(spirited music) - And this is "North Dakota Legislative Review" on Prairie Public.

I'm Dave Thompson.

Thanks for joining us.

Our guest is State Representative Jonathan Warrey.

He's from Casselton.

He's the chairman of the Industry Business and Labor Committee in the House.

So, Representative, thanks for being here.

- Thanks, Dave.

- I wanted to start with a bill that you've introduced, and it's about the Office of Entrepreneurship.

Have I got that correct?

- [Jonathan] You do.

Yes, you do.

- So tell me about that bill.

- Sure, sure.

So, House Bill 1191 is a bill to establish an Office of Entrepreneurship in the state.

I got the concept of it.

I've been a volunteer board member for an organization called Emerging Prairie, which is in Fargo.

And one of the missions of Emerging Prairie is to really help develop the startup community, business startup community.

And they've been doing that for about a decade and providing resources to entrepreneurs that are starting their business.

It could be really lonely starting a business and a lot of sacrifices.

So this creates a sense of community.

I saw that model.

Then I worked with some people from a national organization, non-partisan organization called Right to Start.

It's part of the Kauffman Foundation.

And they have some model legislation that is now established, in six other states, an Office of Entrepreneurship.

So that was kind of the foundation for this and to bring more of that to the central and western part of the state.

- Now, entrepreneurs do have ideas and I suppose they sometimes feel, "Do I need to do... Can I do this?

Can I do this?"

This might help.

- Yes.

Entrepreneurs are problem solvers, and this is really to help them establish viable businesses.

There's so many things you have to do.

There's a lot of red tape.

There's a lot of reports you have to have from a financial standpoint, financing, regulations, HR.

Just connecting you to some of those resources that can help you is really the impetus of this bill.

We do have organizations in the state that already provide some of these services, but we need a coordinating effort, I think, to make it stronger.

- Maybe a more of a one-stop shop perhaps.

- [Jonathan] Correct, yeah.

- What's the reaction you've been getting on your bill?

- Yeah, I've actually had quite a few entrepreneurs come out, whether that be, they've now got established businesses.

I've had several say, "I really could have used this.

This really would've been helpful."

A few people say is, we can establish more government to help businesses get off the ground.

And I say this, if we can provide something from an enablement standpoint that doesn't cost a lot of money, but can actually steward some of the things that are already happening, why wouldn't we invest in that?

- Absolutely.

And you make a good point that, we talk a lot about the big industries in North Dakota, oil and gas, agriculture, but really, it's the new and emerging things that our entrepreneurs are bringing to the table that will help the economy grow.

- That's right.

Entrepreneurs, small businesses, really are still our number one job creators that are out there in terms of net new organic job creation.

And just, like I said, entrepreneurs are problem solvers.

People that start a business, there's asphalt company that started in Bismarck three years ago, and the owner and his wife, they'll have 20 employees by the end of this year.

He came and testified in support of this bill saying, "If it wouldn't have been for some of the efforts we received from Emerging Prairie, we probably wouldn't be here."

- Now, of course, then you also point out something.

As people are looking for jobs and people are looking for employees, there still is kind of a job shortage in North Dakota.

- Yeah, worker shortage.

Right, right.

- Worker shortage.

- So part of the work we do on the industry business and labor committee is, what's our workforce retention and attraction strategy look like from the state?

And that might include, yesterday we approved a bill that creates a compact with other states so that licensing reciprocity happens more quickly as people wanna move to the state.

So that's just an example of some of the things we do from a workforce retention standpoint.

- So you're making some progress in that.

And I know this has been discussed in number of sessions, trying to get that reciprocity in place.

- Yeah, yeah.

Some predecessors... To me, being in the legislature, started this about four sessions ago, to be a more worker friendly state, especially if someone's moving in for a military and maybe they've got a spouse that's employed in some field or just, "Hey, come to North Dakota and we're gonna recognize your certifications or your licenses quickly and not create a lot of barriers to you moving here."

And we are hoping that's just part of the overall strategy for workforce attraction.

