Murphy’s Law Blog

One could say that any infrastructure improvement is a positive for Agricultural value added projects let alone farming itself. Be it a crush plant, the recently discussed wet corn plant, a livestock facility or whatever, they need some or all of the water, roads, pipelines, rail and power mix. During this special session we have been working to bring many of these factors...

This special session is still going but I left Bismarck on Thursday because those issues central to agriculture were resolved and to what I see as a satisfactory end. From ARPA dollars that this session was to distribute, at least $200 million must be used for highway roads and bridges. $24.6 million is designated for grants to counties for their bridge projects based on...

The State Board of Agricultural Research and Education (SBARE) has been around for almost 25 years and has several stated goals you can read on their website, but it is about Ag research and getting those results applied to help producers and their communities. They hold listening sessions for several days around the state to help them prioritize needs so that they can...

The Senate and House Appropriations committees spent Tuesday, Wednesday and part of Thursday this week in Bismarck to draft a bill which is intended to spend the approximately $1.1 billion dollars which came to North Dakota via the American Rescue Plan Act. $317 million of this money had been appropriated earlier this spring in the regular session with the rest waiting...

The regular session ended half a year ago and this Interim Committee just met for the first time. They are tasked with a couple of studies and to receive the usual reports. One of the studies is of the North Dakota Beef Commission, including its operations and the selection of its commission members. There was a kerfuffle during the last session about this but the bill...

Last year, the NDSGA joined with other agriculture groups, contractors, cities, counties and townships, engineering firms, the Greater ND Chamber (GNDC), ND Motor Carriers and others to form the ND Transportation Coalition. The goal was to work together for bettering our state’s transportation infrastructure by advocating for sustainable/dependable funding. We found some...

She was in an orange t-shirt leaning up against the hotel wall and dragging on a cigarette when she asked “Are you with those farmers in there?” I told her I was and she said “Thank you for what you do. You feed us.” The event was the North Dakota Livestock Alliance’s (NDLA) PIG, Diversifying for Profitability gathering at the Fargo Holiday Inn this week. With Minnesota...

This past Friday, NDSU renamed its greenhouse complex after Jack Dalrymple. It was to honor the support he gave as a longtime legislator, Lieutenant Governor and Governor towards agricultural research throughout that institution. I write briefly about this today to let you know that the benefits of Ag research were touted often to those assembled. Jack himself stated that...

This committee usually goes to the Energy and Environmental Research Center (EERC) every other year or so to see what they have come up with. The EERC is housed on the University of North Dakota campus in Grand Forks and has been in existence since 1951. They have done a lot lately on coal, oil and gas research to further the technologies in the Bakken. Successes in those...

Legislative Management – a select group of legislators – selected four major topics to be studied for this newly invented interim committee. Topic 1 – Was to merge a couple sections of the Century Code which are largely complimentary but contain enough differences so that it would be wise to get it together. One was written in 1955 and the other in 1981. Both address...

This year the title was Water, Roads and Agriculture Working Together and it was held in Grand Forks. Much of the full day was spent educating Water Resource District (WRD) managers about what happened in this previous legislative session. Senator Mark Weber was the lone legislator in attendance as the water related bills were discussed along with the bonding and...

When I last wrote you the first part of May, I mentioned $10 million for townships. Now that the math has been done ($10 million divided by the number of Congressional Townships) it comes out to slightly over $6,000 per township. That money will be released by the State Treasurer on August 1, 2021. Also, your township will be receiving $214 per mile of road maintained. No...

On Friday, April 30, shortly after midnight, Senator Holmberg finished explaining HB1015 – the OMB budget bill with the many riders attached. It passed unanimously and the 67th session ended. While a lot was going on these past two days, to me the most significant measure for rural ND and Agriculture was millions of dollars for township roads. As Holmberg quipped in his...

This morning, Day 74 of the 67th Legislative session, saw subsurface water management (tiling) pass unanimously on the Senate floor. The issue that had held it up was notification to water boards on projects less than 80 acres. The conference committee settled on a two year period of trying it out – called a Sunset provision – so that next session, if they liked the data...

After several conference committee meetings, today a compromise was agreed upon. HB1437 will require reporting of, but no permit for, tiling of agricultural land less than 80 acres in size. This was agreed upon because time was running out to reach agreement and/ or mostly because reporting of less than 80 was attached in an amendment under a sunset clause which will...

Just this Thursday morning, SB2144-the posting bill-was passed on the House side with only 3 dissenting votes. We can pretty much put this one to bed and thank all of the participants. Uniformity for local health units as well as installers where wastewater management is concerned has also been passed and is headed for the Governor. Township road funding is now looking at...

Tuesday was Day 69 and by all accounts it is heading well into next week when 73 days had been the hope. It may be that this Friday will not count even though legislators will be working because they may not hammer in on a floor session which allows them to “cheat” on counting days. This would be done because there are many Conference Committees that need to agree on the...

Late last Friday, HB1475 was approved at a level of $10 million for supporting the new Agriculture Development and Diversification (ADD) fund. It sets up a board that will review loans and grants from the fund which have already been looked at by the Bank of North Dakota. Hopefully there are some entrepreneurs that will be aware and eligible to help our industry move...

SB2144 is the bill that brings forward the agreement reached by the Interim committee. It seems best practice that a Legislature simply accept bills crafted over an interim by all parties, but it rarely is the case. As a legislator said to me this morning, “You have to give input if you really think it is right.” And of course, one must. But it really messes things up when...

HB1475 passed out of the Senate yesterday and we are hoping that the House will concur with the changes. This bill creates the ADD fund spelled out in the title and it is currently $10 million for loans and up to 25% of that in grants per biennium. It started out at $150 million; the House Approps cut it to $5 million and the Senate to $10 million. The Conference Committee...