(dramatic music) - This is North Dakota Legislative Review on Prairie Public.

I'm Dave Thompson.

Thanks for joining us.

Our guest this week is the Republican and the leader of the House, House majority leader Mike Lefor from Dickinson.

Representative Lefor, thanks for being here.

- It's always a pleasure, Dave.

I always enjoy talking with you.

- Well, we're getting toward crossover.

So what do you think are the big issues that still need to be settled from your point of view in the House?

- Well, I think the top one is the property tax.

We heard during the interim that there would be upwards of 60 bills on property tax.

And I think the finance and tax committee on our side has listened to well over a dozen bills of different, different flavors.

And I think the Senate has three or four.

I do think that come Monday, the House Finance and Tax Committee's likely to take it down to one or two of the best concepts that they think are out there.

And that includes one that has a property tax credit of $1,450 for primary tax, primary residences, I should say, and a 3% cap on political subdivisions.

I think that's probably got some traction.

Workforce is always a big issue.

I think that the Department of Commerce gave us a presentation to our House caucus yesterday, and they're talking about ways that they want to help to recruit more people to come into North Dakota.

And I think we started a pilot project last session.

I think it's really starting to pay off.

They're doing a great job in getting people to move into North Dakota.

I think North Dakota is, from what I have been told, is the number one in migration state in the country.

So we're doing some things right, but I would say property tax, workforce.

I also think that the cash management study that we had over the interim got a bill that creates a board to identify better place to invest our state's dollars, especially when it comes to the dollars that the agencies have in their budget and so forth.

And I think those are also, those are gonna be some pretty important issues going forward.

- Since you talked about property tax, first, let's get into that.

Property tax, everybody seems to agree that there has to be reform along with some rebate.

- [Mike] Correct.

- Would that be correct?

- That's correct.

And so what people need to realize too is that in historically, the legislature, in my opinion, obviously may be a little bit biased, has done a tremendous job in providing tax relief.

This biennium alone, we're providing $1.8 billion in property tax relief.

Now, the packages that I'm hearing are gonna be probably add another $500 million to that total.

So the but the relief isn't the entire equation.

You're right, it's the reform part of it.

So when we're talking, the political subdivisions in this particular biennium are getting $5.5 billion from the state.

And so tremendous investment by the state back into political subdivisions.

But I would tell you that the reform piece, the placing 3% cap on increases in budgets is probably going to pass.

There's strong support for it in the House.

There's strong support for it in the Senate that we limit the growth of government in the political subdivisions.

- But you mentioned 3%, at least there was some discussion that maybe we have could be tied to the consumer price index or something else like that?

- That's correct.

There are versions out there that do tie to the consumer price index.

I do think that the one that I hear the most though is getting more traction is the 3%.

We want some clarity in that area, and I think the 3% puts it there.

But it also gives the political subdivisions.

If you don't grow that fast, let's say you go 2%, you can bank that 1% for up to five years.

So we're trying to be as flexible as we possibly can.

As a former park board member, former city commissioner, I can certainly see how they're viewing things as well.

And they have the same issues the state does as far as workforce and a host of other issues that costs keep going up.

But we need to, the people have basically said, look, we want property tax reform.

- Yeah, and of course you mentioned, you know, housing is a big thing in terms of workforce and affordable housing especially.

This all ties together into it, doesn't it?

- Sure does.

Workforce, housing, getting people into the state to fill the jobs.

We've got good problems in North Dakota, and that is we've got a lot of people that want to invest in North Dakota.

Governor Bergen went to South Korea and is establishing South Korea as a strong trade partner.

We've got a lot of other countries that want to invest in our country, and a lot of big companies that wanna move to North Dakota, whether it's data centers, artificial intelligence, just a whole group of companies that wanna move to North Dakota, that I know that I've met with that are from all kinds of states across the country.

But the first question they're asked, we are asked, do you have the workforce to cover that?

But that we're not unique in that.

Every state has that type of situation.

So I'm pretty proud of the work of the Department of Commerce in putting together, they are working with a company that does help recruit people into the state.