- So what do you think are the barriers that North Dakota is facing to attract workforce?

- You know, our weather, even though it's been a nice winter overall.

I think sometimes, you know, if you are... Our cities are growing nicely, you know, our population centers.

Sometimes our rural communities maybe don't have some of the resources that you're gonna see, but I will give, you know, the heart of our...

The heart of North Dakota still is in many of the small towns.

And you'll see our public schools still do very well.

Our regional healthcare centers do very well.

And I think as a legislative body, we've actually done a good job investing in that.

But I think we have to continue to do that to make it a place where people wanna move.

We got a great quality of life here.

Don't have the best weather, but we've got many other things that entice families to move here and stay here.

- Well, like they say, "Cold nose, warm heart."

- That's true, yeah.

- But you're still hearing some of the issues like affordable housing and childcare, are still big issues out there.

- They continue to be.

You know, last session, childcare was a real significant issue.

We passed about a $66 million package to create different streams of incentives for people or pay the workers more, create construction funding for some daycare centers.

So we're starting to see... We're starting to see progress on that.

It'll remain a forever challenge, I think, because it's one of those things that's not, what can families afford to pay and what can we pay the workforce in that.

But the childcare side, we continue to see some improvements there.

I think we gotta stay focused on that.

On the housing side, today we heard a bill in our political subdivisions committee for a $50 million investment across different segments of population centers.

This was introduced by Governor Kelly Armstrong, who was sponsored by Senator Bekkedahl out of the Williston area.

A really meaningful investment in more housing, more housing starts.

Everything from senior housing to multi-family units to single family homes.

So we're still evaluating that bill in our committee, but I think that will probably get a favorable outcome from us.

- And the goal is to, you know, incentivize housing.

- And it's the true public-private partnership.

The state will put something in if the local communities and the private developers will put something in.

And that's a good model that's worked on college campuses to build some of our buildings, these challenge grants that have really helped with some of our university buildings as well.

- Have you seen need to do other things with infrastructure?

For example, streets, roads, that type of thing?

- Yes.

Most of those bills haven't come through our committees, but, yeah, that's always a, how much is the infrastructure gonna be?

That's always an important component of a new development.

Anything related to housing, you've gotta have the infrastructure in there.

Nobody likes special assessments, but they're a part of the economics when we're talking housing.

- Of course, now you've brought up special assessments.

That's one of the other big issues that has been permeating the session, is property tax, reform, and reduction.

So, what are you hearing from your constituents?

- Yeah, so I give a tip of the hat to the people working in finance and tax, both in the House and in the Senate, Dave.

They reviewed 60 bills.

Approximately 60 bills.

They got it down to three.

We passed three of them out of the house.

Just to give... Each of them have a little bit different strategy and some different mechanics.

And so three of those are alive right now, and I think that will continue to be debated.

I am confident we're gonna come out with a combination of relief and reform, because that's what the voters really talked to us about.

And when all of us that did door knocking through this last election cycle, obviously, it was the number one topic we heard.

- Do you hear any concern from community leaders saying the caps, they are problematic?

- Yes, we are hearing some of that.

And it's different...

If you've got a shrinking population, that's a different issue, or a rapidly growing population.

However, I do think that we've gotta try some caps because we've tried other things.

And I think that future legislative sessions will respond to some of these challenges that we have from these caps.

And I am confident we can work through those.

- Absolutely.

Of course, the one big bill that everybody seems to be might be the vehicle has caps in them, increases the, you know, primary residents' tax credit, and that's putting the two legs of the stool on it.

- Yeah, that's probably... You know, primary residence was the number one thing we heard.

And there's some other bills that maybe spread some of the relief around.

And the debate right now is, "Should we give a little bit of relief to everybody or more relief to this particular segment?"

And that's what's being debated.

But in all scenarios, caps are component to that.

- And of course there was the speaker's bill, which really I think focused in on more money for K-12 and taking that off the property tax goals.

- Yeah, I think you might be speaking to Representative Louser's bill.

- That Louser's bill, yeah.

