701-566-9300It took lawmakers two and one-half days to complete their task of passing the contents of one bill which was considered by the ND Supreme Court to be too inclusive of different topics. They broke it into 14 and a few would be of interest to our state’s farmers. One was a confirmation of the emergency snow clearing bill which was amended to allow some political subdivisions whose applications for that money were in the pipeline when the deadline in June was reached. The deadline was extended until October 20 and an extra $106,000 was added. Another was in the law which required all Water Resource Districts (WRD) to belong to Joint Water Districts. That law required the WRDs to levy two mills, but this was amended in the past couple of days to say that they could levy two but need not.
The biggie was an incentive for a company willing to build a fertilizer plant using green energy (wind in this case). The $125 million is to be paid only upon completion of the project which is expected to cost $1 to $1.5 billion. The company had already begun because this was passed in late April and while some legislators tried to amend the law in various ways, the majority of both houses kept it intact. An agricultural coalition of nine groups (including the NDSGA) was working for that result. In another interesting twist, the Governor gave a State of the State address at the beginning and asked for some excess funds be used to reduce our state income tax. Passed by the House, the Senate defeated that proposal by about a two to one vote.
