Other public desks · October 14, 2026
Statewide shelves. Not one pile.
Campaign money, a published plea, utility filings, rail reports, and fire perimeters are different records. None of them is a jail roster, a death count, or a bed count. This page links the public search. It does not log in, and it does not copy the tables here. A resignation is not a scandal. A newsroom’s suspicion is not a conviction. Two records sit side by side only when the source already put them there.
Not matched
Mateer
A search of the news and agency pages opened for this shelf did not find a public file under the name Mateer, or under “Trivia Mateer.” No docket, contribution, or brewery license is invented to fill the gap. If a report exists, it has to be the document, not a recollection.
Helena Municipal Court · reported plea
Ellie Boldman
This is not a blotter feed and not a brewery alert. Montana Free Press, March 5, 2025, also carried by Montana Public Radio, reported that Sen. Ellie Boldman, D-Missoula, pleaded guilty in Helena Municipal Court to misdemeanor DUI. The story says she admitted a blood-alcohol content of 0.149 while in physical control of a vehicle parked near Park and Placer avenues, and that the citation said she was sleeping in a running vehicle obstructing the roadway. The reported sentence was a $1,000 fine with $300 suspended, a 180-day jail term suspended unless the conditions were broken, six months away from a bar or casino, and a chemical-dependency evaluation. She told MTPR she was waiting for a ride. The story says she had left a Helena bar. It does not name a brewery, so none is named here. A guilty plea is not a finding about her votes. A Billings Gazette post on May 22, 2026, and a Missoulian headline, say a Lewis and Clark County District judge ordered release of body-camera footage, and those headlines say the first 34 minutes. This desk has not read that order, and the video is not on this page.
Montana Free Press, March 5, 2025Commissioner of Political Practices
CERS
The Campaign Electronic Reporting System is the public search of campaign-finance reports candidates and committees file with the Commissioner of Political Practices. The COPP’s own guide says online reporting is required under MCA 13-37-225 unless a waiver is granted, and that a report is not public until it is filed. Search is open at cers-ext.mt.gov. Lobbyist reports and the complaint forms sit on politicalpractices.mt.gov. A contribution line is not a corruption finding. This desk does not log in through ePass and does not copy a donor roll onto this page.
CERS public searchUtility filings · not a rate order
PSC and data centers
The Public Service Commission regulates monopoly utilities. It is not on the governor’s public-information list; a request goes to the commission. Daily Montanan, November 18, 2025, reported that Earthjustice filed a complaint asking the PSC to investigate NorthWestern Energy’s letters of intent for data-center load. The complaint, as reported, named Atlas Power, Sabey, and Quantica and recited megawatt figures the groups attributed to NorthWestern. Those are the complaint’s figures, not a commission order. A March 2026 report said the PSC had let NorthWestern keep letter contents under a protective order, and that the groups moved to lift it. The Billings Gazette, August 5, 2026, reported that the PSC then released some of that material, including letters of intent. This desk has not opened the docket and will not invent its number. A letter of intent is not a power plant. A protective order is not proof of what was withheld.
Daily Montanan, November 18, 2025Accident reports · not a live map
Trains
Rail accidents Montana readers can check without a login start at the Federal Railroad Administration’s public safety data, with economic regulation at the Surface Transportation Board. An accident row is the report that was filed. It is not a cause finding until the report states one, and it is not a consist, a crew list, or a hazardous-materials manifest. This desk does not plot trains. The field atlas next door is not this file.
FRA safety dataPerimeters · not an ignition finding
Wildfires
The Department of Natural Resources and Conservation publishes fire information and says its map is informational. The Montana State Library’s current-wildfire map draws locations and perimeters from National Interagency Fire Center open data, plus cadastral layers, and the library says it may revise the file. A perimeter is not a cause, a damage census, or a list of who was evacuated. Historical DNRC fire reports can be downloaded from the department’s fire-report site. This page does not host a mirror.
Montana DNRCRequests · not yet mailed
NextRequest and the state portal
CivicPlus NextRequest is a vendor product. There is no one statewide door. On October 14, 2026 this desk checked thirty-four guessed hostnames without logging in. Two answered as agency portals: Missoula County at missoulacountymt.nextrequest.com, which says it is not the city and that most email from before February 2, 2016 cannot be produced, and Kalispell, which says a $5 fee is due before release. The other thirty-two redirected to CivicPlus and are not listed as governments. Executive-branch records for agencies the governor’s office supports go through the Office of Public Information Requests. OPIR’s own page says it does not cover local government, the Legislature, the courts, the university system, or agencies of other elected officials, and it names the Public Service Commission, the Attorney General, the Secretary of State, and the Auditor as examples of offices you ask directly. A portal login is not a record. No new request is filed from this page. The Mac federation is not attached to this check.
