24-03-2025
District 12, 29 lawmakers update constituents on bills
Mar. 24—JAMESTOWN — District 12 and 29 lawmakers answered several questions about bills that they are working on in the North Dakota Legislature, including property taxes, keeping explicit sexual material out away from areas accessible to minors in libraries, education bills, helping rural communities and a bill related to energy conversion and transmission facility, siting among other issues.
District 12 and 29 lawmakers answered questions about the legislative session on Saturday, March 22, at a meet-and-greet event hosted by the Jamestown Area Chamber of Commerce at the Gladstone Inn & Suites. Rep. Don Vigesaa, R-Cooperstown, did not attend the event.
Rep. Craig Headland, R-Montpelier, said the House Finance and Taxation Committee has seen almost 60 bills in regard to property tax.
"I think the Senate has settled in pretty much on House Bill 1176, a bill that in some ways I and the House Tax Committee completely rewrote from its original design," said Headland, who chairs the House Finance and Taxation Committee. "The original design had the intent of taking every primary residence to zero. We took that out. We don't know that we believe in that."
HB 1176 would expand the primary residence tax credit from $500 to $1,450 beginning in tax year 2025, Forum News Service reported.
"I've also heard that there's a move to possibly take the $1,450 down to $1,250," Headland said. "I don't know that I agree that we need to do that either. What I do agree with that I've heard that they're thinking about is putting some type of percentage into the equations so no one's primary residence goes to zero today. If we want to take properties to zero in the future, and future legislators have the funding ability to do it, that's a decision they should make."
HB 1176 would also expand eligibility for the Homestead Tax Credit program, which is available to homeowners over 65 years old, Forum News Service reported. The income thresholds for eligibility would be expanded from $40,000 to $50,000 to be eligible for the full credit and from $70,000 to $80,000 to be eligible for half the credit. It also expands the maximum available renter's refund from $400 to $600.
The bill also proposes a 3% cap on property tax levy increases from taxing districts.
"We put in some provisions to help the political subdivisions deal with the restrictions caps," Headland said. "Some of them stayed in the bill. One of them, the opt-out provision where we allowed a county to opt out or a city to opt out of the cap altogether, was stripped out of the bill in House Appropriations, which I didn't really think was appropriate because the policy committee, which I chair, had put it in."
Sen. Terry Wanzek, R-Jamestown, said he would support some of the amendments to HB 1176.
"I think it's not probably prudent to take one class of property down to zero," he said. "In some cases, that's the way it's designed right now would go to zero and there is an amendment that would say that's limited to 75%. You could end up getting a full $1,450 tax credit on your primary home. ... Targeting primary homes does make sense.
"Most of us have a home and a primary home and are paying taxes on it, and it would single out, in my view, more of North Dakota citizens," he said. " ... Some property if we provide a huge property tax decrease, it's going to out-of-state people and it's leaving our state. That's of some concern."
Rep. Bernie Satrom, R-Jamestown, said Senate Bill 2307 is about keeping explicit sexual material away from areas accessible to minors.
"It's about safety of children,"he said.
He said it's illegal to allow children to have explicit sexual material.
"Some of you probably know that sexually explicit information is being used by groomers and sexual abusers, and it's not a positive thing for children to have sexually explicit information, have access to it, particularly at a young age," he said.
SB 2307 would require public libraries and school districts to develop a policy and review process by Jan. 1 for library collections to ensure explicit sexual material is not in an area accessible to minors.
The bill also requires safety policies and technology protection measures for digital or online database resources offered by a school district, state agency or public library to students in grades K-12. If a provider of digital or online library resources fails to comply with having safety policies and technology protection measures, the school district, state agency or public library shall withhold any further payments to the provider pending verification of compliance, the bill says.
The bill also creates an obscenity review procedure where any person may request a local state's attorney's opinion to review if material in a library or school district has explicit sexual material. The state's attorney would need to issue an opinion on the alleged violation within 60 days to the interested person, provider of digital or online library database resources, school district, state agency or public library under review.
If it is determined that a public library, state agency or school district is in violation, funding may be withheld if correction action to comply with the law isn't taken within 10 days.
The state's attorney may prosecute for failure to comply with the law.
Satrom said some librarians didn't comply with a previous bill that was passed during the legislative session in 2023.
Rep. Mitch Ostlie, R-Jamestown, said any concerns with library materials should be handled locally.
"If you have a concern with something in the library, you should go to the librarian," he said. "If you don't like the answer you get there, there is a library board. If you don't like the answer there, they're under control of either city council or county commission. So those are important steps in the process to deal with a lot of issues but sometimes we jump a few levels of governing bodies and go right to the Legislature and we're supposed to fix some of this stuff."
He said local law enforcement and the state's attorney's office brings charges forward to individuals who are breaking the law.
