#MTGov Daily Rundown: Bullock's Hypocritical Record on Equal Pay

This week, Governor Steve Bullock will hold events across the state supposedly to highlight his efforts to ensure equal pay and equal treatment for women. However, as on a lot of issues, his actual record doesn't live up to his rhetoric.

Montana Ranks 46^th in Gender Pay Gap Nationwide Under Steve Bullock.

2015: Overall, women in Montana earn just 67.5 percent of what men earn, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. For full-time workers, women in the state earn 75 percent of what men earn, compared with 78 percent nationwide. That’s a larger pay gap than all but five states in the country (Billings Gazette, 8/24/15).

Also, in his last year as Attorney General, female employees at the Montana Dept. of Justice were paid, on average, just 72% of the average hourly wage paid to male employees. Also, a majority of the MDOJ's highest paid employees were men.

While Bullock touts the work of the Equal Pay Task Force, a Media Trackers study of 2012 employee salary data from the Montana Department of Justice (MDOJ) — which Bullock headed as Attorney General from 2009 until 2013 — maintained a substantial pay gap between men and women in Bullock’s final year of leadership (Media Trackers, 12/12/13)

According to the data, MDOJ had 790 employees in 2012. Just over 44  percent were women.Female employees made on average about $18/hr, while male employees made on average about $25/hr, meaning that women who worked for Bullock earned a mere 72 percent of the earnings of their male colleagues in 2012.

Even though women comprised only 44 percent of MDOJ employees in 2012, the data showed that over 70 percent of the department’s 300 lowest-paid employees were women. Of the 100 highest-paid employees at MDOJ, Media Trackers found that fewer than 30 were women.

Bullock also had issues with his female lieutenant governor Angela McLean, who by all accounts, seemed to be well liked. However, there was apparently a falling out between McLean and Bullock that led to her resigning and taking another post in state government.
Montana Gov. Steve Bullock has used his private email account to communicate about a wide variety of official business from proposed legislation to his increasingly strained relationship with the former lieutenant governor, according to hundreds of pages of emails released Friday." -Great Falls Tribune, 5/6/2016

"The newly released records shed more light on the strained relationship between McLean, Bullock and his staff. McLean complains to Bullock about her treatment by his budget director, Dan Villa, whom she said told her 'either you are on the team or you are not.'

In May, the lieutenant governor wrote a letter to Bullock saying Chief of Staff Tracy Stone-Manning had confirmed that he was considering a different running mate for his 2016 re-election campaign. 'I guess I am learning ambition is a funny thing and realizing the full consequences of standing up for what you believe it right,' McLean wrote." -Great Falls Tribune, 5/6/2016

The resignation of McLean and Bullock's issues with his choices for Lt. Gov. have caused leading commentators and newspapers to raise larger questions about how the governor's office is being mananged.

"“What’s more important is it looks odd the governor is going to have a third lieutenant governor in a four-year term. That then raises questions I don’t think the governor wants raised. It brings back the Walsh story, it goes to the fundamental question of, 'Is the governor competent?'” -MSU political science professor David Parker in the Billings Gazette, 12/1/2016

"There’s a gap there. There’s obviously a gap between her account of what took place and the fact that you felt her frustration was disruptive. I mean, there’s something else there.” -Montana Standard editor David McCumber, 12/16/2016