Executives from the Australian firm of Babcock and Brown Infrastructure (BBI) are wondering why their offer to buy Northwestern Energy is generating such resistance. The explanation is simple: Montanans believe they’ve seen this movie before and they don’t like the ending. Here’s why.

The company, based in the Sydney down under, raises ghosts from our past: a time when powerful absentee interests treated Montana as a colonial economy. This history, combined with bitterness from our decade old experiment with energy deregulation, is responsible for much of the sour mood.

BBI executives seeking a context for Montana’s wariness could do no better than to read John Kinsey Howard’s 1943 classic, Montana: High, Wide, and Handsome. Howard, a newspaper reporter from Great Falls, described the social and environmental price Montana paid as remote bureaucratic and corporate forces ran roughshod over the state.

Montana: High, Wide, and Handsome recounts the collusion between government agencies and the railways that encouraged thousands to homestead Montana’s arid high plains. For a few years, abnormally high rainfall and the high grain prices of WWI, gave hope for sustainable prosperity. But these lands were (and still are) generally inhospitable for farming. Over the generations, as normal weather conditions returned, people were rung out of their land. Today, the eastern two-thirds of Montana has fewer people than during World War I. In 1878, John Wesley Powell warned that the region's adverse mix of climate and topography would preclude repeating the successful homesteading experience in the Midwest.

Howard reserves special ire for the legendary machinations of the Anaconda Copper Company. Formed in 1881 by Eastern financial interests, it was once one of the largest companies in the world. For nearly a century, Anaconda held a vice-like grip on the state. “Anaconda ran it all,” said University of Montana historian Harry Fritz. “The railroads, the ranchers, the power company, the newspapers, the miners, everything.” (Until the mid-1960s, Anaconda owned six of the state’s seven daily newspapers.) Anaconda’s legacy lingers in the toxic waters of the Berkley Pit and the contaminated sediments of the Clark Fork River. (The upper river basin is the nation’s largest Superfund site.)

But nothing motivates suspicion of BBI’s offer more than the memory of the damage done by the meltdown of the Montana Power Company (MPC). “The Power” was established in 1912 to provide electricity for Anaconda’s growing operations. As the state’s primary public utility, MPC generated, distributed, and sold electricity to Montana and beyond. It enjoyed protected monopoly status, yet citizens benefited from some of the lowest electricity rates in the nation. MPC’s stodgy, but reliable stock paid consistent dividends, making it a favorite in retirement portfolios.

A decade ago, the Racicot administration, along with the MPC and its large industrial customers, pushed energy deregulation through the legislature. The heavy-handed lobbying and high-pressure tactics (the deregulation bill was introduced on the last day of the 1997 legislative session) reminded many of the corporate cronyism that defined Montana’s sordid political past.

In 2000, just as electricity prices began to rise, MPC sold its assets (i.e., dams, power plants, transmission lines, and coalfields) to out-of-state interests. The sale generated $2.7 billion. MPC used the proceeds to transform itself into the telecommunications company, Touch America. This transition came just as the bottom fell out of the tech sector, and three years later Touch America was bankrupt. (In 2003, Touch America was sold to 360 Networks of Vancouver, British Columbia for $28 million.) MPC stockholders lost everything.

A lawsuit has been filed accusing a New York investment bank and a Wall Street law firm of conspiring with MPC officials to push for passage of an electric utility deregulation law in 1997 so MPC could sell its energy assets at higher prices. It’s ironic that in order to get more competition the current legislature is considering a bill to re-regulate our energy market.

The American West has long had its destiny in the hands of outsiders. Only recently has this begun to change. The opposition to BBI reflects this historical reality—and perhaps it signals a political maturity and a more promising future.