Office of Public Information RequestsPublished tools · no GitHub org found
Montana Free Press
The newsroom at montanafreepress.org publishes an Election Guide and a Capitol Tracker. Those are its products. On October 14, 2026, github.com/montanafreepress returned a 404. No repository list is invented in its place. A line in the newsroom’s 2024 impact report about sharing election-guide code with WyoFile is not a license file this desk has read. A news story is not a dataset, and it is not imported into a custody count.
Montana Free Press
Elections, departures, one history
Secretary of State · not a ruling
Election results
The live board at electionresults.mt.gov is the Secretary of State’s results display. When this desk read it on October 14, 2026, it showed the June 2, 2026 primary with turnout of 37.92 percent, 300,011 ballots out of 791,207 registered voters, and 728 precincts fully reported. The board said those figures were last updated June 29, 2026, at 1:50 p.m. Mountain. The canvass and the archived files live on sosmt.gov. A results board is not a court order. Montana Free Press reported on October 5, 2026 that Lewis and Clark County District Judge Mike Menahan struck down the absentee-envelope birth-year rule and that the requirement had voided nearly 6,000 votes since 2025. The plaintiffs in that story are Disability Rights Montana and Big Sky 55+. The Secretary of State defended the law. This desk has not read the order. Campaign money stays in CERS, above. A contribution is not a vote.
Secretary of State results boardDepartures · a lawsuit only if the source files one
Who stepped down
These are separate. Shannon O’Brien resigned as chair of the Montana Democratic Party on October 12, 2026, and endorsed independent U.S. Senate candidate Seth Bodnar. Montana Free Press reported that the party said Vice Chair Bruce Knutson became chair. The nominee, Alani Bankhead, criticized the resignation. No lawsuit is in that story. John Adams said he will leave as chief executive of Montana Free Press on June 1, 2027. That is a planned exit, not a charge. Judge Robert “Dusty” Deschamps — the name on the request was spelled Decamps — was reported by the Missoulian on January 2, 2025 to be retiring after two decades on the Missoula district bench. The story says he was elected county attorney in 1970, served seven terms, and ran for judge in 2006 to replace John Henson. He said it was time. The story does not attach a scandal or a lawsuit to the retirement. The one departure a newsroom tied to a suit is Butte-Silver Bow Coroner Lori Durkin, reported on leave after the family of Caleb Boelman, 32, alleged the office let his body decompose and misstated a toxicology screen. The Montana Standard reported that a Missoula firm sued the county and the coroner in Missoula district court on January 29, 2025. A January letter had demanded $750,000 and policy changes. A demand is not a judgment. Dan Hollis was reported as interim coroner. This desk has not opened that case.
Missoulian, Deschamps, January 2, 2025Utility executive · testimony is not an order
NorthWestern and the merger
NorthWestern Energy’s chief executive, Brian Bird, is the industry name in the data-center file already on this shelf. Montana Independent reported that on May 13, 2026, under questioning from lawyer Monica Tranel, Bird agreed he had discussed data centers as a merger opportunity, and that he also named transmission and generation. The story says Public Service Commission Vice President Jennifer Fielder kept that subject out of the merger hearing. It also says a first-quarter 2026 earnings report described three signed data-center agreements and a larger Quantica figure. An answer in a hearing is not a rate order. A Helena Independent Record opinion column on October 13, 2026 asserted what executives might be paid if a Black Hills combination closed, and it named Bright Horizon Energy. That is a column. This desk has not read the proxy, and it does not adopt the column’s dollar figures.
Montana Independent, May 16, 20261986 · suspicion is not a conviction
Wayne Nance
The New York Times, October 26, 1986, reported that Wayne N. Nance of East Missoula was killed in September 1986 in a struggle at his employer’s house. The Times said he entered the house, tied up his employer Kristen Wells, and stabbed her husband, and that the husband shot him with the intruder’s rifle. The Times said police and the FBI had then connected him to the killing of a couple found tied and stabbed the previous December, suspected him in a 1984 death, and suspected him in other unsolved slayings. Captain Larry Weatherman of the Missoula County sheriff’s office is the officer the Times quoted. Wikipedia records that Nance was never charged, tried, or convicted, because he died during that break-in. This desk has no charging document to cite, and it does not adopt an encyclopedia’s victim count as a verdict. The nickname in later retellings is not a court style. This history is not correlated here to a current lawsuit, a current inquest, or a corporate filing.
New York Times, October 26, 1986Inquest already reported · not reopened
Brendon Galbreath
The Missoulian, April 29, 2022, reported that a Missoula coroner’s jury found Brendon Galbreath died by suicide during a police chase in August 2021 and cleared the officer. An inquest verdict answers criminal means. It does not decide a civil case, and this desk does not open one that the story did not file. Other inquests already on the docket stay there.
Missoulian, April 29, 2022