701-566-9300After the Senate morning floor session from 8 to 9, the chair of Energy and Natural Resources brought the full committee back to work on a couple of bills. Understanding that all bills were supposed to be out of committee quite a while ago, I thought I had better check it out. What followed was a prime example of what can happen in a hurry and out of the blue during the last few days of session: One bill was 1320 which had 2 parts – a municipal water purchase and Red River Water Supply part and the other was a section about redefining navigable waters of ND. First the committee divided the bill and put the navigable water section into 1202 which is the Outdoor Heritage Fund bill. Then Senator Wardner came in with an amendment which completely revamped 1320. Called a hoghouse, the bill became a vehicle for funding the Teddy Roosevelt library in Medora. This is a project the Governor has been promoting and the plan for making it happen was laid out for us. Meanwhile, the section of 1320 on The RRV Water Supply disappeared and was said to be making an appearance somewhere else. The next conference committee was on 2358 which was a bill about how to define a watercourse. The two houses agreed on that and then added on the section on the RRV Water Supply. Presto! If you are enough of a political junkie/concerned citizen to have read this far, you can see why nothing is ever over until the final hammer comes down on the session.