And if you are looking to move to North Dakota, you're from a foreign country, call the Department of Commerce, they're gonna be able to work with you on what the guidelines are to become, become an American citizen or get a visa to work here temporarily.

- So how does the division of legal immigration work with us?

- Well, that's what it is.

The division of legal immigration was something that we started, as I said, as a pilot project last session.

And they're, they have the early components or the early results of the work that they've done and starting.

So we're, they're getting people to be able to move into North Dakota.

And they've done a tremendous job.

I think they've created, brought several thousand people to the state already.

- Yet somebody did introduce a bill to end the Office of Legal Immigration early on.

- I'm aware of that.

I think that'd be a tremendous mistake.

Sometimes we get confused between legal immigration and illegal immigration.

You know, everybody that lives in this country came from somewhere else.

Their ancestors came from a different country.

So there are a lot of people that want to make their lives better by moving to the United States, by moving to North Dakota, and they'll go through the regular process of immigration that everybody else does.

But doing it in a legal fashion, I think that's a great thing.

I would point to a company called Cardinal Glass in Fargo.

They have a lot of immigrants that work for them.

It's an outstanding company, and it's worked very well.

So I think we need to encourage the growth of this particular program to get people to move to North Dakota.

I think stopping that would be a huge mistake.

- Childcare still seems to be a barrier though, finding childcare, I should say.

- It is.

And there, but there are successful models in the state.

I talked about Wolf Pups in Watford City and other communities that have really been innovative in their approach to this issue.

And I would tell you that we started, Representative Emily O'Brien from Grand Forks, put forward a bill that allocated $65 million toward childcare.

We're just getting the results of that.

Are we putting the dollars in the right area to be effective?

The idea is to get more mothers or fathers, if they're stay at home dads, back into the workforce.

And we're seeing some success in some areas and in some not, but we're gonna have to increase our focus on the areas that do.

- Another one thing I wanna talk to you about is the bill that would provide free breakfast and lunch in the schools.

How do you feel about that?

- Well, right now it comes down to funding our priorities and the things that we're looking at when we talk about 2.3 billion toward property tax relief, funding the schools at a higher and higher rate.

I would tell you that at the end of the day, if there are some things that we can do to lessen the burden on some of these families, I would support that.

- Okay, so that's still a work in progress?

- Oh, it absolutely is.

I think there's a couple three bills that are out there in that regard.

But I need to see the specifics of the language, how far it goes, and that type of thing.

But I do think that there's room for us to help in that area.

- What about education savings accounts?

- I'm a strong supporter.

I believe that when we talk about school choice, that it needs to be driven by the parents.

Do the parents want their children in a public school, a private school, a public charter school?

And even if they're in a public school or private school and they have an opportunity for distance education or CTEs.

I mean, I'm a big fan of CTEs as well.

I hope that we do look to that educational vouchers because the parents should be able to choose where their parents go to school and what type of education they're getting.

That gives them more flexibility in that area.

- So how do you address opponents who say this is taking money away from public schools?

- It's not.

They need to, if they're gonna make that argument, they need to point to one instance where we've decreased our funding for public education.

It's not happened.

And in fact, we're looking at increase of 2% and 2%.

So I don't know why that's taking away.

And I think that with educational vouchers that we put a limit to how much can be spent.

Let's say it's 40 million, $50 million.

But to me, that's an argument that's not supported by the facts.

- What about bonding?

We did, we talked about it earlier in an interview with, between you and I.

- We did.

- And you had some issues with it.

Not dismissing it entirely, but you have, you wanna look at some things before we get there?

- Well, when we look at borrowing money, first of all, can we pay cash for it?

Can we provide a line of credit through the Bank of North Dakota?

Because on water issues, and I give representative Steve Swiontek from Fargo a lot of credit.

He's dug very deeply into this.

And we're looking at the possibility of maybe providing a line of credit instead of bonding, much as we don't think we're gonna spend all the dollars that are in the fund, but if they do have the opportunity to move these projects faster at a lower cost because they're a lot, we're doing a lot of these things in two year cycles.

And that doesn't always work with long-term projects.

