On a Tuesday afternoon in early March, residents in Laurel, Montana, gathered near the edge of town and looked toward a nearby 114-acre parcel that has become the focus of a rapidly growing local campaign. Organizers say the proposed psychiatric forensic facility—described by state officials as a way to address a backlog for people in the criminal-justice system awaiting mental health evaluations—has collided with local residents’ sense that the process was opaque and that their community was not meaningfully consulted.
Opposition in Laurel has varied. Some residents say they support the facility’s purpose in principle, but they dispute the decision to place it close to their homes and, in many accounts, they tie their anger to what they describe as a rushed and poorly explained siting process. A common thread in interviews and community activity is a feeling of being overlooked by state and local officials, with residents drawing their conclusions from texts, records requests, and public meetings rather than from what they say was direct engagement.
Shawna Hopper, a local restaurant owner who is married to the local fire chief, described her involvement in community organizing as a response to what she characterized as being “pushed and walked all over.” She said, “I have the heart to make this a better community,” and added, “But I’m not one that’s going to be pushed and walked all over.” Hopper and others have circulated information online and through documentation efforts, including a Facebook group called Laurel C.A.R.E.D. (Community Advocates for Responsible Economic Development), which has grown to more than 1,000 members, as well as a website, drafted emergency ordinances, filed public records requests, and surveyed residents about their stances.
The petition effort has become a focal point. In the hours before she joined neighbors at a Laurel City Council meeting, Hopper filed a petition with Yellowstone County officials to remove Waggoner from office over allegations of backroom dealing to bring the facility to Laurel. Asked to comment on the recall petition, Waggoner said he had hired a lawyer and planned to file an injunction in District Court to have the petition invalidated.
In the weeks leading up to the council meeting, residents framed their campaign as both a short-term demand for direct state engagement and a longer-term push to stop the facility from being built at the current location. Statehouse and local officials have acknowledged different kinds of local pushback. State Rep. Lee Deming, a Republican and retired teacher who taught in Laurel for decades, said the community’s concerns have “created huge rifts” and added, “I think it is different. I think it’s much more intense,” while also saying, “There are going to be some people who are going to be upset for a long time over how the process worked out,” and “I don’t blame them for that at all.”
The dispute has also played out as residents compare the state’s description of the facility with what they say they fear will happen nearby. Amber Zahn said she first learned the facility would be coming next to her home in January via late-night text messages from Hopper after reading about the site selection in local news coverage. Zahn said, looking out over the nearby property, “We can be selfish and say it’s gonna take away our view, which it is,” but she also said, “it also puts us in fear,” and asked, “And is fear a great thing to base things off of? No, but it makes a lot of decisions for a lot of people.”
Residents point to what they describe as abrupt changes in how Montana sought and selected a location for the forensic facility. The state later announced Laurel would be the home to the new forensic facility in November—an outcome that surprised many locals because Laurel had not previously sought the facility in an official application process. According to the report, the state’s development efforts were previously directed at Billings and Yellowstone County officials rebuffed the state’s advances over the summer. When the state pivoted to asking other towns to apply, residents say Laurel did not submit a proposal; instead, the city’s chief administrative officer, Kurt Markegard, sent a letter explaining why Laurel lacked a suitable 10-acre site within city limits.
Markegard’s communications, and what residents say those messages imply about earlier conversations with state officials, have been central to the local mistrust. In the report, Markegard wrote to the Board of Investments executive director Dan Villa that Laurel’s mayor, Waggoner, and he had described to Villa “a location just outside Laurel’s city limits” with criteria that could make building the facility “remarkably successful.” Residents then sought additional documentation through public records requests, which they said yielded months of documented conversations among Markegard, Waggoner, and Villa dating back to July. The report also includes an email from Markegard to Villa that described a 10-acre plot of land west of Laurel and highlighted infrastructure considerations, and quotes a message inviting a Teams meeting to discuss the proposed site.
In addition to local fears, some residents say their opposition stems from development and tax concerns tied to the town’s geography and boundaries. Laurel is described as hemmed in by Billings to the east, rimrock cliffs to the north, and the Yellowstone River to the south, with industrial facilities nearby. Residents such as Kris Vogele and Steve Krum argued that placing the facility on the 114-acre parcel would drain a potential revenue base that could otherwise come from future housing and businesses. Krum said, “I think it’s a death-blow to Laurel. I do,” and added, “That is the direction that they can go and reasonably create a tax base to help fund the operation of the city. There’s no other way to grow.”
State officials, however, have sought to address those concerns by emphasizing how a secure forensic facility would operate. In an early March presentation to state lawmakers in Helena, Brereton and Villa discussed “myths vs. facts” about the facility’s potential impact on Laurel, including its proximity to an elementary school. Villa said, “(E)ssential infrastructure frequently co-exists within residential boundaries,” and compared the Laurel situation to other psychiatric facilities described in the presentation. Villa also said, “This secure facility was recently built in the very affluent neighborhood of Helena, 431 yards from Smith Elementary,” and said in Laurel they were evaluating feasibility of a 114-acre lot “over a half mile wide” to ensure a “massive geographic buffer.” Brereton said, “Unlike a civil facility, this type of forensic facility serves those involved in the criminal justice system and therefore does not discharge patients into the community,” and added, “So patients are securely transferred to and from the facility and the community, arguably, will never see these individuals or these patients. That is the fact.”
After the Helena presentation, Hopper described feeling more enraged by what she characterized as “myth-versus-fact” messaging. In a pre-6 a.m. text message to Montana Free Press reported in the story, Hopper wrote, “I am livid,” and also wrote, “More lies.” In the same report, residents said they took their concerns back to city officials and to the public record, continuing through meetings and letter-writing as they prepared for the council’s discussion.
At the Laurel City Council meeting, the report describes organizers using a local event space next to City Hall as a staging area before moving into the committee hearing room. During the meeting, the city council scheduled a date in coming weeks to consider emergency ordinances drafted by residents including Vogele. The report also describes a statement put into the record by City Council Member Jodi Mackay, which was signed by all eight city council members, describing Laurel as “a small, hardworking, thoughtful community.” The statement said the community had been disrupted by the “chaos” brought about by state efforts and said, “To date, the Laurel City Council nor Laurel citizens have had no meaningful engagement with any state officials regarding this topic,” according to the text Mackay read. Mackay’s statement also said the residents had been galvanized into a “grassroots effort comprised of concerned and educated citizens,” and urged state officials to “engage with these voters” and “make them part of your process.” After Mackay read the statement, the report says audience members responded with applause.
Sources in the story describe the facility fight in Laurel as a dispute about both the need for psychiatric forensic care and the local consequences of where it would be built. For residents who want to block the state’s planned siting, the issue has become less about whether mental health treatment for people in the criminal-justice system is needed and more about what they say they were denied: timely outreach, direct engagement, and a process that they believe treated Laurel’s future as secondary.