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

I'm Dave Thompson, thanks for joining us.

Our guest is Senator Sean Cleary of Bismarck.

He's a Republican.

He's been on the show before.

Senator, thank you for being here.

- Thanks for having me back, Dave.

- Well, lemme just ask about your impression of the first part of the session.

- I think it's been going well.

We're off to a good start.

It's been productive.

As we get further into session, the conversations get harder, but I think we're off on a good foot and I think after folks are back, rested from our crossover bake, we'll be ready to get back at it.

- Now, I should mention, you're in the Senate, so you didn't have the big property tax bills.

They're coming.

- [Sean] Yes.

- So what's your thought about property taxes?

- Well, it seems like we have a lot of work left to do on that.

The house sent us three different bills.

They also sent us a bill related to income tax regarding the marriage penalty that we have in North Dakota.

And so I think there is consensus building on what needs to be done for property tax relief, primarily for primary residences.

But with the house sending over a couple bills, we'll have to wade through those and decide what we wanna send back in the second half.

- Do you think that there's an appetite to try to combine the best of the three maybe into one?

- I think so, but I do think that there's consensus that that primary chunk of it needs to be for homeowners.

That's what the conversation has been since we began session.

It's what the governor's expressed interest in.

So regardless if we incorporate some of those other parts of it, I would like to see most of it focused on homeowners in the state.

- One of the things that's very controversial, of course, about that bill is the cap for local governments, the 3% cap.

There are ways to get around it, but what are you hearing from constituents about a cap?

- I personally haven't heard a ton from my constituents directly on a cap.

I would say personally, I'm supportive of doing some form of a cap because in our state we're lucky that the state has a lot of financial resources and we push a lot of those resources out to cities and counties.

But we need to make sure that we're doing that in a financial responsible way.

So if we're gonna continue to take over portions of property tax, I think it's more than appropriate that we have some say in how that money's being spent.

- Yeah, as the state becomes more and more involved in, you know, these tax breaks for property taxpayers and paying more for schools and roads and things like that.

Yeah, so I can see that that is an argument that's been made.

I know that are some local governments are saying, yeah, but if you're a Cass County you can levy sales taxes, but if you're a Slope County you can't.

So there might be some toss and turn there.

- And I think that's why there's been discussion on allowing them to have votes.

And again, this is a cap on the percentage that they collect from property taxes.

It's not on the budget as a whole.

So I think that's also an important thing to remember when we're talking about how much they can and can't raise their budgets by.

- I wanna change gears for a little bit.

You are of course representing Bismarck, which is very much a government town, and the governor proposed a 3% and 3% for raises for state employees.

State employees are hoping they can go a little higher than that depending on the upcoming revenue forecast.

What have you been hearing on that?

- I think that's gonna be a discussion that we have throughout the second half of the legislative session.

Three and three I would say is about the floor.

It won't go any lower than that.

And we've had discussions about equity increases for certain positions within state government.

For example, correctional officers.

It's really hard to fill those spots.

It's a difficult job.

And so we've had conversations about, you know, is there more that we can do to help them recruit and retain employees there.

- So that maybe targeted increases is a possibility, then.

- I think that's probably what it'll end up looking more like is that three and three is a base and then if there's certain positions where we're having difficulty filling 'em or retaining people, taking a look at what more we can do to be a competitive employer there.

- And are you pleased with what's happened so far, K-12 funding?

- Well, we didn't have K-12 funding over in the Senate side that started over on the house.

I think they landed on a two and a 2 and 2% increase.

You know, obviously school choice and educational savings accounts have been a big part of the conversation too.

I think we're in a position where we can do both, we can have a strong funding for our public schools and I personally support educational savings accounts in some capacity for students too.

So when we deal with those issues in the second half, I would like to see both of those things move forward.

You know, strong support for K-12 education in our state and then support for a vehicle that helps folks with other expenses related to their education.

- There's at least one bill still pending on educational savings accounts, correct?

There might be more than one.

- We passed a bill out of the Senate in the first half that provides $500 towards educational savings accounts for all students in North Dakota, public, homeschool, non-public, if they into the program.

And then if a student chooses to go to a non-public school and they're below a certain income threshold, it's sort of a tier that helps them pay for some of that cost.

- Well, and a related issue is the school meal discussion.

What's still on the table right now is in the K-12 DPI budget.

They've got it to raise it to, I think, is it 210% of poverty level.

Those kids would be eligible for free meals.

