(upbeat music) - Hello and welcome to "Prairie Pulse".

Well, North Dakota just wound up it's legislative session.

And today we've got a couple of guests for you but first we have a Grand Forks Republican state Senator Ray Holmberg.

Senator Holmberg, thanks for joining us today.

- Thank you for inviting me.

- As we get started, we always ask tell the folks maybe a little bit about yourself and your background.

- I was a high school counselor, and before that I taught government at Central High School in Grand Forks.

- In Grand Forks.

And what drew you to become a state senator for North Dakota?

- It was a fluke in that the federal courts had redistricted Grand Forks and the entire North side of town had no incumbent senators or representatives.

I went to a meeting and there were four of us there that organized the Republican party and then district 17 and three of us were elected to the legislature.

- Well, that's it.

Of course, you've been there for a while now and you're the Senate Appropriations chair.

Can you give us some of your, just sort of general thoughts on the session this year?

- I thought it was, going back to when I taught government and recruiters textbook, a majority if you're in the majority, you point with pride and if you're in the minority, you view with alarm.

So I guess I would point with pride.

I think that the legislature did a pretty good job under trying times with COVID and with initially a sense that we were going to be broke and yet ended up quite flush in part because of over $2 billion of federal money that's already here and another billion that we haven't dealt with yet that's coming up later this year.

- Yeah.

And with that said, and of course some other funds that were set aside back in 2010 but we will get into probably a little bit but is North Dakota in good fiscal and financial situation as we go forward now?

- I think it is.

I think we had a good year and our budget numbers are still running ahead and we have a conservative estimate going forward but we keep getting better than what our estimates are.

So I think we're in good shape.

Yeah.

I think going forward, we will do well.

- And with that, I mean, talk a little bit about bonding bills and infrastructure and sort of that legacy fund spending that a lot of people are interested in what's going on.

So quite a bit there to talk about.

- We used bond and then we had about a 12 year gap where we didn't.

Last session we did a little bonding.

This time we did $680 million but one has to look at what that accomplished.

First of all, it finalized the funding for the Fargo Diversion, which frees up other money for other projects around the state.

We completed with bonding the Harris Hall Project here at NDSU, which is not just an NDSU building but it's for agriculture across the state.

And we put more money into roads.

So it was kind of a change for many in the legislature but with the interest rates as low as they are I think it was a wise investment and again, freeing up other monies.

And we have a method of paying, paying those bonds back which is a painless method I guess, if you can use that term.

- Well, you talked a little bit about education but how about funding for K-12 and higher education?

How did that play out?

- Well, the governor asked for a seven and a half percent reduction in funding for higher education and that included the university system and also extension and experiment station, which is a separate budget but it all in the same vein.

The university system asked for what they called a needs based budget, what they felt they needed to continue.

And we started out, we had the bill in my appropriations committee.

We started out on day one saying we are gonna go with the needs-based budget.

And at the end of the day, we passed that university budget in the Senate unanimously.

And which indicates that people really liked what we were doing and what the university system had been doing.

You know, there were side shows and things like that but at the end of the day there was a lot of support for both ag.

extension.

And for the university system.

- We talked about it before we gave on camera I guess there were a couple of bills or a number of bills that were controversial.

One governor Burgum vetoed was the transgender sports bill.

Can you talk a little bit about that?

And was it even necessary to introduce that bill?

- Well, I was one of those that voted no on the bill and I was not convinced that it was necessary.

I think there were many problems with the bill.

Within the bill itself there were contradictions and I think the governor did the right thing but it was a painful bill from the standpoint of the strong feelings on both sides.

So I think at the end of the day, the right thing happened but I think the North Dakota High school Activities Association has a very good policy.

Even the proponents of the transgender bill said it was a good policy but they could change it at any time and at request for, "Well, then why don't we just enact what their policy is into law so they can't change it all the time?"

But that was not acceptable.

So what happened happened, the governor vetoed it and the Senate did not override the veto.

- It's my understanding but wouldn't North Dakota have risked losing events had the bill passed?

- Yes, that was testimony that was given.

We heard that and we heard that particularly, in Grand Forks from Grand Forks Fargo a lot and from Bismarck about the loss of the events that would come.

And also those kinds of bills sometimes give a state a reputation that is not savory when it comes to encouraging people to come to the state.

And I think we've had a good record the last 10 years.

We gained 110,000 people in 10 years.

We don't want to jeopardize anything.

- Well, and the mass mandate bill of course did pass despite governor Burgum veto.

Can you explain what the bill does and what it means going forward?

- What the bill does really is just say that state officials, the governor, the health officer cannot mandate the wearing of masks but your county health officer, your mayor your County commission, they can still do it.

