Murphy’s Law Bog 2023 | #28
Hurry Up and Wait.

At this point in the session, it is all conference committees with the House vs. Senate versions of bills. Sometimes they decide the other house amendments were fine and the agreement takes five minutes. Other times they dig in and it takes a lot of meetings. There are three legislators from each side and if they cannot make any headway, leadership may replace some members to get a fresh take. 

Lately, a few conference committees were thought to have completed all their tasks, but leadership called them back to tell them they needed to cut more. Then legislators must explain why and then those conference committees must figure it out.

The North Dakota Department of Transportation budget is having a few conference committees and the biggest budget of all, Human Services, is also cooking. People are pushing hard to finish as morale can suffer going into late April and when you add an unrelenting winter to the mix it doesn’t help.

As you may have seen in the media, the mix of tax relief has yet to be decided, but that would break a lot of impasses when solved as it deals with $400 to $600 million. How much property tax relief, how much income tax relief? Stay tuned!