FARGO (KFGO) – As lawmakers prepare to head to Bismarck next week to gavel into North Dakota’s 68th Legislative Assembly, an informal survey of the area’s delegation to the state Capitol suggests broad bipartisan agreement about the most important issues the legislature must address this session and topics likely to spur the most debate.
Policy Priorities
Every legislator who responded to questions from KFGO News about the priorities and challenges of the coming session mentioned North Dakota’s workforce shortage as a major concern.
Veteran legislators and first-term lawmakers alike said the state’s economic growth is being constrained by workforce issues.
Longtime Dem-NPL Sen. Tim Mathern said that in the early 1900s North Dakota had an Office of Immigration to try and attract people to settle in the state. He said it is time to re-open that office.
“Both to help businesses make the proper connections with people around the world, and for those people to get the proper services when they want to come here so that their family is well taken care of and they have a safe place to live,” he said.
Republican House member Michelle Strinden is starting her third term. She said the state’s workforce challenges can be directly tied to another issue legislators on both sides of the aisle repeatedly raised.
“Many workforce shortages are caused by a lack of quality, affordable childcare. Increasing access to childcare and supporting our working families should be the legislature’s top priority this session,” she said.
Five-term Republican Sen. Kyle Davison of Fargo’s District 41 agreed that childcare is priority number one. He said the legislature has a critical role to play in improving childcare in the state.
“How do we improve our system, and then how within that system do we inject funding to improve access, quality, and affordability for working families?” he said.
House Minority Leader Josh Boschee said to expand capacity statewide, the legislature should enhance the childcare assistance program for working families, and allocate funding to support the wages of childcare workers and tax credits for families and employers who pay for childcare.
First-term legislators like Liz Conmy, a Democrat from Fargo’s District 11, and Jim Jonas, a District 13 Republican, agreed that childcare and workforce were among their top priorities, but both placed an emphasis on increased education funding, teacher pay and retention as keys to solving to those problems.
Jonas, who is a former teacher and coach and currently serves on the West Fargo school board, noted that North Dakota ranks among the worst in the nation in teacher pay and that the number of young people going into the teaching profession is lagging.
Conmy said worker retention is a problem across all sectors.
“You can’t grow if you can’t maintain what you’ve got, and we need workers. We have around 20,000 job openings… that is huge and we need to develop a multi-prong approach, from education to improved wages to incentives to entice folks to come and live here,” she said.
Another Dem-NPL newcomer, state Sen. Ryan Braunberger of District 10, agreed with a multi-faceted approach.
“We need to make sure there is access to affordable childcare, housing options, and healthcare in every community of North Dakota. Once we are able to solve these issues it will help resolve our workforce shortages and attract new people to the state,” Braunberger said, adding that improving mental health care is another of his top concerns.
Looming Fights
Davison said how the legislature chooses to spend the state’s $2 billion surplus is likely to be a source of debate.
“That will require aligning priorities between legislators who focus more strongly on ideology and the more pragmatic who are trying to bring solutions to challenges,” he said.
Second-term House member Greg Stemen from Fargo’s District 27 said the surplus is directly connected to another controversial topic.
“How to we provide tax relief when we’re sitting on a surplus? How do we get that money back into the hands of North Dakota citizen and taxpayers, or allow them to keep more of it?” he asked.
Strinden said she supports Gov. Doug Burgum’s proposal to reduce income taxes.
“I hope we pass it and provide tax relief to hard working North Dakotans, as well as ensure that our state remains competitive in attracting new jobs and investment opportunities,” she said.
Mathern, on the other hand, says Burgum’s proposal would only benefit the state’s most wealthy citizens.
“The Governor described it as ‘everybody would get a reduction’ – that is not true, because not everyone pays income tax. So the lowest paid people would not get a benefit out of this,” he said.
Mathern added that if any tax relief passes he thinks it should be for residential property taxes. Fellow Dem-NPL Sen. Merrill Piepkorn, who said addressing citizens’ tax concerns was one of his top priorities, agreed that a property tax relief bill would likely be a more popular path.
For his part, Stemen said he isn’t endorsing property tax relief until hears more details.
“As a conservative, I believe in local control. The more we as a state legislative body assert ourselves into county-assessed taxes or school boards or park boards or whatever it may be, it’s a little bit of a slippery slope, so I would hope that the argument is extremely compelling,” Stemen said.
Biggest Concerns
Mathern and Strinden found common ground when it came to the area of behavioral health and securing proper funding to support people with mental illness and substance use disorders. Strinden serves on the Human Resources subdivision of the House Appropriations Committee.
“I see firsthand how serious our state’s behavioral health crisis is. We are failing our most vulnerable citizens, and need to increase funding for treatment and prevention of substance use disorder and mental health services,” she said.
Mathern agreed, saying local services need to be better funded. He said up to now many legislators and the Governor have talked about doing a better job in the area of behavior health, but too much of that energy has gone into building a new State Hospital.
Conmy said women’s access to reproductive health care and the possible consequences of North Dakota’s abortion ban – like limited access to lifesaving procedures, law enforcement involvement, and prosecuting doctors and pharmacists are big concerns for her going into this session.
Boschee and Piepkorn said they worried about keeping the legislature’s attention on important issues like childcare, workforce, and tax relief instead of hot button cultural issues.
“Will the legislature, primarily the GOP super-majority, be able to stay focused on the real issues facing North Dakotans or will they let the small extreme minority of their caucus allow the focus to be culture issues that come from national pundits and fringe corners of the internet?” Boschee asked.
Piepkorn said the Dem-NPL will be stretched thin this session with only four Senators and 12 members in the House.
“It could be stressful just trying to keep up with the day-to-day business we have to do,” Piepkorn said. “I’m not really worried about it. We just have to suit up, show up and do the best we can.”
Stemen said with term limits on legislators looming on the horizon, the pressure is on the 68th Assembly to attract new talent.
“Let’s make sure we’re solving problems that benefit North Dakotans and bringing forth legislation that isn’t a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist,” he said. “I want us to have a respectable and positive session that says ‘this is how state government should work.’ I want our level of decorum to continually improve and for us to become a body that people want to become a part of in the future.”
