June 29, 2017
Murphy’s Law Blog 2017 | #37
A Quick Canadian Trip
Monday I drove up to Winnipeg against a north wind for the annual International Legislator’s Forum. This is a gathering which includes select lawmakers from Minnesota, South Dakota, North Dakota and Manitoba. Originally it was about managing flood waters but lately has expanded to transportation, sex trafficking, invasive species and other topics. The...
June 23, 2017
Murphy’s Law Blog 2017 | #36
Last week we had an hour or so at the Clemens/Ericson farm outside of Wimbledon. The idea was to gather interested growers in the shop and discuss what happened in the ND Legislature concerning agricultural issues. We did have 10 or so producers show up at 8 in the morning and besides a short presentation from Scott Rising and me, it was mostly answering questions about a...
May 5, 2017
Murphy’s Law Blog 2017 | #35
Okay, here it is one week after the session ended and there has been a change brought on by the Governor. He vetoed the $10,000 that was going to go to every township outside of the oil producing counties. You may recall that it was to arrive August 1st but for one year only and the money was to have come from the Strategic Investment and Improvements fund as well as the...
April 27, 2017
Murphy’s Law Blog 2017 | #34
Today is the 77th Legislative Day of this session. There were at least 2 other days that everyone worked but were not counted due to a sleight of hand in technical parliamentary rules. In other words, it would be right up against the 80 day limit were if straightforward. Anyway, this looks like the last day.
I just walked out on discussion of the last of 19 amendments that...
April 26, 2017
Murphy’s Law Blog 2017 | #33
The SWC (State Water Commission budget, HB1020) was pretty much settled Monday in Conference Committee about 5 p.m. They need to approve the settled language after it is typed up by attorneys this morning. Rural Water was put in its own bucket or category of funding which presumably makes them happy. The big deal is that the Red River Water Supply Project appears to be on...
April 21, 2017
Murphy’s Law Blog 2017 | #32
The bill that dealt with NDSU Research and Extension has been contentious in the area of the Extension Service Soil Conservation committee because the House saw an administrative position as too rich for the function. They removed $213,000 for that and the conference committee put back all but $21,788 of that just minutes ago this Friday afternoon. The Senate had taken out...
April 21, 2017
Murphy’s Law Blog 2017 | #31
Township road money is a bone of contention in bill SB2013 which is the budget for Trust Lands. Oil country townships get 3 percent of the oil extraction tax in their county. Another 3 percent of the extraction tax is pooled from the nine biggest oil producing counties and then distributed per township in those counties depending on maintained miles. Of course, most...
April 19, 2017
Murphy’s Law Blog 2017 | #30
Bills and the ideas that spawn them begin to pop up in unlikely places when legislative sessions get to the later stages such as we are now in. These are ideas championed by lawmakers who will not give up, the ones that keep watchers hoping and hopping. There are supposed standards for germane-ness, like that an item introduced as an amendment onto a budget bill should be...
April 15, 2017
Murphy’s Law Blog 2017 | #29
The House killed SB2263 the other day. That was the Senate tiling bill. HB1390 is on the way to the governor and the tiling equipment should be ready to roll.
Friday morning in the Conference Committee that deals with the DOT budget, an amendment was approved that deals with the highway maintenance sites that were to be consolidated. There are eight sections to the...
April 13, 2017
Murphy’s Law Blog 2017 | #28
A big part of the whole scheme with making laws is relationships. Lawmaker to Lawmaker, Lobbyist to Lawmaker and Lobbyist to Lobbyist are amongst them. Throw in those from the Executive branch and staff and pretty soon there are a lot of people to know and get along with if one is determined to be friendly. Not all take that path, but generally it is acknowledged that one...
April 11, 2017
Murphy’s Law Blog 2017 | #27
This is the week leading up to Easter and the Capitol natives are getting restless. It’s horse to the barn kind of stuff about wanting to go home. Everyone wants to know when we are getting out and no one knows. But enough of that and on to the budgets that matter to growers around our state.
The DOT budget (2012) had their first conference committee this morning and...
April 7, 2017
Murphy’s Law Blog 2017 | #26
Tiling bills look like they are about to be resolved as the chairman of the House Ag committee has decided to concur with the Senate treatment of HB1390. They will then kill SB2263 on the House floor. Amongst the major differences between 1390 and current law is that Water Resource District board members must undergo a course on water management each of their 3 year terms,...
April 4, 2017
Murphy’s Law Blog 2017 | #25
This morning I sat in on the first conference committee of the session. Usually they last half an hour and this one went 10 minutes over before they agreed to try later. ANYWAY, it was a bill (HB1339, which I had not previously followed but probably should have) that came in which would have dropped the threshold percentage to appeal an assessed water project from 25...
April 3, 2017
Murphy’s Law Blog 2017 | #24
Late on Friday afternoon in House Appropriations, a motion was made by Representative Streyle to eliminate any reference to SBARE, (State Board of Agricultural Research and Education) which is chaired by Mike Beltz of Hillsboro. SBARE was established by the Legislature in 1997 to be responsible for policy and budgeting for the ND Ag Experiment Station and later for NDSU...
March 31, 2017
Murphy’s Law Blog 2017 | #23
You may recall that the last couple of sessions the Legislature “bought back” 12 percent of county budgets to take the pressure off of property taxes. Last session we worked hard to make it a bill that would fund the state mandated part of social services that are delivered by the counties. It failed even though the Governor was pushing it, so the buyback continued. This...
March 29, 2017
Murphy’s Law Blog 2017 | #22
You may recall that the last couple of sessions the Legislature “bought back” 12 percent of county budgets to take the pressure off of property taxes. Last session we worked hard to make it a bill that would fund the state mandated part of social services that are delivered by the counties. It failed even though the Governor was pushing it, so the buyback continued. This...
March 24, 2017
Murphy’s Law Blog 2017 | #21
Discussions with the Water, Tax, Transportation and other Worlds have us coming to conclusions that will go to the floor within the next week and then to Conference Committees. One experienced lobbyist stated that, were he a betting man, he would put a grand on the Legislature lasting at least to day 75 of the 80 allowed. Leadership has stated that they are trying to be...
March 22, 2017
Murphy’s Law Blog 2017 | #20
Yesterday was spent partly in Senate Finance and Tax as the committee worked on HB1361 which is about property tax caps. Each of the Senators has a position, with Chairman Cook stating that for the past five budgets, Morton county has not had a mill increase, but with a 3 percent cap they probably would have had one every year. Senator Laffen said he was against it on the...
March 17, 2017
Murphy’s Law Blog 2017 | #19
Big news. Today, upon the 5-0 Do Not Pass Recommendation of the Senate Agriculture Committee, the floor unanimously followed that lead on HB1282. It failed 46-0 with only one Senator absent. It would appear that the Commodity Groups were heard.
It was a big water day in Senate Energy and Natural Resources. They took more testimony on Quick Take – this time on the House...
March 17, 2017
Murphy’s Law Blog 2017 | #18
On Tuesday, the Grower’s board had a meeting in Fargo that touched on many issues including subcommittee meetings for a Legislative update, a Membership meeting, Communications and other business. I took off for Bismarck early that evening.
Wednesday saw DOT discussing their budget in front of House Appropiations. The day ended at the Water Commission building where current...