract.

Johnson reiterated that federal regulators had quickly approved the hospital’s plan of correction soon after placing it on “immediate jeopardy” status. He stressed that the hospital remains in compliance with its internal policies and federal regulations.

“I think it is important to note that when we find something, we fix something,” Johnson said. “…The actions of a couple of individuals do not reflect the actions of 1,800 people who come here every day to take care of people and do it with the highest level of standards and ethics.”

The post Helena hospital CEO acknowledges issues with how hospital handled reports of sexual abuse appeared first on Montana Free Press.

Editor’s note: This article contains references to sexual assault and harassment. 

In the spring of 2024, a cancer patient at St. Peter’s Health in Helena, the longtime local hospital, made a disturbing report to one of the staffers in the oncology unit.

The patient, a 51-year-old woman, said that a male nurse had “touched and fondled her breasts,” according to the recollection of the staffer whom she told. The patient also insisted that she did not want that male nurse to care for her anymore.

In a publicly available report detailing the incident, federal hospital inspectors said the employee then shared the patient’s allegation with an on-duty supervising nurse. Two other staff members later told inspectors that they were also informed about the patient’s claim the day after it was made. 

But according to the 2025 investigation by the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services, the federal agency that serves as a watchdog for patient abuse and neglect, none of the four staff members who learned of the patient’s grievance documented the complaint in the hospital’s official system for such allegations. That inaction allowed the report to go uninvestigated for several months, and for the staff member accused of assault to remain employed until much later that year. 

In October of 2024, another patient came forward to accuse that same staff member of assaulting her a year earlier, when she was hospitalized in the intensive care unit. That allegation, reiterated in the federal inspection, matches the felony charge and licensing investigation against former St. Peter’s nurse Aaron Gams. Gams has pleaded not guilty to the charge, although a recent court filing shows he is scheduled to change his plea later this month.  

According to the federal inspection, investigators said the lack of official documentation of the complaints against the male nurse was part of a “systemic” failure in how St. Peter’s handled multiple reports of sexual abuse by two staff members in 2023 and 2024. The report indicates that, during its unannounced inspection prompted by an anonymous complaint, the federal agency identified a dozen staffers at St. Peter’s who had failed, on more than a dozen occasions, to file required reports about hospital employees allegedly sexually harassing and abusing patients.

“These failures created an unsafe environment and had the potential to place all hospital patients at risk for sexual abuse,” the inspection stated.

Investigators concluded that the ”severity and cumulative effect” of the hospital’s reporting failures and other violations in patient safety protocol justified putting St. Peter’s in “immediate jeopardy” status — a designation that could have resulted in the hospital losing its ability to bill the public health insurance programs Medicaid and Medicare.

Within a week of that finding, inspectors said, St. Peter’s submitted a plan for correcting how it tracks and investigates reports of sexual abuse. Once that plan was accepted by investigators on Jan. 28, 2025, the hospital’s immediate jeopardy status was lifted.

A nonprofit hospital, St. Peter’s is one of the largest employers in Helena, with roughly 1,800 employees. It serves around 100,000 residents from Lewis and Clark and surrounding counties, according to the hospital’s website. 

A spokesperson for the hospital declined to answer specific questions from Montana Free Press about the findings of the federal investigation and the hospital’s response. The hospital also declined several requests from MTFP to interview hospital CEO Wade Johnson or other administration officials about the report. 

In a series of statements, St. Peter’s spokesperson Jacquelyn Tescher said the hospital has changed its protocols in light of the federal investigation’s findings.

“All of us at St. Peter’s Health are deeply troubled and saddened by what happened. The actions of these individuals do not reflect the care and commitment we have for our patients, families, and this community,” Tescher wrote in an email to MTFP. 

The hospital did not provide specific dates or details about its internal actions, but Tescher said that the repeated lack of documentation flagged by federal investigators didn’t necessarily mean that hospital staff had been unresponsive to patient complaints. 

“While our staff took immediate action and began an internal review on each concern, the initial concern and actions taken were not always immediately documented. In some instances, documentation occurred after a concern was founded and corrective actions had been implemented,” Tescher said. “… We have learned through this process that [the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services] requires more timely reporting and specific documentation mechanisms be used in addition to the protocols we have in place. We have adopted those updated protocols, and our entire team has been trained to use them.”

