Murphy’s Law Blog 2023 | #15
Some Key Points

Now that the second period starts this week here are a few things we know about the legislature and agricultural issues:
 
There are a lot of opportunities for extra funding for county and township roads and bridges that are still alive. Some bills have been rolled into the North Dakota Department of Transportation (NDDOT) budget and some survived intact. While there are key legislators that have professed impatience with hearing so much about rural road and bridge funding efforts, I do believe progress will be made with flexible funding for the NDDOT, snow emergency funding, and so on.

Water drainage bills are a mix of some good and bad policies yet to be determined in this process, but Water Resource Districts (WRDs), the Department of Water Resources, commodity groups and legislators are working towards reasonable governance. One example would be getting rid of conflicting Century Code and another, a move to govern water with watershed intentions using joint WRDs. 

Animal agriculture has seen a well-publicized movement towards a limited corporate farming structure. There has been extensive work with zoning in helping counties and townships identify locations whereby animal feeding would be welcomed. 

We are at day 35 of an intended 69-to-70-day session. The average lately has been around 76 days. I will attempt to let you know about these and other issues moving along in the next two months.