But the idea of universal free meals for breakfast and lunch doesn't seem to have a lot of traction yet.

- Yeah, there was definitely a setback with that in the house with the two bills that we're proposing to cover that for more families failing.

I was a co-sponsor of one of those bills and I would support increasing funding for that in the second half.

To me it's about healthy meals for kids, but it's also essentially a tax cut for working families.

Folks are paying those expenses when their kids are going to school.

And so to me, by helping pay a portion of those costs for those meals, we're helping to put more money back in the pockets of working families.

So that's why I'm supportive of that policy.

- And of course the argument is that hungry kids don't learn as well.

- Exactly, no, a happy kid is one who's not hungry.

- So, is this one of the cases where it might come back given what the revenue forecast might be?

- Yeah, we are gonna get an updated revenue forecast in the middle of March.

And right now we have about $377 million.

We're upside down, we call it.

We've appropriated more than we have.

So we have some work to do to trim back some of the budgets that we've passed in the first half.

But we're lucky that our state's economy seems to be humming along pretty well.

And so I'm optimistic that we'll get a strong revenue forecast and we can use those revenues to provide tax relief and to invest in priorities like education.

- And just so everybody knows this is not unusual for the legislature to be upside down at this part of the session.

- Yeah, if anything, we might be less upside down than we typically are right now.

So I think we're in pretty good shape to find consensus in the second half.

- So another thing that might be a big discussion in the upcoming half of the session, building projects, building prisons, also building a state hospital that seems to be going through right now.

What's your feeling about some of those building projects?

- Well, the state hospital, I saw the house passed out a bill that appropriates $330 million for a new state hospital.

I'm supportive of building a state hospital in some capacity.

I haven't seen all the details that they've proposed.

I know in broad strokes, bed size and square footage and that sort of thing.

But in the second half I'd really like to dive into the details as to how did we arrive at this number?

Is that the right number?

And then as far as other capital projects, in the first half we proposed beginning of a design for a new facility, a prison facility at the Missouri River Correctional Center, just outside Bismarck.

And it's just a reality that we have overcrowding in our prison system and it's expensive to incarcerate folks and keep them in prison.

And so while it didn't really...

It wasn't the most exciting thing to bring this bill to plan building this new large prison that will probably cost close to half a billion dollars.

That's where we're at right now with our criminal justice system.

And until things change, we're gonna have overcrowding and we need to build to help address that.

So that's in the works, but that'll be in an upcoming biennium where we have to make a more significant capital expenditure.

- But I guess the million dollar question is how do you change that?

How can that change, do you provide treatment programs for people who are, you know, addicted?

Is that one way to do it?

- I think the state's made a lot of progress over the last 10 years in the services that we're providing to folks who are in our criminal justice system.

And you're exactly right, Dave, if we provide these services like drug and alcohol treatment, like education, like workforce training, those folks are more likely when they get out of prison to successfully reenter society.

And there'll always be a component of incarceration.

That's what our criminal justice system is built on.

But rehabilitation needs to go hand in hand with that.

And I think that's why we renamed our Department of Corrections, the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

- So there was a bill of course, to do truth in sentencing and that passed in the Senate, how did you vote on it?

- I opposed that bill for a couple reasons.

I don't disagree that it would be helpful for folks to have a more clear idea on what the sentences are gonna be when they commit a crime or when a prosecutor's prosecuting a crime.

But what we've seen in other states that have adopted this truth in sentencing is we know for sure that sentences will get longer and we know that it'll be more expensive.

That's just the fact of the bill when you incarcerate more people.

But the other states that have done it have seen ballooning budgets, but their communities don't get safer.

Folks aren't more likely to stay outta the criminal justice system.

So I'm skeptical that that's the solution that's gonna move us forward in our criminal justice system.

- But maybe something that needs more study, needs more input, needs more scientific material.

- I would like to see, Dave, more consensus from law enforcement, from judges from our Department of Corrections on it.

Because right now it's been our Attorney General's bill and there has been law enforcement that have been supportive of it.

But our Department of Corrections is not supportive of it.

Our judges have been mainly silent on it.

And to me it's not an approach that's come from a place of consensus.

And that's why I couldn't support it in the first half of the legislative session.

- Now, mandatory sentencing is not a part of this, is it?

- There are mandatory minimums in this bill mainly related to crimes involving police, fleeing police, assaulting police.

And frankly, I am supportive of those.

I voted for those last legislative session.

I think it's important to support law enforcement if there's folks who are targeting them.