Although the Helena hospital appeared to avoid long-term repercussions from federal officials for its mishandling of sexual abuse complaints, the findings of the investigation raise new questions about the internal safety protocols at St. Peter’s after officials there said publicly that one of its longtime cancer physicians, Dr. Thomas Weiner, had harmed patients. St. Peter’s has faced several lawsuits over alleged negligence and malpractice related to Weiner’s care since it fired him in 2020.

Tescher did not directly answer a question about how the hospital intends to rebuild the community’s trust in the wake of the federal investigation. As part of the hospital’s statement, she said St. Peter’s takes “very seriously” the privilege and responsibility of caring for patients’ health and well-being. 

“St. Peter’s is committed to acting with integrity as we continue to rebuild trust and provide the great care and experience our community deserves,” Tescher wrote.

‘STAFF MEMBER A’

The accused male staff member, along with all other employees, is anonymous in the federal investigation and only referred to by a letter of the alphabet. Inspectors labeled the male nurse as “staff member A.” But the details of that employee’s actions and the timeline of his related disciplinary proceedings, as laid out by federal health inspectors, match those included in a felony criminal complaint and a state licensing investigation against Gams, the former St. Peter’s nurse the hospital fired in October 2024.

Federal investigators recounted that, roughly six months after the oncology patient complained about staff member A, another patient contacted a different hospital employee to report that staff member A had abused her when she was incapacitated in the intensive care unit in 2023. 

The patient had, for nearly a year, believed her recollections were a figment of her imagination, according to the report she later filed with local law enforcement. That perception changed when the nurse texted her in late September 2024, introduced himself as Gams and asked to talk about what had happened, according to charging documents. The patient concluded that Gams had obtained her personal cellphone number from her medical records, a breach of patient privacy laws. 

On Oct. 8, 2024, less than two weeks after she first heard from Gams, federal investigators said the patient reported the text messages and her recollections from the ICU to a hospital employee. But health inspectors found that multiple staff members who learned of the incident — either directly from the patient or from colleagues — did not immediately complete an official report about the woman’s account. 

Inspectors noted that another higher-up staff member was informed about the second patient’s accusation the following day, a Wednesday, but that staff member A was not placed on administrative leave until Friday, two days later. At that time, inspectors noted that “no incident report was created,” an omission that they found violated the hospital’s own internal protocols.

Investigators said that someone in the facility eventually entered the incident into the hospital’s official reporting system in mid-November, more than a month after the former ICU patient first reached out.

Asked by MTFP to respond to the federal findings about documentation failures related to staff member A, Tescher pushed back, describing the hospital as having taken assertive action in the case that was also reported to local law enforcement. 

“Upon receiving the report of this nurse’s behavior towards a patient, they never worked another shift, and they never cared for another patient. St. Peter’s Health followed its reporting procedures and fully cooperated with law enforcement in its investigation,” she said in an emailed statement. “To be clear, when an allegation is reported, we take immediate action to protect patients and work with appropriate authorities on next steps.”

But the federal inspection indicates that the first known complaint against staff member A, originating from the since-deceased oncology patient, did not reach the upper levels of the hospital’s administration until January 2025, roughly nine months after it was originally made. 

Two days after MTFP reported on Gams’ arrest on Dec. 31, 2024, one of the staff members who had been told about the oncology patient’s sexual abuse complaint shared the account with a higher-level hospital employee, according to internal emails reviewed by federal investigators and their interviews with staff. 

“Review of a facility email from staff member C to staff member W, dated 1/2/25 at 4:15 p.m., confirmed that allegations of sexual abuse made by patient #2 against staff member A around April 2024, were not communicated to staff member W until approximately nine months after the allegations were made,” the inspection said.

Tescher did not respond to specific questions about the multi-month delay in the report about the oncology patient’s complaint.

Hospital officials did take action after Gams was placed on administrative leave in October 2024 to determine whether he had improperly accessed other patients’ medical records. 

The hospital’s internal audit confirmed that he had. In total, the federal inspection said, St. Peter’s staff found that staff member A had inappropriately accessed “around a dozen” patient records. In an interview with investigators, one upper administration official said there appeared to be “a pattern of staff member A accessing former ICU patients’ charts after they discharged from the facility.”