- Yep.

So that's putting more of the responsibility on the state for K-12 funding, among other things.

Than Speaker Weisz's bill is a different valuation for agricultural, commercial, and residential property, yes.

- So there are solutions, but it's not a simple fix perhaps.

- Correct.

It's one of those, you know, problem from far away looks easy to solve until you get up close to it.

And that's where I commend the committees, many of the leadership in both chambers.

We know... We hear it loud and clear from our constituents, this is the number one issue.

Do your best to get it right.

The good news is, too, Governor Armstrong kicked off as, you know, one of the first things he talked about in his address was leading with this.

And then using the legacy fund streams, at least we've got a continuation now.

We've got a funding source for this, at least in the 1176 version.

- Which seems to be a sustainable source.

- It seems to be sustainable.

- But I'll go back that, when the election night, in his first interview with me, he said...

I said, "Okay, what are the big issues?"

"Number one is property tax.

Number two is property tax.

Number three is property tax."

So, he had been hearing it, he understood, everybody understands that property taxes really, you know, top of mind for a lot of people.

- Yeah, it's so personal to so many people.

And we have done some things with homestead tax credits, but it obviously has not been enough, given some of the valuation increases we've seen.

Just the price of housing, and because that's the mechanism by which we tax, that really has gone up substantially.

So that's why it's so personal to people.

And it's a very important issue.

I am very impressed with the focus that the both chambers of the legislature are putting on it.

- In your committee for IBNL, did you take a look at legislation regarding these data centers that are popping up all over the place?

- Yeah, we saw one data center bill, but it was mostly around zoning, who had the capability for zoning.

Not... That was going through other committees for those.

- Right, and the other committees were dealing with power needs and- - Yes.

- You know, how to strengthen the grid to, you know, take care of these powers.

- And what's interesting about that, some areas have excess power, like, where it was going down in Dickie County, I believe, they've got excess power.

That doesn't mean you're gonna have that in all the areas that data centers are interested in moving in.

So you have to be consulting with our power companies.

We've gotta be consulting with some of our other regulatory bodies to make sure that these are going into the right spot so that they're not having an issue where maybe rates are gonna go up a lot for the citizens around there.

That is not the intention of this.

- Okay, I wanna go back to your other committee.

You did deal with some election related issues.

What were the toughest issues that you felt you had to deal with?

- We had a lot more election related issues last session.

This particular time we had campaign finance disclosures.

We had some of that.

And if that could be made easier, I'm all for having as much sunshine on that as possible.

But if that process could be made easier, I think that's good.

A little bit on AI saying...

I actually sponsored this bill.

And my friend, the late Josh Christie, sponsored a bill on this too around on these political advertisements, making sure if they impersonate somebody using AI, that we have to disclose that.

So those are a couple of examples that we've seen from an election standpoint.

- There, of course, I don't know if it went through your committee, but there was a discussion about changing the primary process too.

And I know based on some of the district conventions that happened in the Republican Party and some things like that.

Plus, what happened during the state convention last year?

- Yes.

So I think you're referencing where it would require everyone to get signatures to get on the ballot, yeah, versus getting endorsed by the local districts.

And that bill did fail.

We also had... Yeah, that one failed.

And what was the other one?

- There was another one that basically said if you receive the endorsement from your party district convention, an opponent could still run, but had to run as an independent.

- Ah, yes, yes.

And so those bills failed I think because people say, "Overall, the process is not broken, let's not make this drastic of a change."

- We have an open primary system.

- [Jonathan] We do.

- And so far, it's worked.

- [Jonathan] It has.

- I know that there is at least one representative in the house that wants to find a way that Republicans vote in Republican primaries, Democrats vote in Democrat primaries, which is problematic 'cause we don't have voter registration.

- [Jonathan] Correct, correct.

- And nobody wants to go there from what I understand.

- No, that's right.

We did have one additional bill, this was sponsored by Representative Wagner, to require more of these important issues to go on either primary or general election ballot.

