(upbeat music) - This is "Legislative Review" on Prairie Public.

I'm Dave Thompson, thanks for joining us.

Our guest this week is a freshman senator from Fargo.

He's a Democrat, Ryan Braunberger.

Senator, thank you for being here.

- Thank you, it's very good to be here.

- I wanted to ask you, as a freshman, what's been your impression of the session so far?

- Chaotic, is a big one, but it's been really good.

I think there's a lot more camaraderie between all of us and we're a small Caucus.

So we talk a lot and fun and that sort of thing.

But it's been a good experience and definitely one I enjoy and wanna be back for so.

- What are the big issues that you're focusing on?

- I think my main focus is a lot on the social issues, especially like childcare, your LGBTQ rights, helping families, the low income families are probably my biggest issues that I wanna address the most.

- And you got judiciary committee, well, a lot of those are there.

- Yes.

- And some on state and local government, the other committee you have?

- Yeah, they're both there.

So they're both very busy.

My judiciary, I call my intense committee where it's a very high emotion where my state and local is not as emotional as some of that so.

- Well I'm kind of curious, you have four members in your Democratic Caucus.

- Yes.

- ...in the Senate.

How has that working out for you?

- It's been very interesting.

It's pushed me into a leadership role 'cause I am the Caucus chair for the Senate.

And it's been a learning experience.

Case keeping on top of everything.

I've been trying to make sure that we can get access to all the bills and all the committees since we're only four, we can only be on four of the committees.

So we have four committees that we don't even have representation on.

But we've been really good at getting some support from our people outside our citizens that have helped support us to help guide us on some of that too.

- I noticed a few people I recognized who are coming into the capitol and they said to me, I'm going to be observing a committee for the Democratic Caucus.

- Yeah, I think we have probably about a half a dozen people that actually observe.

There are four committees that we don't have access to and they report to us on what's going on and just either remotely or in person and just kind of tell us what they think of different bills and making sure that we understand what is going on before they hit the floor.

So we know which way, if we like the bill or don't like the bill, and why.

- You know, when the session started, one of the main themes was workforce, workforce development, attracting workforce to North Dakota.

From your perspective how is that that being accomplished now?

- It's tough.

I think we are working towards that and I think a lot of things that I think we would like to accomplish to make sure that we can attract workforce like childcare, ensuring that people have the access to it and it's affordable.

Making sure we're helping support families and then making sure that we're writing policies that will attract a diverse population.

Unfortunately this census has been very challenging and I think some of the things that have happened recently are gonna negatively impact our workforce recruitment, especially for that.

- So some of the things are some of the social issue bills?

- I think, yeah, definitely the social issue bills 'cause I think, we wanna attract a diverse group of people and with diverse thought, and I feel like the direction that we're going in, the legislature is they don't want that diverse thought.

And that really frightens me and disappoints me because I think the only way a culture can grow is with diversity of thought.

And if we don't want that diversity of thought and if we don't attract that, then we're going to just kind of become stagnant and not be able to grow.

I have a fear that some of this legislation is going to start reversing our population because we've been just started within the last decade of really growing our population, and retaining our youth in our universities and stuff like that.

And I feel like the bills that we have passed so far are gonna start reversing them.

- You're talking about some of the LGBTQ bills that are not out there.

I assume the idea of restricting access to books might be another issue.

- Oh, I agree, definitely agree.

I think even though the bills that have passed for the restriction of books are definitely better than they were when they were first presented, they still I think are gonna limit some of the access to the teenagers in sex education aspect of it.

I come from a background where I used to work with a lot of HIV prevention.

And seeing the numbers of STDs increase across the state and especially even the younger generation is starting, the HIV infections are increasing in that generation at a faster rate than the older generation.

And it's really kind of scary.

And if we don't have access to the information on how to prevent that, and if we can't teach the youth of that, I'm worried where that's gonna end up, and if we're gonna end up back in and deeper in the HIV epidemic than we were when it first came out in the 80s.

