Official Newspaper of Eddy County since 1883
Official Newspaper of Eddy County since 1883
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Members of the North Dakota House of Representatives in the 67th Legislative Assembly continue to complete work in the policy committees, refer bills to appropriations or take final action on the House floor. There is a lot of work to be completed before cross-over, so there will be some very long floor sessions before we finish the first half. The House of Representatives dealt with three major issues on Friday. They passed HB 1175 by a 77-17 margin. The bill will provide COVID-19 Liability Protection. It provides protection for business...
Members of the 67th Legislative Assembly continue working on the bills in committee and bringing them to the floor of their respective chamber for action. We are getting a lot of emails on various bills and greatly appreciate the people from our District communicating with us about their support or concerns on specific pieces of legislation. The Government Operations Division of House Appropriations began their extensive deliberation in earnest on fourteen state agency budgets in this first half of the session. HB 1003 is the budget for the Off...
Members of the upcoming 67th Legislative Assembly officially convened on January 5, 2021 at the state capital in Bismarck for the start of the session. After members of the 67th Legislature heard from Governor Doug Burgum, Tribal Chairman Mark Fox and Chief justice John Jensen on Tuesday, they started the process of hearing the bills and budgets we will have before us this year. The House Human services Committee had a number of bills on Wednesday. HB 1044 will allow the state to join in a compact with other states to allow Advance Practice...
Members of the upcoming 67th Legislative Assembly gathered in Bismarck on January 5, 2021 for the start of the session. Tuesday morning the legislature was scheduled to receive addresses from Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation Chairman Mark Fox who represented all tribal governments in the state and Supreme Court Chief Justice Jon Jensen, on the state of the judiciary. The Legislature officially convened at noon Tuesday and went into a joint session at 1 p.m. to hear the State of the State Address from Governor Doug Burgum. There were no floor...
Members of the upcoming 67th Legislative Assembly met in Bismarck December 1-3 for the organizational session. It was a whole different experience as almost everyone was wearing face masks or face shields, which were required by a temporary rule change voted on by the members in both chambers. The legislators also voted to require masks or shields during the upcoming session, where social distancing isn’t possible, as the state continues to be impacted by COVID-19. We remain hopeful that the vaccine will be available sooner than originally e...
Members of the 66th Legislative Assembly finished their work on Saturday (April 27) and adjourned. We are thankful with the way many of the issues affecting rural North Dakota came together. There were a lot of changes to the original executive budget which we believe will be very positive for not only our district, but for the entire state. We were able to work with legislators from both parties and both chambers to not only get bills we helped sponsor passed, but also to influence other legislation in a positive manner. We were certainly...
Members 66th Legislative Assembly are working together to try to bring the session to a close, hopefully the end of this week. SB 2020 has passed the House and Senate. The bill as amended includes $37.2 million for rural water systems. Sixteen of the 22 rural water systems on the State Water Commission 2-year plan, will be able to utilize those funds at a cost share rate of 75 percent state and 25 percent local. Forty-five million dollars are included to address the water supply needs of the 47 municipalities on the State Water Commission...
Members of the House of Representatives of the 66th Legislative Assembly joined their Senate colleagues and overrode the Governor's Veto of SB 2055. The House voted 89-3 for the override and in the Senate, it was unanimous. The bill clarifies the use of the legislative budget section and sets up the standards and guidelines by which it can operate when the legislature is not in session. The change was made to reflect changes that were suggested by the some of the Justices of the North Dakota Supreme Court in a ruling after the last session...
Members of 66th Legislative Assembly have completed most of the policy committee work and have started meeting in conference committees. The House Appropriations Committee has adopted a pay package for state employees and Senate Appropriations committee has agreed to the House package. It could change slightly before we are done, but the package that has been agreed to calls for a 2 percent increase in the first year of the biennium and 2.5 percent in the second year. The House plan provides a larger increase for the lower paid employees with a...
The House of Representatives took time on Tuesday afternoon to recognize and honor former members who have passed away in the last two years. Family members from across the nation come to the service and take part in the very moving ceremony. There were 27 former Representatives honored in the House this year. We have served with many of those legislators and thank them, as well as their families, for the work they did on behalf of the citizens of our great state. In another special ceremony this past week, Gov. Burgum delivered remarks and...
Committee work in the policy committees of the 66th Legislative Assembly is nearing completion, and most work will be wrapped up early this week. The two chambers will move into the conference committee portion of the session, in the next few days. Conference committees involve three members from each chamber who will try to work out differences in the way the legislation passed each chamber. The big news this week was the signing of HB 1066, which was co-sponsored by Rep. Vigesaa. The legislation known as the Prairie Dog Bill was signed by...