The federal report did not say whether Gams used those records to contact other patients, but it noted that the administrator said that the hospital had not reached out to the affected patients “to inquire with the patients or their representative if they had concerns regarding their care.”

Tescher did not respond to MTFP’s questions about whether the hospital had notified those patients about its findings since the federal inspection ended. 

Gams’ attorney did not respond to a list of questions from MTFP about the findings of the federal investigators, including the account about another patient who apparently accused Gams of sexual assault in 2024. 

“Because this is an ongoing case, I am unable to comment on your questions,” Gams’ Helena attorney, Misty Gaubatz, wrote in an email, noting that her client had pleaded not guilty to a single pending charge, which prosecutors brought based on the account of the former ICU patient.

ACCUSATIONS AGAINST A SECOND NURSE 

Federal investigators detailed allegations against another staff member accused of harassing and inappropriately touching patients. The report identified her only as “staff member AAA,” describing her as a female nurse who worked on the Behavioral Health Unit. 

According to the inspection, the nurse was accused of sexually harassing and abusing a male patient who had been hospitalized in the psychiatric unit in June 2024. The patient informed other staff members in writing that he had “experienced sexual harassment/abuse” from the nurse during his hospitalization, including, in the patient’s words, “inappropriate touching in private areas kissing hugging trying to have a relationship.”

As part of that complaint, the patient described his confusion about the woman’s treatment of him, adding that he wasn’t “in the right frame of mind” and that it took him “a few days to realize that this behavior is very inappropriate and extremely unprofessional.”

Within days of the patient delivering his written grievance, at least five staff members read or learned about his allegations against staff member AAA, federal investigators found. None of them documented the patient’s complaint in an official incident report, the inspection said. 

One of the employees, when passing the patient’s allegation onto her supervising director, shared other misgivings about the female nurse’s behavior. Among those concerns, that colleague recounted hearing staff member AAA describe another patient as “cute” and that she had given that patient “a backrub.”

Federal inspectors spoke to the male patient who originally reported staff member AAA. In that conversation, the former patient “stated he had been struggling every day since the sexual abuse.” He also told investigators that he was “concerned that staff member AAA had sexually assaulted other patients on the unit.”

In response to questions about the nurse’s current employment status with St. Peter’s, Tescher said that staff member AAA had been a contracted nurse who was “immediately” removed from patient care after the hospital administration learned of the allegations.

“Upon receiving a report of this safety concern, the contracted nurse was immediately removed from patient care. Their employer was contacted and we sent a report to the nurse licensing board. They never worked at St. Peter’s Health again,” Tescher wrote.

Tescher said that the abuse allegations against the female nurse came only from one patient, despite the federal inspection report referencing another staff member’s observations about her conduct toward another patient. 

Tescher did not respond to an additional question from MTFP regarding when the hospital became aware of the report against the contracted nurse and when she was removed from caring for patients.

REBUILDING TRUST

Throughout the report, federal inspectors reiterated the systemic shortfalls in the hospital’s process for documenting and investigating sexual assault complaints. Those failures, investigators said, had put all patients at risk of inappropriate treatment.

In June of last year, hospital officials updated the federal agency on its progress in a report on St. Peter’s letterhead. The hospital said it had increased training about how to handle reports of sexual abuse, including featuring “educational content” in its internal newsroom about the importance of “responding to, reporting, and investigating abuse and neglect.” The hospital also said it had launched in-person training for its employees about “patient safety culture,” facilitated by CEO Johnson. 

That same month, federal officials completed a follow-up inspection about the hospital’s compliance with requirements about documenting abuse reports. Investigators found that St. Peter’s “had corrected the areas of deficient practice.”

In an email earlier this month, a spokesperson for the federal agency confirmed to MTFP that St. Peter’s is in compliance with its policies and regulations. 

“[T]here have been no additional surveys at the facility since,” the spokesperson said. 

Tescher, the hospital spokesperson, said the hospital’s disciplinary status had been removed because of the significant improvement in its protocols.

“The immediate jeopardy classification was lifted because St. Peter’s implemented a robust reporting/documentation training program for all 1,800 caregivers. This focus on reporting/documentation training continues for all employees annually and new employees during their onboarding process,” Tescher wrote. 