So we're looking out 2, 3, 5 years ahead of time, be able to have them do their RFPs, start getting shovels in the ground at a lower cost.

For bonding, I would say, first of all, if we can pay cash for it, let's do that.

The reason that I would favor bonding is if I would be concerned about down the road, 2, 3, 5 years, that inflation would cost the projects a lot more, then we need to at least take a look at bonding.

But I'm on the surface, I would like to try and get away without doing that and using our cash and/or a line of credit.

- Plus you make the point that our unique bank of North Dakota, state owned bank really is a good tool.

- The Bank of North Dakota, I've got nothing but the highest amount of respect for the people that work there.

And the fantastic job they've done.

Their mission is to help economic development in North Dakota.

And they've done very, very well in that.

They do a great job in letting us know what the financial tools are to help us in our mission as a state, because we have several billion dollars worth of infrastructure needs, whether it's in townships, roads, bridges.

We have great quality infrastructure across the state of North Dakota, and they've been a main driver behind that.

- Is the, is it still in the budget that some money from the Bank of North Dakota profits is going to go back in the general fund?

- Right now, the budget is allocating $140 million from the Bank of North Dakota for that.

- I know the governor didn't like the idea.

You wanted it to be kept in the bank.

What do you say to that?

- I would say that, let's see what the situation is at the end of the session.

If we feel that we have enough dollars in the general fund, in strategic investment fund and things like that, and we don't need it, I think that would be fine.

- How about the Millan elevator, which also.

- Same thought process.

I mean, if we don't need it, then let's not use it.

- But so far things are looking pretty good at this point, but you're getting close to crossover and yeah, you're underwater.

If it was going to go past, past the day but.

- Well, well, is Chairman Vigas of our appropriations committee visit with our caucus and said right now there's $9 billion worth of asks and obviously that money isn't there and everybody's got a project across the state that's important to 'em.

And there are a lot of important things that we won't be able to fund.

But I will tell you this, that as we get to crossover, as we get to understanding where we're at, at the halfway point, that helps us develop a more aggressive strategy in the second half.

But I will tell you that the chairs of the Senate appropriation, House appropriation, have been doing a great job keeping tight rein on spending.

- I have to ask this because Prairie Public was in the news because of the vote in the House, that it was not, you know, was a substantial vote, but not an overwhelming vote, about our funding.

So I'm curious as to what's the, shall we say, strategy from here on out?

- Well, I think it's gonna be heard in the Senate.

And again, it's a second half of the session decision.

What are the dollars available?

What are the priorities?

And so that's where I think it'll certainly have more discussion in the second half.

- Was there anything specifically that prompted this bill?

- Not that I'm aware of, other than I think that there's some in our caucus or in the assembly that are concerned about funding of what they, in essence believe is a private entity, even though you're called Prairie Republic.

And that those dollars can be ascertained by sponsorships.

- Okay.

- [Mike] That's the argument that I heard.

- Also here some discussion about charitable gambling, which in all fairness, Prairie Public is in charitable gambling.

- So the end of the day, I, we know that charitable gaming is taking off.

And I don't know that that's always necessarily a good thing as far as gambling is concerned, but I do, from those proponents of cutting that funding, it, they're stating that you are able to get more revenue from gaming.

- So we can basically say on that, that wait for the second half, see what happens.

- [Mike] Oh, I think so, yes.

- There are some other things that I wanted to ask you about.

You were one of the sponsors of a bill concerning books in the libraries last session.

- Correct?

- [Mike] Correct.

- You, have you seen the new bill out there?

- No, I haven't.

I don't know the depth of what it does, but what my bill does, and they called my bill a book ban bill.

And it wasn't.

All you had to do was read the bill.

What my bill did was state that for, keep sexually explicit materials out of the children's section of the library.

That's all my bill did.

And so now if they move it to other parts of the library and so forth, that's in compliance with the law.

Mine didn't have any criminal provisions and there were no book bans.

But I've not read the bill bring, brought forward this session.

- It kind of surprised me that it was brought forward, but that's the way things going.

- Yeah, I guess I've, I think I was asked to co-sponsor the bill and I declined.