- It is interesting that you're bringing up that STD cases are increasing among the younger folks.

I find that very interesting.

- Yeah, it is interesting.

And I think a lot of that has to do with we're turning to be more conservative about that aspect of life.

- I wanted to ask you about childcare because that's a whole big part about workforce development is having adequate childcare, having childcare available if you need it.

So you know in times both parents can work, the governor has been pushing it, and the governor in an interview with us said that he's a little disappointed that it hasn't moved faster.

- I definitely agree.

I definitely agree, and I think some of the issues was is that the governor wanted all this money into it but he didn't really have any policies.

So I think that's part of the issue.

Us and the Demo MPL pushed a lot of policies forward.

Like I had the stabilization grants, Senator Hogan had increased for try to do for background checks and increased money and like TANF and those other aspects of, to help support those families.

And unfortunately a lot of those bills have since failed.

However, we are still working on some appropriations and getting 'em into the health and human services realm budgets to bring some of that back.

So we're working through that.

- The analogy that was has been around for a while is that you're entering the fourth quarter now and maybe substitutes legislation can be put into bills now.

- Yes.

Yeah, that's correct.

And that's kind of the idea of what we're trying to do is when we get into that quarter and those conference committees so that we can introduce some of that legislation that has previously failed put forward.

- So those are the big things that you could do to help to attract people to North Dakota.

- Correct.

- Are there anything, any other ideas that you would have or that you're supporting?

- I think just, it's one of the biggest things as a, if we could change the weather it would be a lot different, but we can't.

I think we can attract people here, but I think the problem is that we're having really struggling with attracting people that wanna stay here.

And we need to build some sort of way to let them put down roots.

And I think some of that can be, if we can make sure they feel welcome.

And especially I know Senator Mather was introduced to legislation on an immigration office.

I think that is great.

And I think that'll help bring community together.

I know the hospitals in my area are bringing a lot of people from out of the country.

I think one of the things we hear the most about is that when they get here they don't feel like there's a sense of community.

So we need to bridge that and make sure that we can create senses of community even in these rural areas so that they feel welcome, so they feel like they can either bring their families with them or they can start families and put down roots.

- But the legislature can only do so much in that.

A lot of that's gotta be mindset change.

- Correct.

That is very much so and I don't know how we can do that.

That is a mystery.

I think we try to legislate mind change in some of our policies, but you can't change that unless there's some people that are willing to actually act on it.

- They have to want to change?

- Correct, yep.

- Basically.

Well let me ask you about one aspect you talked about about attracting people and keeping people, there's a huge debate as you well know, going on about retirement for state employees.

- [Brown] Yes.

- And there is a, I mean there are two different camps.

Keep the defined benefit which they have right now or end the defined benefit and get everybody on defined contribution, where do you come down?

- I've definitely forged keeping the defined benefit and one of the main reasons I am is that the defined benefit helps the lower to middle income individuals the most.

Because they are the ones that can't afford to contribute their own funds into it and continue to grow that.

The big argument about the defined contribution plan is that it's portable, it can move people around and stuff like that.

Yes, and they're saying that the youth want that, but I think the youth only are choosing that because they are leaving their employers because they don't like their employers.

I don't think they think they're leaving because they always want to have a new career.

I think they just don't like who they're working for.

So I think the defined, I'm kind of going on a little bit of attention, but the defined benefit plan is gonna be a tool that we can keep those workers on because they're gonna have a guaranteed income and retirement where the defined contribution can be very volatile.

And even if you look at statistics in history since pension plans have been decreasing in the private sector, the amount of wealth in retirement has decreased equally as well.

So because people can't necessarily afford to go into a 401K or put excess money into that.

So I think it's important as stewards of the government, that we need to support our employees.

And I think define benefit as the portion to do that.