Members of 66th Legislative Assembly reviewed the latest revenue forecasts this past week. The forecasts provided the members with a solid estimate of the dollars they will have to work with as they finish the session. The House and Senate Appropriations Committees agreed that they would use the estimates that forecast an extra $26 million in ongoing funding as they complete the legislative budget work. There is also an increase in oil revenues which will refill the reserve funds for the future. That is critical for future legislative...
The North Dakota House of Representatives is completing their work on the last few house resolutions and start working on the Senate bills. A total of 269 bills and 14 resolutions were passed by the Senate and sent to the House. The deadline for passing resolutions to the other chamber was Friday, and the House completed their work on those. Both chambers are waiting for the new revenue estimates for the state that were expected to be released on Monday and Tuesday. Once we have those numbers, we will have a better idea how the funds match up...
The 66th Legislative Assembly was called back to order on Wednesday, Feb. 27 with committee meetings in the morning, a short floor session in the afternoon, and full committee meetings continuing until early evening. We enjoyed the crossover break and the opportunity to visit with many of you, take care of personal matters and start to gather information for the second half. The House dealt with 545 bills and 56 resolutions in the first half of the session, which is up substantially in total numbers from the 2017 session. We defeated 180 of...
We have completed the first half of the 66th Legislative Session and look forward to catching up with some things at home before starting the second half next Wednesday. We also want to reflect a little on where we are at with the state budget and certain policy issues as we approach crossover this week. The Appropriations Committee has spent countless hours meticulously going through every line of the budget. We expect that the state budget, as it comes from the House at crossover, will call for spending less than the Governor's budget. We...
The 66th Legislative Session has moved into the stage where we are spending longer periods of time on the floor, as we complete our work by crossover. We expect some evening work this week or next. Committees are also extremely busy finishing their bills. Several pieces of legislation in every committee have been in sub-committee as we try to work out our differences. All bills that have a hearing in a committee must be voted on by the full House during a floor session. The Appropriations Committee will continue to meet for extended hours as...
As we move into the second month of the 66th Legislative Session, we are starting to wrap up much of the first half policy committee work. The Appropriations Committee will be meeting extended hours as they deal with the bills that were assigned to them as well as the bills with appropriations that have been referred from the policy committees. We expect to have much longer floor sessions as we work to complete the bills coming from committee before Crossover later in February. The House Human Services Committee gave a 12-0 do-pass...
There have been 545 bills and 31 resolutions introduced in the House of Representatives this session compared to 434 bills and 11 resolutions last session. That is the most bills since the 2009 session. The number of bills in the Senate is up slightly over last session. We have a lot of work to get done in a short amount of time during the 66th Session. There have been quite a few very interesting bills being heard on the House Floor in recent days. HB1282 was introduced to give people with a criminal past a second chance in seeking...
As we move into the third week of the 66th Legislative Session, the floor sessions remain about an hour each day and we spend the rest of the day in our respective committees. There are a lot of important bills in every committee and we are trying to stay on top of those as we complete work on others in our own committees. HB 1066 drew a big crowd to the legislature on Tuesday for its first hearing. Named Operation Prairie Dog by its sponsors, the bill would make oil money available to communities outside the oil patch. The bill would set up...
As we move into the second week of the 66th Legislative Session, we are starting to see more bills on the House Floor as committees have completed their work on some of the smaller ones. Besides hearing bills, the committees we serve on are having overviews of various departments. The Human Service Committee had extensive reviews of the operations of the Department of Human Services and the Department of Health. The Energy and Natural Resources Committee had overviews of the Oil and Gas Division, the ND Pipeline Authority as well as the Game an...
The 66th Legislative Assembly was officially called to order on Thursday, Jan. 3, 2019. In the morning the legislators heard from Spirit Lake Tribal Chair Myra Pearson and Chief Justice Gerald VandeWalle. Tribal Chair Pearson spoke about the many challenges facing Native Americans living on the reservation and elsewhere. She thanked state officials for helping to address those issues and said tribal officials looked forward to providing input during the budgeting process. Chief Justice VandeWalle, spoke about the additional staffing needs of...
Members of the 66th Legislative Assembly met in Bismarck on Dec. 3-5 for the organizational session. The legislators were kept busy with technical training, various educational seminars and the selection of committee assignments. Rep. Vigesaa chaired the Committee on Committees that met a number of times to assign the 94 members to their respective committees. Rep. Devlin also chaired an Administrative Rules Committee meeting on Monday morning. Rep. Vigesaa finished out his term as Assistant Majority Leader. He had chosen earlier not to seek...
We have been involved in committee work recently that should be of interest to many of the citizens of District 23. There are a number of interim committees working on various issues. Others, like the Administrative Rules Committee, which is chaired by Rep. Devlin, are busy reviewing new state agency rules. Many of those rules are based on legislation from the last legislative session. Rep. Vigesaa serves as vice-chairman of the Government Finance Committee, which also met recently to review some very important information. That committee recei...
