Editorials

Missoula has made vital progress in recent years on the subject of sexual assault. Following the launch in 2012 of a federal Department of Justice investigation into local handling of rape reports, the Missoula Police Department, Missoula County Attorney’s Office and University of Montana dove into a groundbreaking process of improving education, prevention and response systems, and emerged as national leaders for best practices.

Now it’s time to take that progress to the next level — the state level.

So it’s that time of year when we are inundated with the “top” stories of the last year. Not that there is anything wrong with this, other than it recurs with increasing frequency.

Not the number of “year in review” stories, mind you. It’s how quickly they return. It seems just last week there was the deluge of the “top stories from 2015.”

While we cannot explain the physics, we know it is as true as gravity — the more one ages, the faster one ages.

The Montana Standard, Dec. 30, on advice for Montana’s leaders:

Just in case they don’t make them themselves, we’ll make the following New Year’s resolutions for some folks around the state:

If this is the kind of leadership we’re going to see out of the Republican-dominated Legislature, the biennial session set to start in barely more than a week’s time is going to take the state backward in highly irresponsible, demagogic fashion.

As a curtain-raiser to what will be undeniably difficult budget discussions, Senate President Scott Sales and his fellow Republicans have suggested cutting Gov. Bullock’s $12 million early childhood education proposal “that the majority of Montanans haven’t asked for” to fill the highway-funding shortfall.