- So you would be more in favor of Senator Cleary's plan?

- Yes.

- Which would offer employees a choice to find benefit, contribution, whatever they wanted to do.

- Correct, that is correct.

- Another thing that's that's being talked about is tax cuts of course and tax plans.

And Governor Burgum again has basically put his line in the sand saying he's to do income tax cuts and he wants a path to zero income tax.

And the bill that's in there right now has a combination of property tax breaks and income tax breaks.

So wanted to get your thoughts on that.

- You know, income tax is not something that we actually really heard about on the campaign trail, when we know our door knock, nobody really worked talked about that because, North Dakota is a low income tax state period.

I know some of the reasoning by Governor Burgum is 'cause he wants us to compete with Texas.

There's a lot of things that Texas has advantages over North Dakota that I don't think we can actually get to zero income tax because of we don't have ports of entry that can easily ship products out of seas.

We can't build year round.

We can't have crops here round and they have such a more diversified portfolio than we do that I think us getting to a 0% tax is gonna end up bankrupting the state one.

'Cause I think then we don't have enough other resources to compensate for that.

And then I think one of the big impacts that he wants is that he believes oil is gonna be able to backfill that, oil is volatile, the oil prices go up and down.

And we as a body have even put restrictions in place of that when the bills passed to eliminate the trigger tax.

So now that puts a stop so they are gonna pay the same price no matter what the price of oil is.

Where before we could actually boost a little bit of that up to kind of offset that.

- Yeah, we've got shale plays, Permian Basin and North Dakota, which is the bargain, and they are competing, they're competing for workforce.

And you mentioned the good thing about Texas because we are a landlocked state in North Dakota.

You know Texas has seaports and you're right on that.

But where do you see that maybe shaking out?

- I have a feeling there probably will be an income tax cut and a property and will shift some things around for a property burden on that.

And where it lands on how much it is, we won't have a flat tax.

I think it's still gonna be a graduated plan.

And I think we're still gonna end up with that, it's just gonna be lower.

I think we're gonna have a bigger, larger group of the lower income.

There's gonna be increased where they're gonna be cut almost out where they don't have to pay taxes at all, income tax at all.

And then we're gonna still have like homestead tax credit, and there's one other one that I can't think of at the moment.

But, yeah, we're gonna still have some of that and especially when we're also gonna remove some of the property tax burden for schools to the state instead of the school districts themselves.

- Yeah, the bill of you buy down.

There's a certain amount of mills and we do have to talk mills 'cause that's what the statute says.

That a school district has to raise in order to qualify for state aid.

- Yep.

- And that's going to be reduced a bit.

- Yes, that does my knowledge how mills work.

I have no idea, I'm not really familiar with that aspect of that 'cause I'm more of a policy person than a appropriator.

- Well, let me ask you about, since we're talking about some monetary things, state government pay raises, state employees a six and four plan, which is probably one of the more generous plans we've seen in a while.

- Correct.

Yes, and that is seems to be pretty common 'cause obviously yesterday we went through, I think it was yesterday we went through a lot of the agency bills and most of those bills all had six and four and I think it's great.

I think we should be doing more just because of inflation and we're still at the bottom for employees in the country.

But I like where we're at with six and four as a good start at least.

- Well I did hear some people in the higher education realm who said they're thinking that this is not enough to cover inflation.

And they would like to see an eight, but they're very happy with six and four right now.

So let's put it that way.

- Yeah, I 100% agree.

Like I said, I would like to see more but I don't think it's gonna be something that we can negotiate at this point.

- Well you're in Fargo, and Fargo is going to be getting a center for technical education, one of the career academies.

And money is now in the pipeline to get that career academy built.

What are you hearing from your constituents on that?

- I think they're for it definitely, my area of Fargo is kind of interesting because we're mostly apartments and we're very transient and we're mostly a lot of immigrants.

So I don't wanna necessarily hear a lot about that.