It was a sense that the local people should make those decisions because what happens or what's going on in a pandemic, for example, in Fargo is vastly different than in Steele County or in Bowman County.

And there should be that opportunity to let the local people weigh in and decide on it.

- Well, higher education and the so-called academic freedom became sort of another hot issue especially different parties on that one.

Can you discuss or explain this bill to us?

- Are you talking about the Challenge Grant bill?

- Yes.

- Oh, okay.

Yeah.

The unfortunate part of that was those two concepts, the concept of giving money to foundations at a university to help students has nothing to do with planned parenthood and the merging of those two bills which was done on the Senate floor, not in any committee after hearings was I think the wrong way to go.

I think that if you're going to have a measure like that it should be a bill introduced on its own and rise or fall based upon the testimony and what the committees find.

So I think it was an unfortunate thing and it became one of the many side shows that occurred during the legislature.

I always say the legislature is like a three-ring circus.

You've got the main events and then you've got the side shows.

And particularly the bloggers love to, whenever there's a shiny object that comes along, they like to start singing, "Send in the clowns," and that gets all of the attention of the legislature.

The governor now has that particular bill and he will decide what he's going to do.

- With that said, let's move on to can you explain how much money North Dakota is gonna get in Federal Coronavirus Funding Aid and how might that be invested?

- We've received and appropriated around $2 billion of federal money.

We also have another billion dollars in the queue but we don't know what the guidelines are yet.

So we set that money aside so you can expect the legislature to come back to Bismarck later this year, once we have the guidelines from the federal government to determine how much flexibility we have with that funding, does it go to human services?

Does it go to highways?

Does it go to retirement systems?

I mean, they're just a lot of questions.

We had no answers so we just put it off.

That's why you find that in our general fund which is income tax, sales tax, those kinds of taxes the increase from last biennium was 3% but with federal money and other funds it was a 21% increase in what we had last time.

That's why our budget numbers have jumped so high because of federal money and then because of the bonding.

- Of course Senator Holmberg, it's always nice to be in the majority party but in your estimation is a Republican super majority a good thing or is it too much?

- We will see the answer to that question this fall when we redistrict because if you look at where the, and this is going to be a generalization there are only a handful of Democrats West of Interstate 29.

So that whole vast area of the state is represented by Republicans.

There will be a shift in districts, a dramatic shift and Republicans are the ones out there that are gonna take the brunt of the hit, if you want to call it a hint that you'll get moved out of your district, for example.

So it's going to be interesting, and that will tell more than the number of Democrats that were in Bismarck because there weren't a lot of them.

There were seven in the Senate and 14 in the House.

So that's not a lot.

And 120 Republicans.

So 120 Republicans will have interesting discussions as we redistrict.

- We've got about a minute left.

What are your priorities kind of leading up to and heading into the next session in two years?

- Of course, one of them will be redistricting which I will be on the committee.

And the other is how are we going to reasonably spend this other billion dollars that has been borrowed from our grandchildren that the federal government gave us to spend?

How do we invest that money over the next month when we find out how we can do it?

So that's what I would view as a priority going forward.

- All right, well, Senator Holmberg, thank you for your time today.

- And thank you for inviting me.

- Stay tuned.

We'll be back in just a moment with state representative, Joshua Boschee.

(upbeat music) Hello, and welcome back.

Joining me now is Fargo's Democratic State Representative Joshua Boschee.

Joshua, thanks for joining us today.

- Great to be here.

- You know, before we get started tell the folks a little bit about yourself and your background, maybe.

- Yeah, well, I have the privilege of representing North Fargo in the State House, but I also serve as the minority leader of the Democratic caucus.

I grew up in Mynatt, but have called Fargo home for the last 21 years.

Started here at college and then have done my career ever since.

So currently I have the privilege of also working at Hatch Realty where I'm a real estate agent when I'm not in meetings with the legislature.

- Well, and that's what you're here to talk about today.

The recent legislative session that just wrapped up.

Can you give us, I guess some general thoughts about the session?

- Yeah.

You know, it was a COVID session so there's a lot of unprecedentedness that we all experienced.

So it was quiet in the fact that we didn't, you know engage a lot with the public in person but we had the ability to interact with the public virtually and through our hybrid technology.

I think the report that came out last week was well over 800,000 people watched the session at various points.

So that was a great way to stay connected and to be transparent with the work that we were doing.

But as far as our accomplishments, you know I feel it was a very successful session.

We passed some mile marker legislation and made sure that we funded government for what North Dakotans expect.

But there was also a lot of challenges.

There was a lot of distractions and what I would consider some extreme legislation that I think took up some headlines and took a lot of our time that had we not had to tackle those things we would have been able to do even more great things.

