Legislative Report

Rep. Rick Holman, February 2, 2017

 

It’s Groundhog Day. In the movie, every new day was a new beginning. If we could go back five years knowing what we know now about what has happened with the ND budget and start over that would be a good concept. Of course, we can’t. We must look at where we are and make things work. Mike Jacobs, former editor of the Grand Forks Herald, in his column this week did a good job of explaining how cutting taxes and increasing spending during the “good times” has created a situation where we are struggling with meeting our obligations.

 

Tuesday evening, I visited with the nursing home administrators from Hillsboro, Mayville and Hatton. They are certainly feeling the stress caused by mandated cuts in funding. In committee, we have been going over the part of the budget that supports all North Dakota Long Term Care facilities. Hearing from and visiting with those who are directly connected is helpful. Hopefully, before we are done, a plan can be developed to restore the cut. In a couple weeks we will send their budget over to the Senate for further action.

 

Also, on Tuesday, I was able to visit with school superintendents from Hatton, Thompson, Finley-Sharon, May-Port CG and Hillsboro. Among other things we discussed the need to continue support for the Regional Education Associations (REA’s). House Bill 1318 is an attempt to remove them. REA’s provide a way for our local teachers to work together and receive information to help them in their classrooms. In our local area, the Teacher Learning Center at Mayville State provides materials and support to teachers in in several schools, providing resources that are not always available in the individual school.

 

HB 1393 will require a Water Resource Board to receive permission from the County Commission before moving forward with a water project. This would have the effect of making sure that the Commission is aware of all aspects of the proposed project.

 

SB 2225 is legislation that likely came forward as a result of the protests south of Mandan. It changes penalties related to trespassing. This is a situation where making changes to address a situation in one place can have unintended consequences in another area. The Friday hearing will draw a lot of attention.

 

There have been about 800 bills filed with many going by the wayside. Anything with a cost is getting additional scrutiny. By the end of February, we'll have a better handle on what will be actually making it through the session. Stay tuned…….

 

The legislative process has three steps, often compared to Hockey. Period one gets everything out there and weeds out some of the things that don't have broad support. Period Two sends the surviving bills to the other chamber for fine tuning and near the end of the session in Period Three, conference committees made up of both House and Senate members work through their differences. If both Houses again approve of the bill, the legislation is sent to the Governor for final approval (or not). This process makes sure that everything is properly and publicly vetted before becoming the law of North Dakota.

 

Rick Holman.