Physical Residence-Intended Residence

Residency shouldn't require mind reading - Monday, July 14, 2008 Missoulian
Where do you live? And how do you know you really live there?
Most of us would probably give a simple answer to these questions. We might say we live wherever it is that we pay rent, mortgage or property taxes. “Home” is the place where we lay our heads each night, or where we collect our mail. It's the address we provide when filling out our voter registration cards.
But if you're a candidate for public office in Montana, you might answer that question differently. You could say, for instance, that “home” is wherever you “intend” to live at some point in the future.
While the Montana Constitution requires that a candidate for state office reside within the district he would like to represent for at least six months prior to an election, the Montana Code Annotated goes on to explain just how to determine a candidate's true residence, and that explanation contains definitions like this: “The place where an individual's family resides is presumed to be that individual's place of residence. However, an individual who takes up or continues a residence at a place other than where the individual's family resides with the intention of remaining is a resident of the place where the individual resides.”
These sort of sentences seem to give a lot of weight to a candidate's intentions, and indeed, legal precedence largely backs that up.
The problem is, it's difficult, if not impossible, for anyone other than the candidate himself to know just where he “intends” to live.
And that seems to be the crux of Dick Motta's complaint, filed with the state Office of Political Practices on Tuesday.
“The whole word ‘intent' in my mind, is totally subjective,” he told the Missoulian this week. “From a legal point of view, you would think they would throw that out as being overly vague.”
Motta is running against Jesse Laslovich to represent Senate District 43, which covers voters in Deer Lodge and Granite counties.
A little more than a month ago, Montana House Speaker Scott Sales asked Attorney General Mike McGrath for a formal opinion on the Laslovich's residency, an opinion that McGrath rightly declined to provide. After all, Laslovich is an employee in his office.
Jesse Laslovich has been representing the district since he was first elected to a seat in the House. At the time, he was a student at the University of Montana and listed his parents' address in Anaconda as his own. He then ran unopposed for a seat in the Senate. He is now seeking re-election.
However, Laslovich has graduated from law school. About a year ago, he was appointed by McGrath to work in the Office of Consumer Protection in the Montana Department of Justice, and he has been working in Helena all that time. He also got married, and his wife works in Helena, too. They even bought a home - in Helena.
Nevertheless, Laslovich filed as a Senate candidate still using his parents' address, stating that he intends to return to Anaconda after his appointment with the Justice Department ends. Of course, he and his wife don't intend to move in with his parents, but rather to sell their house in Helena and look for property in Anaconda.
So how do the people Laslovich wants to represent feel about supporting a candidate who doesn't technically live there? Probably same as we in Montana feel about being represented by someone who doesn't live here. That would be U.S. Sen. Max Baucus, whose only claim to a home in Montana is his mother's residence. And for 11 years before he and his wife purchased that half, he didn't have any residence in Montana at all.
That's in contrast to fellow U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, who rents a place in Washington, D.C., but returns to his farm near Big Sandy every weekend, and U.S. Rep. Denny Rehberg, who doesn't even rent an apartment in Washington. He sleeps on his office couch.
The voters of Senate District 43 will decide for themselves whether Laslovich is an appropriate representative. Since Laslovich was previously elected to the House as a university student in Missoula, it stands to reason that at least some people in the district think he can do the job just fine.
“I've always been a person who leaves it to the will of the people,” Laslovich said. “I've had somebody say, Jesse, we'd vote for you if you lived on the moon.”
He told the Missoulian this while standing in his parents' kitchen, where he was in the middle of a tiling project. He also said he manages to visit his hometown regularly, and has always considered it “home.” He agreed that “the question of intent is a subjective one,” but pointed out that if that's how the law is read, he hasn't done anything wrong.
Motta, of course, disagrees. The state constitution, he contends, is pretty clear on this issue. If state statute contains contradictory provisions, that would merely mean the provisions are ... well, unconstitutional.
Most residency requirements tend to be more specific, he noted.
“You almost have to assume that this whole approach to ‘intent' is sort of an attempt to give legislators a way to reinterpret the statute,” Motta mused.
Indeed, it strikes us as the height of silliness that one's residency should hinge on one's intent. It boils down to the fact that elected officials make poor representatives if they don't have regular contact with the people they are supposed to represent.
That's not to suggest that you should have to own a home to qualify as a candidate - but at the very least, the homes of family members you no longer live with should not count.
What should matter is where you actually live right now - and we should make it clear to our legislative representatives that the statutory loophole that asks us to read candidates' minds in order to figure out where they live needs to be closed.
Copyright © 2008 Missoulian