COLUMBIA FALLS, Montana— The following is the official statement of House District 3 Candidate Taylor Rose statement on the closure of the Weyerhaeuser mills in Columbia Falls last Friday.
“Today we saw the end of Columbia Falls great logging heritage with the closure of the Weyerhaeuser mills thanks to federal overreach and the application of green economic policies on our Montana workers. It is also no mere coincidence that at the end of both CFAC and the logging mills, both companies were owned by out of state entities with little to no personal connection to our community.”
“I am fearful that if we in Montana do not turn around these disastrous policies of deindustrialization and a negative stigmatism towards our loggers and factory workers by green activists, Montana is going to wind up as the Greece of the American northwest. In Greece there is no industry to support the next generation and provide a powerful economic base to fund their schools, social services and infrastructure. Tourism and agriculture are powerful and profitable industries for Montana but they are not enough. We need access to our greatest renewable Montana resource: timber. Today we saw a tragedy, but it does not need to stay that way. We can get these mills reopened if we guarantee our logging companies access to the product. We need to get CFAC cleaned up as soon as possible and placed back on the market to get another manufacturing plant on that great piece of real estate.”
“I envision a Montana of industry and community, where we have high paying jobs for our working families and guarantee our children a future in our Montana cities, towns and woods where they can raise their families. If elected to the legislature, I will fight to make Montana manufacturing friendly, protect access to our state forests and work with the feds to get federal land opened up to our loggers. This is why I am running and this is what I want to see for our northwest Montana communities.”