(The following appeared on the Clark Fork Chronicle website on March 23, 2011.)
SUPERIOR, Mont. — Senator Jon Tester says Montana farmers and ranchers who rely on the BNSF Railway to ship their commodities out of state shouldn’t get stuck with higher bills following the recent acquisition of the railroad.
Shareholders approved Berkshire Hathaway’s purchase of BNSF last year, in a deal worth about $44 billion. But the Nebraska-based conglomerate paid approximately $7.3 billion more than BNSF’s “book value.”
So Tester and a bipartisan group of his colleagues are asking the Surface Transportation Board to make sure that BNSF does not “pass that cost on to its captive customers in the form of higher rates.”
The full story is on the Clark Fork Chronicle website.