"We're overstepping a whole lot of levels there," Ostlie said.
Wanzek said the Legislature is working on a couple of bills to address economic development in rural North Dakota.
"It's to try to help those small rural communities that mean a lot to the rural people and some fashion," he said.
Wanzek said he sponsored Senate Bill 2097 with Sen. Tim Mathern, D-Fargo, and Rep. Mike Brandenburg, R-Edgeley, to create a rural community endowment fund and a committee for the fund. The bill would appropriate $5 million to the rural community endowment fund from the general fund in the state treasury.
"It started out wanting $50 million," Wanzek said, referring to the original bill that included $50 million for the community endowment fund.
He said the endowment fund could provide consistent and sustainable funding for small rural communities in the future.
"We're trying to get it passed and get it in there, and even if it isn't accessible right away," he said. "If our ancestors, 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago, if we'd have done that, we'd have that endowment fund now."
Headland said the Legislature is taking it seriously to put funds aside for infrastructure.
"What we're really talking about is what's holding back economic development in rural areas is lack of infrastructure," he said. "I think we're going to have historic levels of funding for county roads, township roads, transmission, electric transmission, natural gas transmission pipelines."
Sen. Cole Conley, R-Jamestown, said economic development is one of the most important things legislators work on.
"That is the fuel that drives the economy," he said.
Ostlie said a bill in the North Dakota Legislature could provide up to $100,000 for improvements at the Stutsman County Fairgrounds.
HB 1591 — sponsored by Ostlie, Satrom, Wanzek and Conley — would create a one-to-one matching grant program and appropriate $3 million to the agriculture commissioner to provide grants to county agriculture fair associations for the planning, design and construction of infrastructure projects from July 1, 2025, to June 30, 2027. No more than $100,000 could be awarded to a county agriculture fair association.
"It's well needed across the state," Ostlie said.
Satrom said agriculture development and diversification is a big deal. He said all local lawmakers sponsored a bill for value-added agriculture.
Wanzek said bills in the Legislature are being pitted as public versus private schools.
"I see this as empowering parents and empowering students to have a choice where in some situations they're limited in their ability to make that choice," he said.
Headland agreed.
"It's more of empowering parents to make the decisions that would they feel would be best for their children and the state being able to help with that," he said. "It doesn't take any money away from public (schools)."
Wanzek said Senate Bill 2400 is an education savings account.
Senate Bill 2400 would provide a $1,000 education savings account payment — it previously was $500 — to an eligible student if that student's household has an annual income less than or equal to 300% of the most recently revised poverty income guidelines.
Headland said there is a misunderstanding of what House Bill 1258 does.
"It doesn't take away local decision making unless that decision is deemed unreasonable," he said.
House Bill 1258 would give the state Public Service Commission the authority to override rules set by local governments that conflict with a state approval for an electric transmission project, The Bismarck Tribune reported.
The bill would apply to all power line siting cases, including the JETx project — a $440 million transmission line project that connects the Otter Tail Power Co. substation north of Jamestown along North Dakota Highway 20 to the Montana-Dakota Utilities Co. substation near Ellendale. The project was requested by the regional power grid operator Midcontinent Independent System Operators (MISO) and is promoted as a way to improve regional power grid reliability. MISO manages the power grid for a 15-state area and parts of the province of Manitoba.
The Stutsman County Commission rejected a proposed zoning ordinance for gas and liquid transmission lines.
The proposed zoning ordinance would have required a setback distance of 2,600 feet between any occupied dwelling and a new high voltage power line or large pipeline.
The current standard is set at 500 feet by the North Dakota Public Service Commission.
The proposed zoning ordinance change originated at the Stutsman County Planning and Zoning Commission, which unanimously approved in July changing the setback distance to 2,600 feet.
The current Stutsman County zoning ordinance does not address setbacks for electrical transmission lines or pipelines.
"You can't allow a small political subdivision to just zone something else because they don't want it," Headland said.
He said all customers of Otter Tail and MDU pay for the cost of transmission line projects.
"They need to be least tried to be kept as reasonably priced as we can," he said. "If you ended up with just nothing but a zigzag across the state, you're not going to have the ability to proceed forward with those projects."
Headland said the last resort is eminent domain.
Eminent domain means the government would have the power to take private property for public use even if the owner doesn't want to sell. The property owner would still be compensated.
"In most cases, there are ways to work around it," Headland said.
Headland said some landowners are unwilling to take a phone call from Otter Tail or MDU.
"My suggestion to any property owner who has not yet talked to Otter Tail in this case with this particular line ... at least take their phone call, sit down with them," he said. "If you can't come to some kind of amenable agreement ... that's a decision you and the company will make. Let's just hope that we can find a route for this very, very critical piece of electric transmission infrastructure that we need."