- Do you have any pet bills that you're kinda watching at this point?

- Pet bills, um, well, I sponsored the cash management study bill.

In that bill it creates a board of the OMB, the Bank of North Dakota, the state treasurer, some legislators, to identify the immediate cash needs of the state, the intermediate need, and the long term need so that we can change the way we're investing our state's cash to have a better return on investment.

I'm very excited about that because I think that board will be able to create an environment where we're gaining a lot more dollars for the state, but not from the taxpayer.

And I think it's gonna be a very big number when it's all said and done.

- You know, it's interesting because just about every emergency commission meeting and you sat on the emergency commission, former Governor Doug Bergham kept hammering that home for a couple of years at least.

- Oh, absolutely.

And I think it was, is a great thing.

And in my discussions with several people who are in the banking industry who serve in the legislature, the Department of OMB, the president of the Bank of North Dakota and the state treasurer, they're all very, very excited about this because right now, the state agencies aren't providing information because they're not required to in a timely basis as to what their cash needs are.

And putting those three tiers together of cash needs.

So if you don't need cash for two years, let's put something, put in something that can be invested and get it ready to return on our dollars.

- Along with cash, I do wanna ask a question about the emergency commission and the limits on emergency commission.

The governor also wanted those limits pulled off, which I believe were put on after the Covid situation when we saw an awful lot of money come to North Dakota from the federal government.

- We did.

- And are there bills now to take off those limits or change the limits?

- Actually, no.

I sponsored a bill that kept the limits the same.

Having served on the emergency commission now for about a year and a half, I feel that we're well within the area of need.

We, you know, there were fires and there are different things that are unexpected that bring forward cash needs, but I think we're just fine at the $70 million level.

- So 70 million was the federal component, right?

- Well, it's the state dollars and the federal grants.

- Oh, okay.

- And so forth.

Yes, so there's different components to it, but in the bill it spells that out specifically, but I think we're just fine at that level.

- How does the governor feel about it now?

- I haven't talked to Governor Armstrong about that particular item.

- Yeah, he hasn't, he's had a couple of emergency commission meetings.

Hasn't?

- [Mike] No.

- Oh he hasn't.

- No, I've not had any.

- Yeah, he's had industrial commission meetings.

- Correct.

- Hasn't talked about it.

But the emergency commission has not met so.

- No, not since Governor Armstrong's become governor.

- There are some other, of course, bills that are out there that I just wanted your opinion on.

One is this personhood bill that was heard.

I think it was a House bill that what about criminalizing abortion?

- Oh, I'm a strong, I couldn't disagree with that bill stronger.

I do not support that.

It's House Bill 1373.

I'll, I don't believe that we should criminalize this, you know, sometimes the, you know, there's some tough decisions that doctors have to make, that women have to make in their health care.

But I'm strongly pro-life, but I'm gonna be strongly against House Bill 1373.

- That goes along with Catholic Conference.

They made the same argument that why demonize the woman?

- Correct, I fully support that concept, that idea of that the North Dakota Catholic Conference brought forward.

As I said before, I'm strong pro-life, but I think this bill goes in the wrong direction.

- Okay, there is of course the tenure bill back.

It was originally as it was written, the way I understand it was for the two year schools.

- [Mike] Correct.

- To end tenure.

But I think there are amendments that may extend to the four year schools.

- I am aware of the two year.

I've not seen the amendment that would make it applicable across the board.

I'll be reading that probably.

I've got testimony at tomorrow, so I'll probably be reading that tonight.

But I'm a strong believer in tenure review.

I don't believe anybody should be granted a lifetime position.

We all have to perform well in our jobs, or we're not gonna be in those jobs.

And I also am a strong believer that the Presidency University should be able to change policies in that regard and have post tenure review at least every third year, that how are you measuring up?

Are you doing the job that you're paid to do?

In fact, I'm a strong believer and there should be no tenure at any university, but that I'm probably an outlier there.

But I do believe the university system is gonna go through a great deal of challenges in the coming years.

And if we're not flexible, I know of a young lady in my hometown that goes to the University of Utah and online, she'll never set foot in the state of Utah.