So either the June or November instead of having maybe some of these levy vote or some of these other votes that just get such low turnout.

So that passed the house, and I think it's moving through the Senate right now.

- Yeah, it is.

What about the idea of prohibiting Fargo from doing this approval voting thing?

- Yeah, so that was something that came before us last session.

And the state does feel...

I shouldn't say the state.

The majority of the house chamber, for sure, I can speak to that, and I was on the majority side, feel that state voting laws should be uniform.

And so yet, I know some of our representatives from our largest city say, "What about our local control?"

And so that was a debate we had, and I think the majority of the house felt like we should have uniform election law.

- So, that was the argument that carried the day at that point.

You don't have any problem...

I shouldn't say it this way.

Fargo argued that this was a citizen initiative and it's home rule charters, and it gets a little muddy at that point.

- It does.

And some of the people that sponsored it to outlaw, I would say, rank choice or approval voting, said they heard from many constituents who were confused by the process.

So I can see both sides of that issue.

That is probably a contentious issue.

Is it local control or should it be standard uniform, you know, election laws on that?

And in that case, you know, having uniform state laws won the day on that so far.

- I'd like to... You brought about, you know, schools, you know, brought about schools earlier, talking about workforce.

There is that one amendment, constitutional amendment that's going through right now, which would take money from the Common Schools Trust Fund, take about $300 million out of it per year to repair or build schools?

Do you have any thoughts on that?

- I do.

And I think that would be premature of us to take that much out, even though there's this great need across many districts.

And in some of our smaller communities, we've got some dilapidated buildings that need help, but I don't think that's the right mechanism.

I think we should allow that to grow so it can continue to fund per pupil payments.

I am aware of an idea being cooked up, being developed right now for using some more of the legacy fund to do some school funding.

And it's not fully baked yet, but I'm aware of a party that's bringing that idea forward.

And I just don't think taking the Common Schools Trust Fund for these construction needs, that is not what's its intent was.

It was for per pupil funding.

Let's continue to allow that to grow so we can properly fund the operating expenses of our schools.

- And a representative of the landlord when he went to house education said something very interesting.

He said, eventually, that Common Schools Trust Fund will take care of all the per pupil payments.

You're wont have to go through general fund appropriations.

- They've got the actuarial data that shows that, Dave, and I forget how many years it's gonna take to do that.

But let's let that continue to grow and then let's handle these construction needs through other means.

That's my opinion.

- Okay.

So would this be...

The thing that's being cooked up now, would that be another stream from the profits of the legacy fund?

- I am not fully aware of the mechanics.

I just talked to a person that's very versed in this.

And I was excited at first glance.

I'm in the "tell me more" stage and I just haven't seen it all yet.

But just some of these innovative ideas, we know we have deferred maintenance in many of our districts.

Then we've got these others that are growing rapidly.

So it's a different set of challenges in each of those areas.

- Your neighbor, West Fargo, is an example of that.

- You got it.

You got it.

And their levy did a portion of their levy pass to deal with some of their rapid growth.

And I have a segment of our district, and District 22 is Wests Fargo.

- Let me ask you this question because I've wanted to ask this question for a while.

There's a 60% requirement for a bond issue, for voting for a bond issue.

Do you think that's fair?

- If I was...

If I had a lot of agricultural land, I would say make it 80%.

If I rented in an apartment somewhere, I'd say make it as low as possible.

So, I mean, I think our compromise historically was 60% does really make the community say, "Yes, this is an expense we want to bond for."

And maybe, I'm not gonna say protect, but pays respect to the agricultural producers that often have to pay a disproportionate amount of that.

There has been ideas to say, "Should we make this 55%?

Should we make it 50?"

I would at least be open to those discussions, but I do understand why it is 60%.

- And speaking of bonding, it seems like there's not been a lot of discussion about bonding for big projects, you know, for university school buildings or, you know, state issue bonds or for the water projects.

Anything going on on that?

- I'm not aware of any on that.

I... We've been very averse to bonding to not in debt ourselves in future legislatures to that, but I'm not aware.

