Legislative Report: N.D. Senate January 23, 2023

It's day seven here at the Legislature. The session has begun with quite a flurry of activity.

After the first day, which was made up of a number of addresses, including the State of the Tribes, the State of the Judiciary, and the Governor's State of the State, members have settled

into getting bills drafted, and committees hearing those early bills. It looks like we may be headed for a record amount of bills being introduced. As of today's writings, 240 have been introduced in the Senate. That is 25 more than this time last year. The House has 368 bills

introduced, compared to 358 last session. January 16 is the deadline for House members to introduce bills, and the last day for any Senate member to introduce additional bills is January 23. As every bill in North Dakota gets a full committee hearing, unlike other states, much time will be spent in the committee room before those bills come before the Senate or House.

Workforce seems to be the major theme of this year's session. The Senate has even

created a special Workforce Committee to see if there is anything that we should be doing in our state to help with the worker shortage. The Governor has also pledged to promote workforce and added substantial resources to attract workers. He has also added dollars to help with daycare as it may help some workers who are on the sidelines get back into the workforce.

There is no silver bullet; we will see what happens.

One of the bills I have cosponsored with Senator Wanzek is to provide $35 million in snow removal assistance to our counties, cities, and townships. With the record amount of snow this past December in some areas of the state, we need to provide some help. We are trying to fast-track the bill to get the program going in the next few weeks. I think there is considerable agreement amongst everyone here that it needs to get done sooner rather than later.

Until next time.