So if we aren't prepared for what's coming, and I think we need to find a place for our, where there is no tenure in the future, - Of course, that might also dovetail into Senator Myrdal's bill for a study of the entire university system coming up.

- Oh, I think that's long overdue.

I think that when I read the university policies, I did this a couple of summers ago that tells you how, what a boring person I am.

But I read those policies and I thought they're so antiquated and need to be updated.

So I'll fully support Senator Myrdal's approach.

- I know there was a comment about, you know, credit hours earned or number of students in seats in a campus.

But that whole thing seems to be changing as we have more online options, more options for older than average students, that type of thing.

- Absolutely, and what we have to realize is there's gonna be more and more competition for students.

If a student can attend a university in a different state and never set foot in that state, we've gotta do everything we can.

And that means by containing our costs.

And my son got a master's of business administration and never set foot in a classroom.

We have to be realistic about what the future of education looks like.

And I think higher education needs to be flexible and nimble.

- There have been bills about the speed limits on North Dakota Highways.

Might as well ask you about this one too, because you have to drive to Dickinson.

- That's right.

- Do you support 80 mile per hour speed limits?

- I caved, I voted for it.

You know, I think it's an individual decision.

It's a safety decision though.

I also recognize that.

I don't think if we hadn't passed the primary seatbelt law that I would've supported that.

But we have the primary seatbelt law.

It is law right now.

And so I will go 79 miles an hour and call it good.

- And normally, you could get by with that.

- [Mike] You could, you could.

- What about raising the speed limit fines in construction zones?

That's I think Senator Romo's bill.

- I think I'll be supportive of that because we really need to protect our, those people that are out there making our roads better, and we need to make sure they're safe.

- Do you think there's enough money for the highway bill to get things finished, two and four lane highway 85?

- Just this session, probably not.

- No, it's gonna take a while.

- It's gonna take several years.

But can we do a component of it or section of it?

Yes, I think there's that capability.

- Are you pleased with the progress so far?

- Of the session?

- [Dave] Of 85?

- Oh yes, I mean, when you look at, if you go back to years ago when I traveled to Williston, we had a business in Williston.

It was not safe at all.

But having some of those areas updated, especially around the Watford City area is a game changer in terms of safety, especially in quality of roads.

It's fantastic.

So we need to continue that, yes.

- So since we're on the construction a little bit, how much money's going, how much money's gonna be there to help finish some of these water projects?

For example, FM diversion, the Red River Valley Water Supply Project and some things that are happening with the Southwest Water Commission?

- Sure, well the Fargo diversion has gotten the money from the state that they're gonna get.

And right now, when you talk about the overall water budget and giving credit to Representative Swiontek, they're gonna use better cash management maybe with a line of credit at the end to move these projects forward and do as much as they can in, you know, these projects are several years in the making.

There'll be some three years, five years, but we have to make sure that we're not doing it in two year cycles.

That we are making sure we have a long-term plan.

That's why the line of credit.

So I think you're gonna see good movement on Red River, on Mouse River, Southwest Water in this session.

- Okay, we've got a little less than a minute left.

So I'm going to ask you to predict as I did the last time.

What day you do your adjourn sign and (indistinct)?

- Oh, I'm not very good at that.

Anytime I put $5 in the pool, I come in close to last but.

- I'll tell you myself I'm close to last.

- Okay, well, I would tell you probably April 30th, May 1st in that area.

- And that's close to 80.

- Yeah, 77, 78, yep.

- Annual sessions.

Do you need 'em now?

Yes or no?

- Yes.

- Okay.

You'd like to see a reconvened session perhaps?

- I would, but it's gonna take a study because how do you, what work are you gonna do?

Are there limits in the bills that can be introduced?

There's gonna be, have to be some things that change, but I think we've reached the point where we need annual sessions, yes.

- [Dave] Well, thank you for your time.

- Thank you for having me.

- Our guest is the House Majority leader, Senator Mike, or Representative Mike Lefor of Dickinson.

For Prairie Public, I'm Dave Thompson.

(dramatic music)