Firm gave most funds to fight ban

HELENA – Nearly 99 percent of the in-kind donations raised in an effort to overturn a state ban on using cyanide in gold mining has come from a company that was prohibited by the ban from developing a mine near Lincoln, new finance reports show.

The reports show that nearly $379,000 of the $382,000 in in-kind donations raised by Miners, Merchants and Montanans for Jobs and Economic Opportunity, FOR I-147, the committee behind the initiative to overturn the ban, came from Canyon Resources Corp., based in Golden, Colo.

The in-kind donations included paying fees for consultants and to conduct public opinion polls. The company also is paying the salary of the chairwoman of Miners, Merchants and Montanans, Tammy Johnson.

Canyon Resources supports Initiative 147, which would repeal a separate 1998 voter-passed initiative that banned the use of cyanide in gold mining.

The company was in the process of trying to develop a large gold mine near Lincoln when voters passed I-137, banning a process known as cyanide heap-leach mining. The company later sued to overturn the law, but a District Court judge ruled against Canyon Resources. An appeal is pending before the state Supreme Court.

Canyon Resources lost $5.7 million in the first three months of this year, documents filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission show. It lost almost $12.5 million last year.

Dick DeVoto, president of Canyon Resources, had earlier said his company would not be a major player in the effort to repeal the cyanide ban.

He said Wednesday he had not seen the latest campaign finance reports and was not personally aware of what percentage of contributions to the committee came from his company. However, he said he expects contributions from other groups, companies and citizens will eventually be much greater.

“In the long run, we certainly expect that there will be significant contributions from those other than Canyon Resources,” he said.

He also said he was not sure his company was directly paying Johnson’s salary as the group’s chairwoman.

Johnson told Lee Newspapers that her company, Environomics Inc., of Libby, had a contract with Canyon Resources to run the campaign until the initiative qualifies for the November ballot. The deadline to qualify initiatives is June 18.

State law caps at $500 the amount of money people and political action committees may donate to other state political campaigns. But there are no limits on the amount of cash or in-kind services that can be donated to initiative campaigns.