I'm not an appropriator, so haven't been part of those discussions, - But, of course, there's two things that are going on in that.

Number one, the bond, it's not a good time to bond from what I'm hearing from some financial people.

And also, the state's still pretty good.

We have a pretty good cash flow and we have the Bank of North Dakota, which is, you can get lines of credit there.

- We do.

Our revolving infrastructure loan fund.

I mean there's just several, several ways the banks of North Dakota does help us.

I will say, this maybe isn't exactly your question, but I'm on the Legacy Fund Advisory Committee with several other legislators, and we are doing the... We're actually gonna take a portion of the legacy fund and put it into real assets.

So that could be potentially utilized for power transmission or some of these things you're speaking of just to provide some of the liquidity for those things, you know, for the Bank of North Dakota to provide some funding for that too or financing for that.

- Would that be out of the principal or just- - That is my understanding, yes.

So it's, you know, as that is 11 plus building billion now, it's taking a portion of that and putting it into real assets.

We're putting some into investments in actual companies.

We're doing some with the revolving infrastructure.

This would be for real assets.

- And with this, the Sovereign Wealth Fund is growing, and is growing exponentially, and we're doing very well.

So, maybe that's a valid use for that.

- Potentially.

And I think the timing's right.

I think with the new governor in office, I think I would love Governor Armstrong to lead us through a conversation to go, is it a sovereign wealth fund or is it a revenue replacement fund?

- [Dave] Now that's an interesting- - Or on what continuum is that, you know?

And so we are using it for some great purposes.

You could make the case it could do even more.

- And we have a couple minutes left.

Casselton's going to benefit from the River Valley Water Supply Project, correct?

- Yeah.

Everybody in the Red River Valley will ultimately, yes.

And ironically enough, Governor Bill Guy back in the '60s, I know he was behind it and he was from the Casselton area.

You know, 60 years later, here we are.

It's finally coming to fruition.

But, yes, it's taken the water from the Missouri River before there's demand for it downstream, and it's taking that over to the eastern part of the state.

- I remember some of those discussions.

I've been around for a while.

- Do you really?

Yeah, you've been around a while, Dave.

- I knew Governor Guy.

And then after he left the governorship, he started working more with the Garrison Diversion project and he came up with some ideas.

- He did great work, foundational work.

And then several of the people that are in the legislature now have done some really good work on this to get it to this point.

- Casselton was the home of how many governors?

- Five.

- Five.

Name them.

- Five governors.

- Name them.

- Ooh, boy.

Burke, Langer, Guy, Sinner, Del Rimple.

- Would that be one day Warrey?

- No, no.

I'm happy serving in the legislature.

- We got a couple seconds left.

I'd like to ask you a couple questions.

The 80 mile per hour speed limit, yes or no?

- I was yes.

I was yes.

- [Dave] Okay.

And higher fines during construction zones if you're caught in the construction zone?

- Yes.

- More points on driver's license for higher speeds, if you call it.

- [Jonathan] Yes.

- So those are fairly, fairly- - Yeah, if we're gonna get one, we gotta have the other two.

- And you're looking for safety, but you do think it's probably safe to drive 80 miles per hour?

- Yeah, I drove in South Dakota quite a bit for business and liked that.

And you always, I mean, enforcement starts almost immediately over 80 miles an hour, so I was a yes on that.

- Okay.

Here's the question that I'm asking everybody.

When do you adjourn sine die?

Do you have a date?

- April 28th.

- April 28th.

- That's my guess.

- You'll have some days then in case you have to come back in special session.

- For sure, yep.

They're very strategic about when we gavel in and...

But that's just my guess.

I mean, people are working hard right now, trying to leave us some space for conference committees, and we are...

I think we're at going at a good pace.

- Well, Representative, thank you very much for sitting down and talking to us.

- Thank you, Dave.

- Our guest today, Representative Jon Warrey.

Jonathan Warrey, I suppose.

He's from Casselton.

He's on two important committees.

For Prairie Public, I'm Dave Thompson.

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