“Patients and families trust us to provide quality, safe and compassionate care each time they come to St. Peter’s,” she continued. “We are committed to earning our community’s trust each day by learning and continually improving in everything we do.”

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The post Inside the ‘systemic’ sexual abuse reporting failure at a Helena hospital appeared first on Montana Free Press.

Small details around Lynne Weinacker’s home illustrate a daily story — one about getting by on very little. Plastic containers labeled “flour” and “pancake” are stacked neatly on her kitchen counter, filled with bulk goods. The crate for her rambunctious dog, Ginger, fits like a puzzle piece under her kitchen table.

Over nearly 20 years, Weinacker has made the two-bed, one-bath trailer in the Golden Estates Mobile Home Park a cozy home. She bought the trailer on Helena’s eastern edge, across the highway from Walmart, for about $5,000 around 2007. 

For years, the rent Weinacker paid for the land beneath the trailer was manageable, the 68-year-old said during a recent interview. She raised her son and made ends meet with a paycheck as a school lunch worker. Eventually, she retired and began living on a fixed income, supplemented by her Social Security benefits.

But last February, the mobile home park property changed hands, bought by a Tennessee-based owner named Abraham Anderson. With less than a month’s notice, Weinacker said, she found out about new owners, new property managers and new rent. Instead of $400 a month, she was told to pay $595. 

The increase stung, Weinacker said, but she figured out how to make do. She picked up a part-time job at a local casino, delivering drinks to gamblers. Weinacker said she deals with arthritis and other disabilities, including back pain that plagues her. But she’s been working despite those conditions, at least for two days a week, she said.

“I do what I gotta do,” she said.

Then, in January, the tenants of the Golden Estates got notice of another rent increase, folded into a new month-to-month lease agreement. 

This time, the jump went from $595 to $799 — nearly double what Weinacker and others were paying just a year earlier.

This time, Weinacker started to panic. The math of the new lot rent, set against her limited income, just didn’t pencil out. 

“If I could afford $800 a month, I wouldn’t live here,” she said.

NEW OWNERS ON THE BLOCK

Golden Estates is far from the only Montana mobile home park to have transferred ownership to an out-of-state company in recent years. Likewise, the tenants in Helena are joining many others who have experienced sudden, substantial rent hikes.

But policy makers, tenants and housing advocates have said that the trend now affecting Golden Estates is a serious issue that could create ripple effects across the community. Mobile home park rent spikes undermine a rare affordable housing option, experts say, threatening to push tenants into less stable living scenarios. 

“Oftentimes, it’s the last step before homelessness,” said Rep. George Nikolakakos, a Great Falls Republican lawmaker who has attempted to pass legislation to better protect mobile home park residents. “That rent starts going up on them [and] there aren’t a lot of other options.”

Nikolakakos, a former mobile home park owner himself, said new owners often take a formulaic approach to raising the rents at their parks. It’s not unheard of to charge about half of whatever the market rate is for rent at a two-bedroom apartment in a given community, he said. The increases will likely create turnover, pushing some residents to sell or abandon their trailers outright rather than paying to move them. The open vacancies can then be filled by tenants who can afford to pay the new rate. 

“They’ll just push it as far as they think they can go,” Nikolakakos said.

State business records show that Golden Estates is now owned by Helena MHC LLC, a company that lists Anderson as its sole proprietor. The company’s mailing address is in Sevierville, Tennessee.

Anderson did not respond to repeated emails and phone calls from Montana Free Press about the rental increase at Golden Estates. But in interviews with national business podcasts, Anderson has spoken plainly about viewing mobile home parks as cash-rich investment opportunities. In a 2020 interview with Mobile Home Park University, a coaching program for investors interested in acquiring trailer parks, Anderson said he owned 11 trailer parks across multiple states. In many of those, Anderson said, he had increased profitability by cutting costs and raising rents.

“[R]aising rents, because that’s the easiest. Costs you a postage stamp to raise the rent,” Anderson said during the interview. 

In a January letter shared with MTFP by Weinacker, the new property management company hired by Anderson cited several reasons for raising tenants’ rents. Among them, the new landlord cited increasing operations and maintenance costs, insurance rates and property taxes.

