Legislative session to begin soon

The 69th N.D. Legislative Assembly will convene their 2025 regular session on Tuesday, Jan. 7, and they’ll be considering hundreds of bills as significant tax reforms appear to be on the horizon.

North Dakota’s voters rejected a ballot measure earlier this year that would have eliminated valuation based property taxes in the state, but many legislators as well as Governor Armstrong believe there’s still an appetite for significant tax relief, particularly when it comes to property taxes.

Governor Armstrong has said that reforming the state’s property taxes is a top priority of his for the 2025 legislative session, and legislators have already penned dozens of different proposals due for consideration in Bismarck.

While some bills offer minor changes, others are far more ambitious and potentially impactful for local governments.

Senate Majority Leader David Hogue of Minot told the North Dakota Monitor that his preferred method of property tax relief would be annual limits to how much a homeowners’ property taxes can increase.

The criticism of such caps on property taxes is that they would limit a local governments’ ability to raise money when necessary, and could incentivise them to increase taxes in advance of any unforeseen expenses knowing they may not be able to later with caps in place.

But legislators may also consider a form of property tax caps that give local governments more flexibility, and there are bound to be many other tax relief ideas debated in the coming weeks and months.

For example, more structural tax reform will also be considered during the upcoming session, and it's all with the purpose of providing tax relief to a population that felt strongly enough to put a constitutional measure on the ballot in 2024.

Meanwhile, with so many bills for tax reform already on the docket, it appears the legislative session will be as busy as ever in 2025.

In September the pace of bill drafts was already well above the year prior, and that pace has likely increased as the session approaches.

So, as per usual, lawmakers will be debating hundreds of unique and potentially impactful pieces of legislation, and the Transcript will be following along throughout the session to keep readers in Eddy County informed of the goings on in Bismarck.

North Dakota residents can also keep track of the process themselves by visiting legis.nd.gov, where session information, bill information and bill tracking is available free of charge.