HELENA — There are two seats up for election this year on the Montana Public Service Commission, the state’s main utility regulatory body. Of those, there’s only one race that features an incumbent seeking reelection.
Republican Commissioner Annie Bukacek won a four-year term on the PSC in 2022, representing District 5. The district was redrawn after that election; it now covers a swath of western and central Montana, including parts of Kalispell, Missoula, Great Falls and Helena.
This year, Bukacek is facing two challengers in the Republican primary: Joe Dooling and David Sanders.
(Watch the video to hear from the Republican primary candidates.)
Bukacek, a doctor from Flathead County, says when talking to voters, she’s cautious about answering specific questions about the regulatory work the commission does. The PSC is a quasi-judicial agency, meaning its proceedings follow stricter rules, including requiring commissioners to act impartially when making decisions.
Because of those guidelines, Bukacek says she’s put a greater emphasis on how she makes her decisions – particularly focusing on maintaining adequate energy supply.
“We are required to not inject bias, and I think I'm good at that,” she said. “I've been a physician for over 40 years, I've been a grassroots advocate for about the same period of time, and so I think I'm very, very good at looking at things objectively.”
Bukacek believes her work on the commission so far has shown she’s able to analyze complicated information, think independently and come to a good outcome for the public.
“I think that right now, it's critically important that a commissioner go above and beyond the call of duty, and I have always done that for everything that I set my mind to,” she said.
Dooling was in the Republican primary for District 5 against Bukacek four years ago. He ended up in third place – but less than 800 votes behind – in an extremely tight race.
Dooling, a farmer and rancher in the Helena Valley, says he got into the race again because of the impact rising power prices have had on people like him – and because he believes the commission hasn’t fought hard enough against rate hikes.
“The last 15 years, the power rate for irrigation has gone up 400%,” he said. “So if we're not going to get ourselves commissioners that are going to look out for the ratepayers, we're in trouble.”
Dooling says the PSC should be slowing down and taking longer looks at major proposals like the planned merger of NorthWestern Energy and Black Hills Energy. He says, besides his time in agriculture, he has worked in engineering and knows what it takes to move big infrastructure projects forward.
“I understand it from a regulation point of view, from a building point of view, all those kinds of things that we had to do to build that power line,” he said.
Sanders has previous experience working at the PSC: He spent about a year as the agency’s executive director, under former President James Brown. Now, Brown is the Montana state auditor, and Sanders works as his chief of staff. He says that experience means he’s ready to help the commission in a new direction.
“I know how to make it work,” he said. “I know what good looks like, and I know what bad looks like. When I was there before, it looked very, very good. When I'm looking at the PSC now, it looks very, very bad.”
Sanders questions whether the increased rates utilities have been asking the agency for are really justified, and says commissioners need to be scrutinizing the proposals.
“Electric rates are going up at three times the rate of inflation – and we all know we've had inflation,” he said. “So affordability is a key problem, accessibility to the Public Service Commission itself and accountability for the Public Service Commission and the monopoly utilities is absolutely paramount.”
Dooling and Sanders have both criticized of “infighting” between commissioners that they say is distracting the PSC from what it should be working on. Much of that turmoil has centered on conflicts between Bukacek and Commissioner Brad Molnar.
Dooling says he believes the tension on the commission can be boiled down to “personal vendettas,” and that the commission majority went too far by voting for a recommendation that Molnar be kept out of the building over complaints about his workplace conduct.
“It's pretty clear if you think the PSC is a smooth-running machine, vote for my incumbent,” he said. “If you want to see this stuff end and get rid of it, vote her out, because she's the heart of it.”
Sanders says the amount of time and energy being spent on the investigations and complaints is damaging the agency.
“There are rate cases that are before the commission that aren't getting scrutinized in the way that they need to be scrutinized, because there's no time and precious little in the way of legal and other regulatory resources to get that work done,” he said. “The commission is also losing good, qualified staff who have either resigned or been fired in recent months, because they just can't take the ongoing drama.”
Bukacek says the conflict on the PSC hasn’t been as disruptive since she and two other members voted to remove Molnar as president last year. She says she’s proud of steps the agency has taken, like adopting an internal policy manual and code of conduct, that she believes will help improve the situation.
“It was kind of a long time overdue,” she said. “The things that we've implemented have made a big difference. There have been a tremendous amount of improvements there, and I feel fortunate to be part of that.”
Sanders has also publicly accused Bukacek of being ineligible for this position. During a legislative interim committee meeting last week, he told lawmakers he had seen evidence that Bukacek’s primary residence was in Marion, west of Kalispell – and outside District 5 – though she had recently re-registered to vote in Helena.
“I felt the absolute need to address this issue in public and make sure the people of Montana have proper choices in front of them, and people who are legally qualified to serve,” Sanders told MTN.
Bukacek told MTN she maintains residences both in Kalispell and in Helena because of her frequent travel back and forth.
“I do not live at my Marion off grid cabin that has been rented out for over two years,” she said in a statement. “I voted at the Lewis and Clark County Election office the same day my opponent made the false allegation.”
Bukacek told MTN she has stopped accepting new patients at her medical practice in Kalispell after her election, and that she’s now serving a relatively small number of longtime patients.
The three Republican candidates are all generally unsupportive of proposals to convert the PSC from an elected body to an appointed body. Bukacek said she wanted to ensure commissioners continued to answer directly to the public, though she was willing to see if someone could come up with a better configuration. Dooling said, despite his frustrations with how the commission has been operating, he thought electing new members was more important than changing the structure. Sanders said he wouldn’t take a firm position on a proposed change until he sees actual legislation, but that he didn’t think structural change alone would fix the PSC.
Whoever wins the Republican nomination will be on the general election ballot alongside a Democratic candidate: Kevin Hamm, a business owner and activist from Helena. Hamm previously ran for the District 5 seat in 2022, and he’s the only one in this year’s Democratic primary.