According to county records, property taxes for the land under the Prospect Avenue trailer parks owned by Helena MHC LLC have increased about 19% since 2020. But taxes for the park that includes Weinacker’s home actually decreased in the most recent assessment period leading up to the change in ownership. The taxes went down by more than $900 between 2024 and 2025, to an annual sum of $26,050 from $26,974.

Harold Lesh, another Golden Estates tenant, owns three trailers at the park that he rents to family members. He said he’s struggling to pay rent for the sites of each one — a fact he said is all the more frustrating because he owns the structures on top of that land.

“We’re renting a piece of grass,” Lesh said in an interview with MTFP. “They don’t own the trailer. They just own the piece of the grass that I’m sitting on.”

Weinacker and other tenants say the quality of streets, communal spaces and infrastructure has not obviously improved since Anderson’s company took over. In 2025, tenants repeatedly lost water access and were under boil-water advisories to mitigate risks of E. coli and other contaminants. One notice about a boil order was posted on traffic cones placed in the park’s streets. 

“They have done no maintenance here whatsoever. Whatsoever,” Weinacker told MTFP.

Calls and emails from MTFP to the property manager listed on letters to the tenants were not returned.

OTHER OPTIONS FEW AND FAR BETWEEN

Last Wednesday evening, dozens of tenants from Golden Estates and some other local mobile home parks filled a community room at the county’s public library to talk about possible strategies for coping with the rocketing rent increases.

The meeting was moderated in part by Amy Hall, a senior housing attorney with the nonprofit Montana Legal Services Association, and by a representative from the Prickly Pear Housing Alliance, a local housing advocacy group.

During the discussion, Hall asked the tenants what communication they had received from the new owner and property manager, and whether maintenance work had been addressed.

The room erupted in sarcastic laughter. 

Residents said that they had not seen improvements to the property and that communication from the property managers had been sporadic and, for most, non-existent. Some recounted fallen trees that had not been cleaned up or removed, outdated water service and inadequate water quality. Hall affirmed that those fixes should fall to the property owner, not residents.  

As for potential avenues for legal action, Hall said, there are few protections for tenants under Montana state law. 

“Montana doesn’t put a cap on the amount of rent that can be charged by a landlord,” Hall said in a later interview with MTFP. “There’s nothing in the law that says the rent increase can only be 10% or even 20%.”

Hall pointed out one potential point of leverage that could apply to Golden Estates tenants: Montana’s legal requirement for a landlord to provide at least 30 days’ notice about rent increases. But that timeline only starts when the notice is received by tenants, rather than the date it was postmarked. 

In the case at Golden Estates, Hall told MTFP, many tenants received notice of the increase around Jan. 5, meaning they could be shielded from having to pay the new $799 increase effective Feb. 1. That timeline and legal protection could become important if tenants face eviction for refusing to pay the rent increase in February, Hall said. In that situation, she said, the Montana Legal Services Association would consider representing tenants in court.

“What we look for are cases where we can preserve somebody’s housing and where they have legitimate, solid legal grounds for defense,” Hall said.

During the Wednesday meeting, Hall stressed that the other tool for tenants to consider is collective action. Dozens of tenants asking the new owner for a reversal of the rent increase might go further than a message from one individual, she said. Speaking to MTFP after the meeting, Hall said, the tenants of Golden Estates already seem organized and motivated to push for change.

“I’ve been doing this for a long time. And usually when those evening meetings are set up, especially when they’re so far away from where the tenants live … usually hardly anybody would come,” Hall reflected, saying she expected to see less than a dozen tenants there. “It was astonishing to see 50 people in that room, and standing room only.”

“This is just turning their own lives upside down,” Hall added. “That’s why I think so many people showed up.”

A MOBILE HOME THAT’S HARD TO MOVE

Without a rent decrease or other financial support, Weinacker considered a short list of other options to keep her housing.

She could move in with her son, a 35-year-old Bozeman resident. But Weinacker said she’s reluctant to move to Bozeman, which she describes as “too crowded.” She also said she’s saddened at the thought of not having a space to herself.

Another idea Weinacker had was to move her trailer to a plot of land that her niece owns in the Helena Valley. That option quickly dwindled when she learned that connecting the trailer to water and sewer could cost thousands of dollars. 

