Click to view schedule for Week 11 – March 13-17

Thank you to all our county officials who joined us for County Day at the Capitol this week! It was great to discuss legislative issues with you all. We know the weather impacted a lot of your plans, but thankfully we had a good group attending and were able to attend the evening legislative social to network with their area lawmaker. We had some wonderful discussions! We heard a great deal of feedback from legislators about the opportunity to hear directly from the “folks back home”.

Both houses of the Legislature got back to a full week of work on the Floor, but still dealt largely with the “easy” bills, as many had overwhelming votes for passage. A goodly number of the stickier and trickier ones had hearings and not the harder work will start.

A few if the bills resolved this week include:

HB1127 to clean up the bidding statutes for county bridges passed the Senate with no changes so it is on to the Governor.

HB1197 passed the Senate like it did the House and now (if the Governor agrees) newspapers may use their E-editions for public notices. 

The Senate agreed with the House on the study of not taxing off-farm grain storage properties in HB1247, however the Senate Finance & Tax Committee is recommending that the Senate defeat a study of taxing property by square foot rather than value.

Retirement plans are a big issue this Session, the two major PERS related bills both had hearings this week. The Senate defeated the retirement plan for police dogs that was HB1388.

The House approved the Senate’s change to the estimated property tax notice adding last year’s specials – SB2121, goes to the Governor

Townships will be able to carry-over $500,000 in their road fund (legally) with the House’s agreement to SB2178.

Both bodies approved in SB2267, to expand the “rural attorney recruitment program” from 4 to 8 subsidies.

A bill to allow law enforcement to announce when a road is closed vs post it closed was passed along with a bill that increases the penalty for thefts during a riot.

NDACo testified on two resolutions for constitutional measures. HCR 3024 would put a measure on the ballot to change the constitution to abolish local property taxes. HCR 4019 would ask voters to remove the 1 mill on property taxes for the UND Medical School and replace the funding with state dollars.

The Primary Seatbelt bill had it’s hearing on the House side along with the proposal to remove the 10 mill requirement to levy for roads in order for a county to receive Gross Production Taxes.