Some of my other ones, I do have a fair amount of faculty for NDSU in my area and they're definitely supportive of those programs and I think it's important to do that.

Yeah, I think that's not a lot, but that's basically it.

- So again that's another workforce type thing.

- [Brown] Yep, correct.

- Switching gears a bit, since you mentioned NDSU, there's that agriculture hall that they want to rebuild and this has been up for a couple times but now they think they've got momentum to get it built.

I think it's called Waldron Hall.

Is that right?

- Yes, I believe, correct.

- Yeah, and that is where most of the ag experimentation and research takes place.

- Yeah, from my understanding, I don't have a lot of knowledge into it, but I do think there is some momentum to ensure funding for that.

It really depends on how everything shakes out, and where we have to start cutting based on everything else.

It's a struggle when you have lots of money, everybody wants money so you have to balance that.

- And at one point they were underwater a billion dollars, but in the eighties you'd say that: Oh my gosh, how are we gonna make that up?

But the state has cash so they'll be able to make that up maybe with more targeted reductions.

- Yeah, I think that's what's gonna happen is that I think we're gonna end up having to figure out where we're gonna make those deductions at.

I think we are based on what we have and what's in there, we are currently underwater a little bit, I think the reason administration one is more like 200 million or 300 million now, but we're still not done yet.

So there'll still be some negotiations.

- So they've cut it down to about 200 million.

I believe, if I remember if I read everything correctly today on the budget summary.

- Well compared to where we were, that's chump changing.

- Right.

And I think we wanna have a little bit of surplus.

Probably, I'm thinking we're still have probably about a half a million dollars to go yet.

- Okay.

So I'm hearing from the appropriators that there's a target of $400,000 for ending fund balance to carry over the next planning.

- That's what I'm hearing as well.

So that's where they're working towards.

- I wanted to ask you is just a general question about higher education.

- Okay.

- You see that there was a real push to use some money from the Legacy Funder rings for research, and I don't know where that is, I'm not exactly sure.

Have you heard anything about money for research?

- I have not.

Actually, I'm not sure I've heard that in my aspect of that part of it.

- Are there any specific things that you're tracking right now that you're really keeping your eye on in terms of issues or bills.

- As a freshman, it's really hard to try to focus that.

I probably don't do the best job honestly on making sure I'm focusing on things.

I kind of go to more of a day-to-day type of thing, just trying to get my feet wet.

It is like getting a hit by a fire hose to try to figure out where things are at.

Luckily I have a great Caucus that helps guide me through that and helps me understand where those things are.

I'm trying to think.

I think workforce is obviously a big issue.

Making sure we can attract the workforce and making sure that we can get the childcare through and pushing that through.

And I've been kind of monitoring the allocation of those funds and through appropriations on getting those into our different budgets.

- It's typical legislative session.

People come in with good ideas like that but as the session wears on, you see things start to move around like chess pieces- - Correct.

- ...almost.

- And it's very fast and it is very, and especially it's getting faster now on that.

And yeah, I wish I had a better answer for that question but.

- Well what's the hardest thing you've had to learn about this process?

- Knowing where things are at?

Just knowing when a bill is up, tracking it.

I think knowing that and just kind of getting organized.

I think I'm finally starting to get organized a little bit where I wasn't quite at the beginning knowing what bills I should be tracking, how to track 'em, where to find them and that sort of thing.

- But you're in your first session.

- Yes.

- Yeah, there is a learning curve.

- Very much so.

- Anything really surprise you?

- I think the pace is really tough.

And I think there's often times when we have bills that come up where I think we should have more time to discuss them and we maybe even make some hasty decisions that hopefully we'll get flushed out this session, but I feel like there's several, we're gonna end up having to correct some things that we did next session just because of the pace and we don't get to fully vet it 'cause I think we do our best to try to make sure we factor in unintended consequences, at least I do.

But I think it's very hard at the pace to try to figure that out.