- Well, let's get into some of them and obviously representing a Fargo area.

What about the FM Diversion project?

Any news on it?

- Yeah.

You know, we're pleased to say that as part of the bonding bill we were able to include the full state portion of the FM Diversion.

The way previously it had been set up is that we would be making payments every two years to cover the state portion.

But by doing it this way through the bonding bill, you know this is a multi-generational project that we'll be able to be paid multi-generationally.

But it also clears up what we call the Water Resources Trust Fund which is funded through oil money and that funds major water water projects throughout the state.

And the FM Diversion was taking up a big chunk of that pie.

And so by us moving that onto the bonding bill that frees up cash so that we can make sure that funding throughout rural North Dakota and other priorities throughout the state, water-related can be prioritized.

- Yeah.

With that said, what is North Dakota's fiscal situation coming out of the session?

And maybe talk a little bit about that legacy funding spending.

- Yeah.

You know, we're coming out of this pandemic stronger than we expected.

You know, both energy prices, as well as our state's economy has been doing a little bit better than we expected.

So that has helped with the state's general fund.

And I think also allowed us to, again, meet the needs that North Dakotans have as far as general services that the state provides.

But a lot of that was supplanted and supported by federal money which helped us get across the finish line with that.

But of course, you know, as you brought up the Legacy Fund in 2010, the voters created the fund.

First 30% of our oil taxes goes into that fund and that fund has grown quicker than we expected.

So at this point it's over $7 billion is in that fund which is generating hundreds of millions of dollars of interest.

And so we're excited about, you know, there's a lot of back and forth between the Democratic caucus and the Republican caucus, the House and the Senate.

But we finally came to an agreement in starting funding priorities of what we call buckets.

So some main themes include making sure that we're paying the balance of our, what we owe for that bonding bill, setting aside some money for research dollars for highway tax funding but then also there's a big pot of money several hundred that would be left over to what we are calling other legislative priorities.

So when we come back in 2023, after spending the next year and a half talking to North Dakotans, we're going to be able to come forward with some ideas as far as how else can we invest that money.

- Okay.

'Cause that's going to be a big, that's a lot of money for the average citizen to think about and how you invest that.

I know a lot of people are interested in that.

But you talked about bonding and let's talk about some of those bonding and infrastructure components.

- Yeah.

You know, so for our viewers or listeners who aren't aware, bonding is kind of like taking out a mortgage on your house.

So we're taking out a 30 year loan to pay for multi-generational projects.

And so the FM Diversion is a key component of that as is the Souris River Diversion program that up in the Mynatt area.

Then beyond that, we've put some money towards roads and infrastructure and bridges that we know that we can get some money out the door right now.

It's cheaper than what we'll pay in a year because of inflation.

We're seeing construction costs continue to go up.

Labor costs are going up.

So before the federal government maybe passes a big infrastructure bill North Dakota is putting some money out there so we can get these work crews from around the country to come here and help our bridges and roads.

So we're hoping that this investment now through low interest rate environment also saves taxpayer dollars because it's going to benefit property taxpayers as well as folks who are paying through other fees and services.

- Well, you mentioned property tax payers.

Did anything, was there any discussion about that during the session?

- Well, there's always many proposals.

And in all honesty, I don't remember which ones passed or which ones didn't.

A lot of the conversation is around making sure that folks can kind of age in their homes.

So especially in a community that's growing like Fargo you know, we have special assessments that come on our properties and that becomes a hindrance for folks who might already have their home paid off, be on a fixed income.

So there were a lot of discussions about how do we make sure that we help folks 65 and older, or those that are disabled but I'll have to look at my notes to see what we actually accomplished.

- I just threw that in there, but let's go to education.

How did educational funding come out with K-12 and higher education?

- Yeah, so K-12 education, you know, first of all thanks to our teachers and our educators for the monumental work they've done over the last year and a half.

We didn't, we weren't able to fund increases as high as we would have liked but we were able to get a 1% and a 1% increase over the next two years for K-12 education.

And that's through our per pupil payments.

So the state pays a rate per kid regardless of which school district they go to.

And in what we've also had in there is an earmark that says at least 70% of that has to go towards staff or teacher salaries.

So it's a way to at least help support school districts as they go into their contract negotiations.

But on top of that, there's a lot of federal resources coming in to K-12 education.

People will, may have heard or will hear of SR Funding.

So school districts are getting a formula funded payment from the federal government that'll pass through the state but some school districts will get millions of dollars to help with meeting the needs, whether it's a delayed learning literacy, math literacy, and in some cases school districts will use it to expand or to do new building projects that they've not been able to finance through property taxes so far.

So K-12, you know, we wish we could have done more but it came up fairly strong.

