Legislative Report, January 15, 2019

Legislative Report, January 15, 2019

Representative Rick Holman, ND District 20

It's always difficult to process the first couple of weeks of a new legislative session. This year more so. In the House of Representatives the D's and the R's each have three designated leaders, Chair, Vice Chair and Caucus Chair. Josh Boschee from Fargo has replaced Cory Mock as the leader of our Dem Caucus and Chet Pollert, from Carrington, has replaced Al Carlson as majority leader. Leaders are important as they organize each side and set the tone as legislators propose, modify, agree and disagree as their ideas are brought forward, discussed, and voted up or down. Unique to the ND Legislature is that every legislator's ideas get heard and receive an up or down vote. Leaders will also listen to your preferences, but ultimately must choose on which committees you will serve to best serve the needs of the caucus.

This is my fourth session serving on the twenty-one-member House Appropriations Committee and on the six-member Human Resources sub-committee. Our job is to look at agency budgets, analyze proposed legislation that has a price tag, and make a recommendation to the to the ND House. If it passes the House, it moves over to the Senate for step two at which time we receive bills that made it through the Senate during the first couple of months. Our task is to look in detail at the proposed budgets for several departments, including but not limited to Corrections, Health, Environment and Veterans. In March, we'll begin looking at the huge Human Services Department. Our detailed analysis looks look at what was approved two years ago, at what has been proposed by the Governor, at resources available, and requests from the many stakeholders who daily interact with government services. Just yesterday, we had a PTSD Service Dog roaming the committee room as his partner was describing the benefits of this terrific program.

District 20 is a rural district touching three counties with small towns, farms, medical facilities, nursing homes, agribusiness, public schools and a college. Located between two of the largest cities in our state, our people depend on services from Fargo and Grand Forks and those larger communities depend on people in our communities traveling to their city for work, entertainment and those things not available at home.

Transportation: Good roads with reliable maintenance is a high priority. Moving the snowplows back to Mayville and changing the routes is an example of how pressure from people can partially reverse a bad policy decision. Coming forward are some recommended changes in funding for townships and counties that may help. Currently there are proposals from the Governor, from the Republicans and from Democrats. Likely, some blending of all three will be what finally comes out. Stay tuned.

Education: The initial budget proposal recommends a small increase in public school funding but, not a lot for higher ed. All the higher education institutions including Mayville State were here this weed presenting their over view of what has happened in the last two years along with a vision of the future. This initial visit is the first time that Brian Van Horn and Jamie Hovet, have presented to the legislature and they were well received. Gary Hagen and Steve Bensen recently retired.

Likely because of the oil-boom expansion and increasing population, workforce training has become extremely important. I believe that workforce training has many definitions which must include all types of post-high school training. Discussions need to consider all types of education, including two-year, four-year and grad school degrees. All are needed to build for the future of our growing state's population.

People Care: While the initial proposal recommends significant increases for state employees, a much lower recommendation was made for those entities that deliver services to our most vulnerable including the three nursing homes located in District 20. To maintain a steady workforce, nursing homes and other providers also need salary adjustments. We also need to continue the Expanded Medicaid since many of our elderly and children benefit from that. We'll continue to work on all those issues.

Next week we will continue working with changes in the Department of Corrections and will begin looking at all aspects of the Health Department.

As we move through the next four months we will again be made aware of how much our state agencies rely on widely fluctuating sales, use and oil taxes. That makes drawing up a two-year budget difficult. Predictions in January can change by April and will certainly change by July of 2021.

My contact information is: email, rholman@nd.gov, Text or call, 701-238-1124, or visit rholman2 on Facebook.

To follow the 66^th Legislative Assembly go to https://www.legis.nd.gov/assembly/66-2019/regular