Moving the trailer anywhere would be labor-intensive and probably expensive, she said, given that it was originally built in the 1960s. Nikolakakos, the Great Falls lawmaker, said costs for uprooting a mobile home — including unhooking water and gas, detaching the skirting and any outdoor railings or porches, physically moving the structure and then re-attaching everything — would rack up costs in the ballpark of $10,000, at a minimum. 

Nikolakakos pointed to local groups that have tried to address the high moving costs faced by tenants forced out of parks after ownership changes. In Whitefish, local nonprofits raised $160,000 to help 26 families and individuals with relocation costs, giving each household roughly $5,000. Housing support groups said that aid helped prevent many families from falling into homelessness. 

Sometimes, when Weinacker is at a loss for what to do, she thinks about other people like her who might be facing similar hardships. She wishes there were statewide laws that protect tenants from rent spikes. She wishes there were more affordable housing options for low-income people like herself. She wishes all her neighbors could have a place to call home for the long term.

“I don’t know what half of these people are gonna do,” Weinacker said. “We live up here because we’re poor.”

The post Rent hikes hammer residents of Helena trailer court appeared first on Montana Free Press.

About two dozen people packed a public meeting room Tuesday to express to the Laurel City Council their vehement opposition to the state proposal to build a new psychiatric facility on the outskirts of town, one intended to treat people in the criminal justice system.

City council members sat in silence as they listened to nearly two hours of commentary from frustrated community members about the selection of a 114-acre parcel just off Old Highway 10 and Golf Course Road. The council is not currently considering a request from the Gianforte administration to annex the property to connect it to Laurel’s city water and sewer infrastructure. But the prospect of such a request materializing in the not-so-distant future has led the Laurel city attorney to repeatedly instruct elected officials to refrain from issuing any opinions or views on the matter to avoid the perception of prejudging any request that might come before them.

While the council members’ lips were tightly sealed, residents of Laurel and the surrounding area gave them an earful.

First, they criticized the state’s proposed location for the 32-bed facility, which would put criminal defendants and convicts with severe mental illness within 500 yards of an elementary school, adjacent to residential homes and, some opponents noted, close to a community golf course. 

Some went as far as to call the facility a “mental health prison” that would be filled with “the worst of the worst.” Others said they supported the need for more mental health treatment options in the area, just not at that precise location. 

“Safety is more than just access to the building. It’s the students and the teachers state of mind,” said Chris Lorash, chair of the Laurel Public Schools board, which recently announced its opposition to the site location. “I’ve already had my children coming home asking about this facility and wondering about what it means. So I think that it’s something that needs to be considered.”

Second, opponents said that connecting the facility to city services would burden Laurel’s limited tax base. Residents are already holding private fundraisers to support schools and emergency first responders, some community members said. Why would Laurel agree to put tax dollars toward a facility that is exempt from paying property taxes and doesn’t obviously support the city’s bottom line?

Perhaps more than any other complaint, residents expressed mistrust and confusion about how Laurel found itself at the top of the state’s list for possible site locations. Repeatedly mentioned by residents was a Nov. 17 letter from the city’s chief administrative officer, Kurt Markegard. Unlike bids from other localities expressing interest in the facility, Markegard’s letter explained that there were no appropriate locations in Laurel’s city limits for the facility, but explained the process for annexing a property to city services. 

Residents pointed to that letter as an indication of obscure dealmaking that had been in the works to bring the facility to Laurel dating back to mid-2025. 

“Backdoor deals have been made without consulting the Laurel community. We deserve answers,” wrote resident Samantha Mayes, whose public comment letter was read into the public record at the meeting by the city attorney. “I again want to know what role the city played in this decision, how Laurel was selected over other willing communities, and most importantly, how the voices of residents and elected officials are intended to be heard.” 

In a statement in between rounds of public comment, Markegard briefly responded to some of the criticism filed against him via email and letters to council members and city staff. The Gianforte administration approached him and the mayor back in July, Markegard said, along with officials from Billings and Yellowstone County, to consider possible local sites for the facility. Markegard told community members that he was willing to go through his emails and all his communication about the issue since then, promising to be an open book. 

“I want open and transparent government. That’s what I want. That’s what I want from the council members. That’s what I want from the mayor and I want that from the public,” Markegard said. 

The city commission did not take any action related to the mental health facility after public comment.

The post Laurel locals speak out against site location for state psychiatric facility  appeared first on Montana Free Press.