As far as higher education, you know, the governor had proposed some significant cuts in our university system funding.

But in the end, the legislators, we have spent the last year and a half studying the funding formulas.

We went back to our idea and it's what we're calling a needs-based funding formula.

So it's again, based on students, how many students are graduating and completing courses, and then some of the physical plant needs at different have.

- Let's talk a moment that a transgender sports bill was in the news quite a bit.

It was vetoed by governor Burgum and I guess his veto was sustained.

In your, well, in your opinion, it says here it was just a bad bill but can you talk about that bill and what was discussed?

- When I talked earlier about distractions and bills that were negatively impacting our state, this would be one of those bills.

House Bill 1298 was introduced under this idea that there's this concept that they think that boys are saying that they're girls so that they can compete in track or gymnastics and outperform young women.

And that's just not the case.

And unfortunately, it targets transgender students, who we have transgender students in our school districts and throughout our state.

And this does nothing to help with their mental wellbeing, with their physical health and safety in schools.

And so it just was a conversation that I think was harmful to those kids but even more harmful as well to our communities.

We heard from the tourism industry and from our chambers of commerce, who said, you know, there are employers who are saying they won't come here.

There are industries, whether it's athletic events or other groups that are saying, you know there's other places we can go set up shop.

We're not going to do a tournament in North Dakota if you pass legislation like this.

So, you know, my message to my colleagues, and I've said this every day to them is that we need to be here focusing on the issues that are important to North Dakotans to move us forward.

These types of bills hold us back and actually limit our opportunities.

- Okay.

Well, another one, the Academic Integrity Bill, can you talk about that one a little bit?

- Yeah.

Senate Bill 2030, which was actually started out as a strong bill for the challenge grant program through the university system.

And what that is, is the state saying we're gonna put 11 and a half million dollars up.

Universities, you go raise a dollar or $2 to get one of those dollars.

It's a very successful program.

You know, we're just hearing recently about the success of NDSU and their capital campaign program UND has had capital campaign program success, Valley city States under a capital campaign.

So it's a way that the state is leveraging our resources to go get more money from supporters of the universities.

What happened was Senator Myrdal, out of Northern part of the state attached an amendment that said that universities would not be able to work with institutions that may refer people to abortion care.

And what's unfortunate about that is it was really targeting a professor at North Dakota State University and the research she's doing and helping educate kids on unhealthy conversations around sexual health and reproductive health and whatnot.

And so it became, again, another distraction that hurts our university system because we have faculty who say, you know, regardless of what someone feels about abortion or planned parenthood, it is a slippery slope for the state to get involved and saying what we can teach and what we can research or not.

And so it's certainly concerning.

And as the filming of this, we don't know what the governor is going to do as far as the veto or not.

But, you know, I've been supportive of asking him to at least veto out that language that restricts academic research.

- Well, okay.

And governor Burgum did veto the mask mandate bill but it was overwritten.

So what does that mean going forward?

- Yeah, so the final version of the bill that the Senate amended on the floor limits to just the governor and the state health officer.

So it did open up.

The original conversation also said that local government couldn't have a mask mandate.

The amendment on the Senate floor removed that.

So it did allow for local control and those types of conversations.

And so since the governor's veto wasn't sustained or it was overridden, it is now law that the governor or the state health officer cannot issue a statewide mask mandate going forward.

- Yeah.

And of course we don't have a whole lot of time but you know, the Federal COVID Aid how much is the state getting?

- Well, billions of dollars.

Our first traunch was about 1.25 billion.

That was what we talked about a lot last year.

There was several hundred million more that came in December and we're receiving approximately 2 billion more.

I believe it's more about 1.8 billion coming sometime in the next few months.

And that's the American rescue plan in which a lot of the money is going to K-12 education.

Our cities and counties are getting direct allocation.

And then the state itself, we will have approximately $1.1 billion that we will be able to allocate likely through a special session later this fall.

- Yeah.

And about a minute left here, but going forward what are your top priorities?

- Well, going forward, you know, we're in a strong fiscal position.

Families throughout North Dakota have gotten resources from the federal government.

We want to get people back to their jobs.

So I want to spend the next year and a half working with legislators and the executive branch for us to figure out how do we make sure this isn't just a shot in the arm that we're going to, you know, have a leg in productivity or opportunities for these families and for North Dakota?

How do we sustain it?

What kind of policies do we have to look at to make sure that North Dakota families are doing well and that are able to work themselves up and out of poverty and out of low income situations?

- Well, Josh, we thank you so much for joining us today.

- Thanks.

Always a privilege to be a part of Prairie public.

- Well, that's all we have on "Prairie Pulse" for this week.

And as always, thanks for watching.

(upbeat music) - Funded by the members of Prairie public.