Legislative Report: March 22, 2021

Coming back from cross-over break, March 3, found the Senate busy with the other half of the agency budgets, which had been heard in the House during the first half of legislative session.

We heard the Treasurer’s budget, which has five functions: Cash management, accounting, investment, revenue collections, and revenue distributions. The department has over 30 different tax distributions to political subdivisions.

We heard the Secretary of State’s budget. Secretary of State, Jaeger, reported that the agency has enhanced its website and launched a Central Indexing System, which includes about 350,000 files. This system is where the public can go to look for information and documents. The department also enhanced the election management system, promulgated rules for Tribal IDs for voting purposes, and drafted new rules for combative sports.

Parks and Recreation budget was presented this week. There is an increased emphasis on improvements to several of the park areas.

We heard the budget for the Insurance Commissioner’s office. This is a special fund agency with no general funds used to support the work of their office. They have several divisions important to connections with the public. Their divisions include the Consumer Assistance Division, Producer Licensing Division, Product Filing Division, Examinations and Company Licensing, Legal Division and Administration. The Insurance Commissioner’s office also handles fire service issues. We heard from Shawn Weltikol, fire chief from the Devils Lake Rural Fire Department, supporting the return of 100% of the premium tax to fire departments, rather than the current percentage, with the remainder going to the general fund.

March 5, we heard the budget for the Attorney General’s office. That agency consists of 13 divisions, with the Bureau of Criminal Investigation being the largest. BCI partners with local law enforcement, as well as, federal and tribal officers. It issues the concealed weapons’ licenses, runs the 24/7 sobriety program, sex registry offender system, and processed 51,000 criminal history requests during the current biennium. During the agency budget presentation, we met Jab, who is a BCI crime-fighting dog. Jab is trained to find small electronic chips/devices, which store pornographic materials, that cannot be found with just a visual search.

The Medicaid Fraud Unit is the newest unit created to find misuse of Medicaid funds by tracing down providers who are double dipping, entering false claims, and also trying to defraud nursing homes. There currently is an open case in Pembina, where a staff person is accused of stealing pain medication from a resident and switching this with over-the-counter medication.

The Consumer Protection Division investigates robo calls, identity theft, imposter scams, telemarketing issues, and do not call reports.

The Gaming Division needs extra help due to the explosion of electronic pull tab machines in the state. These machines have generated $71 million for the machine manufacturers and owners, and $66 million to charities across the state. So, you can see this is big business to the company that sells, and provides technical assistance, to the places in N.D. that allow these machines to be placed in their establishments.

I also serve on the subcommittee for the Agriculture Commissioner’s budget. This budget also saw a significant reduction, like most agency budgets, at the request of the Governor. Commissioner Goehring is asking for additional money for salaries and employee compensation, matching funds for a meat inspector, a reclassification of a staff attorney, a grain inspector, money for warehouse grain licensing, $36,250 for the operation of the industrial hemp program, crop and noxious weed grant increases, and funding for technology licensing. I look forward to working on this budget. The moving of the Trade Office from Commerce to the Agriculture Commissioner’s office will also add some interesting discussions.

Tuesday/Thursday Appropriations heard the budget for the Department of Human Services. This is one of the largest budgets in the state, and has many divisions. I am not on that subcommittee, but will update you more on the work of the subcommittee as they bring their proposals forward.

I am also serving on the budget requests for deficiency payments. These payments will go to agencies who have used all their funding from the current biennium, but still have significant services to provide. One example is the Homestead Tax Credit program. As it currently sits, that budget is in need of an additional $1.3 million; Disabled Veteran’s tax credit program needs $2.7 million more; the Adjutant General’s office needs $3.1 million for disaster relief; and the Bank of North Dakota has asked for $17.5 million to repay the loan to the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library Endowment Fund. I would support all of these requests, except the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library Endowment funds, as those are not due until 2026.

Senate Appropriations will start our subcommittee work on March 15, and will continue until we have approved all agency budgets sent to us by the House.

Some House bills that we passed in the Senate this week, included HB 1230, which specifies that a service animal is a dog, rather than any other animals previously identified as service animals. HB 1074 allowing guides and outfitters to provide electronic reporting to N.D. Game and Fish was approved. There are many other bills approved by the Senate on their way to the Governor for his signature.