Property taxes, book bans and resolutions: Three Grand Forks lawmakers discuss recent session

Yahoo

14 hours ago

Jun. 6—GRAND FORKS — Through an hour-long conversation looking back on the 2025 legislative session, three Grand Forks state lawmakers found moments of agreement and professed similar opinions on issues more than they disagreed.
Rep. Nels Christianson, Rep. Erik Murphy and Rep. Zac Ista, all from Grand Forks, went through some of the topics from the session with different mindsets but familiar answers. For example, on the matter of property tax and
Gov. Kelly Armstrong's bill
— which expanded the primary tax credit to a maximum $1,600 and capped local-level tax increases to no more than 3% annually — Christianson said they found some common ground.
Property tax was one of the several issues discussed during the legislative wrap-up, held at the Grand Forks County office building on Thursday, June 5. All 18 members of districts 17, 18, 19, 20, 42 and 43 were invited, but Ista, Murphy and Christianson were the only ones in attendance. Joel Heitkamp, host of KFGO News and Views and a former state senator, served as moderator. Some issues involved public funding to private schools, Medicaid, the North Dakota Republican Party and what bills the legislators worked on.
Property tax was among the most newsworthy issues during the session. Armstrong discussed it prior to his November election and his bill, HB 1176, was not passed until May 2, near the end of the session.
"Did we deliver relief? Yes," Christianson said. "Reform? Maybe not so much."
Murphy said property taxes are typically something outside of the Legislature's lane, but that he begrudgingly supported Armstrong's property tax bill.
"Property tax is part of the reality of living in a nation such as ours," he said. "Property tax, to me, is a local issue."
Ista, the only Democrat among the three, said there will be a trade-off. Homeowners will get some tax relief, but political subdivisions will have to figure out how to continue to pay for things.
"Now the burden is going to fall on our local, county, city, school districts to see how to live within this new reality. I think it's going to be a challenge going forward for the state and locals to balance it," he said.
One issue on which all three agreed was the matter of banning books. Each legislator was against it, though they had different thoughts on the matter.
Ista said he has voted against every book censorship bill, and will continue to do so every chance he gets.
"The issues in our state that affect our kids are not what books are displayed where in our libraries," he said. "I love taking my kids to Grand Forks Public Library and watch them go down that big pink slide, and I've never once worried about what book they might stumble into."
Christianson said that, under no circumstances, should books be banned. Instead, he said, they should be placed in the appropriate area, and that he wants his daughters to be able to go around the children's section of the library and look at any books they would like in that section.
"I absolutely do not support taking anything out of the ability for people to check out from the library," he said. "I just want to make sure that ... parents have a chance to be in the loop, just that parents can understand what their children are reading, especially in the younger ages."
Murphy said there are better things to do and think about in North Dakota than book bans, and he mentioned Senate Bill 2307, which would have required libraries to make material considered sexually explicit unavailable to minors, and could penalize failure to comply. One issue he took with the bill was the difference between what was said about it versus what it would really do, he said.
"What it really did is, opened up every library in the state, whether it's UND's library, it opened up the (North Dakota Museum of Art)," he said. "If there's a nude in there, that could be considered pornography, therefore we need to take that picture down."
Two resolutions that failed during the session — House Concurrent Resolution 3013, which requested the U.S. Supreme Court overturn gay marriage, and House Concurrent Resolution 3020, declaring that "Christ is King" of North Dakota — drew disagreement between Christianson, who voted "yes" on both, and the other two legislators, who voted against them.
Christianson's thought on HCR 3013 was that issues such as marriage need to be defined at the state level, not through a court decision, referencing Obergefell vs. Hodges, the 2015 U.S. Supreme Court ruling regarding same-sex marriages. Ista said that it was probably the darkest day of the session for him when the resolution came to the floor, and that he was caught "flat-footed" by it. He said he had thought everyone had moved beyond the issue of marriage equality.
Murphy said it's not up to him to decide who any individual should love. He also said that during this recent school year, he knew of students who were transgender and transitioning. The resolution sends the wrong message to North Dakota residents and creates a division in the state, he said.
As for HCR 3020, Murphy simply said "absolutely not" when Heitkamp asked if he thought North Dakota should be in the business of declaring that Christ is king. Ista said that the faith leaders in his life respected a foundational concept of no official religions in America, and that, while he respects the religion of his colleagues, the state should be accommodating to all religions and not place one above the others. Christianson said the resolution would have no effect on state policies, claiming that he voted for what he believes is the truth.
"It was simply a statement, and that's a statement that I will make every day, that Christ is king," he said.