Guest Opinion: HB 562 is a Win for Montana's Businesses

I’m JB Howick and my family and I own Townsend Hardware. As new business owners we learned the hard way about a small but important Montana law: MCA 60-6. This law protects the safety of drivers on state highways by prohibiting anything from being placed on state highway rights-of-way without a permit from the Montana Department of Transportation, which makes sense along the high speed highways outside our cities and towns. However, like so many businesses in Montana, our business sits directly on a state highway sidewalk. Our door technically violates the law whenever it’s opened because we d...