And sometimes, once the logos in effect we're like oh this is an unintended consequence so we need to correct it later.

- How many bills are you signed onto?

- Two that I prime sponsored.

I think I'm cosponsored on maybe another eight or nine.

- [Thompson] What were the bills that you were your main sponsor?

- I was the main sponsor on the 2301, which was the stabilization grants, that was my main sponsor.

And then I had another one which was a constituent wanted me to do was add the day after Thanksgiving as a holiday and one other, oh Juneteenth as an actual holiday holiday.

- So the Juneteenth bill- - It didn't even make it outta committee?

Well it made out a committee- - Because you have to vote on the bill.

- Yeah, but it didn't make it very far.

There was a fiscal note to it and I think people were struggling with the fiscal note and because you have to pay your employees for those days off in the state.

So I think that was probably the biggest downfall on it.

It was something that I was really thinking would be nice not for employees that aren't necessarily state employees but like even like in the political subs for your school districts that aren't teachers, they're the ones that do the frontline stuff for your cooks and your janitors.

'Cause a lot of those holidays you already kind of have off already or at least it's a day off day after Thanksgiving is usually during a break anyway for especially in the school districts, but the janitorial staff still has to go, usually has to go in on those days anyway because it's not considered that.

And that was one of the things I was just trying to make sure to level the playing field and making sure it was fair for all of our state employees.

- Now there are a lot of people who would say that the day after Thanksgiving is kind of a nothing day because, people often take that day as vacation anyways.

- Yeah.

And often do and and even if you work in a school district, you're not gonna have just Thanksgiving day off and then have the kids come back the next day anyway.

So you're usually gonna have both days off anyway.

- If you had your druthers, is there something from the Legacy Fund you'd like to see invested in?

- Oh, that's a good one.

I don't know if I really do.

I mean, I guess in a perfect world I would love to make sure that we have childcare for everybody.

I think that would be a big one.

And then I wish we could do something with ensuring equitable wages for everybody.

I know we have tried to raise the minimum wage over and over again.

There was my colleagues in the house side have tried to do that, and I mean anyway that's not really Legacy Fund but I think just bringing, trying to make sure that there was equitable for everybody.

I'm lucky to be in a heavily poverty area of the Fargo, but I see areas where people are struggling just to make decisions on food and prescriptions and housing.

And I would love if I could use Legacy Funds to solve that crisis, it would be amazing.

- Of course North Dakota has a number of funds.

There's general fund and then what they call the SIF fund, which a lot of people refer to as general fund too.

And then you've got the streams coming off Legacy Fund earnings.

And one thing that I've heard, and I just want you a quick reaction to this is that when we passed the Legacy Fund as as an citizens initiative, we didn't put any parameters on it, what the money's supposed to be used for.

- That is my understanding too.

And I think we just made sure that we could only spend the profits or the interest and earnings on that.

Which I think gives us some flexibility.

'Cause I think it's allows us to be able to do different things when we need to.

However, we have to be very careful 'cause we don't want to spend all of it.

'Cause we wanna be able to have a backstop if we need to.

And I think it's very important to us because we're always gonna have a recession and there's always gonna be a new recession, there's always gonna be great times, there's always gonna be bad times 'cause that's just the sickliness of the world.

- Okay, I ask everybody this question.

- [Brown] Okay.

- How many days are you going to save at the end of the session, or are you gonna go all the way to 80?

- I don't think we'll go to 80, I think our goal is to save eight.

With as slow as we were at the beginning of the week, I was thinking it might be hard for us to save eight, but I think since we've sped up and some of that, I think we'll probably save around eight or 10 - Well, Senator Braunberger, thank you very much for your time.

- You're welcome, thank you.

- Our guest Fargo Democratic Senator Ryan Braunberger.

For Prairie Public and for "Legislative Review," I'm Dave Thompson.

Thank you for listening and watching.

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