And so there was a narrow scope of mandatory minimums for folks who targeted law enforcement.

But unfortunately it was wrapped up in this conversation that really revamps how the Department of Corrections functions.

And again, that's just not something I could support.

- And speaking of corrections, there's some money, I think, to help county jails because for the moment, I mean the state is housing prisoners and county jails because there's no room.

- Correct, we appropriated almost $18 million that will go out to counties to help reimburse the costs associated with housing inmates in their facilities.

And that's, to me, a short term solution.

We need to build out our capacity and then do things while still maintaining public safety in our communities, takes a look at what are we doing to make sure that these are manageable populations and when folks come to prison that they're not gonna get out and re-offend and come right back.

- There was an issue that you were kind of shepherding in the last session and that was the idea of keeping the PERS program intact.

That's the state pension plan.

Now that's gone away.

Now we've got to call it a 401k or whatever.

You've got that plan.

I'm wondering if you've heard from state agencies about whether or not lack of that pension plan has been a barrier to get people to work?

- I haven't heard that.

And you know, I think younger folks, a pension might not be the most appealing thing.

You know, they're thinking about a lot of different things.

Salary, health insurance, quality of life at a job.

So I haven't heard directly from any state agencies about the lack of pension for new employees.

I would say we're gonna continue to pay the cost of it.

That was something that was incredibly frustrating for me last session is I knew it was gonna cost billions of dollars to close the pension when we had an alternative to sustainably fund it.

Unfortunately that's not the direction we went, but now we do have a responsibility to pay that debt down for folks who are currently on the plan.

- And there is a plan to do that.

- There's at least $165 million this session to pay towards our pension liability.

- But that's one session that probably won't take care of the liability at this point.

- It's gonna take about 15 sessions of doing that, almost 30 years.

And that's the discussion we had last session.

And frankly, I've kind of moved forward on it.

It wasn't the outcome I wanted, but now we have to do what we can to make sure it's sustainable and continue to recruit state employees with different financial packages, so.

- You know, it's interesting that when you saw Governor Brigham's budget, he had a number of FTEs proposed.

I'm talking about employees for the minute, and it seems like Kelly Armstrong has reduced that number and from what I'm seeing has maybe reduced even a little bit further from that.

Is that what you're seeing as well?

- Yeah, for nearly every state agency, I think there's been a reduction proposed by Governor Armstrong relative to Governor Brigham's budget.

And I think that's the right direction to go.

I think part of it, as a legislature, we need to be mindful of the amount of work that we're delegating out to state agencies because if we tell 'em to do something, they need folks to do that work.

And so when we're trying to keep costs down and keep taxes low, it cuts both ways.

We need to make sure we're not giving them all these extra projects to do because then we need to avoid, you know, giving them all these extra people to do it.

Those things go hand in hand.

- So on that note, I haven't heard a lot of complaints from state agencies either, so.

- You know, I have not either in the first half.

I think part of it is there's a lot of vacancies within state government and everyone, it's difficult hiring right now.

And so before you come back and ask for more FTEs, I think you need to be able to fill the spots that you have.

And again, if there's a priority that's been identified as a state agency, I personally don't have any issue with adding employees to help 'em get that work done.

But we just need to make sure we're being smart with what we're asking 'em to do before we hire more people to do it.

- And workforce broadly, not just state workers, but broadly, it remains an issue that the legislature has to deal with.

- Workforce does remain a large challenge for our state and our state's economy.

I would say one thing that we made a lot of progress on last legislative session is childcare.

It's been scaled back a little bit this session, but I think within the Department of Health and Human Services, we're gonna see some targeted investments by the time we're done.

Because if you're a family with two people working, you need childcare.

It's just the reality of how our economy works.

It's something that my wife and I deal with.

It's something that a lot of families deal with in the Bismarck community.

So I think we have more work to do on that too.

- And affordable housing is also an issue.

- Affordable housing too, especially in some of our rural communities, these communities that have seen kind of stagnant growth.

It's hard to find a place, even if you wanna stay in a town like Edgeley or Harvey or Hazen, you know, those communities.

We've taken a look at what can we do to help support housing and make it so that folks who wanna stay in their communities have that option.

- I know with the oncoming no data centers, there's gonna be a need for housing in an Ellendale.

- [Sean] Yep.

- Maybe up in the Watford City area as well.

- Yep, some of these communities, they see a big capital project, like a data center or an energy project and hand-in-hand with that is available housing for workers and if we want to have those projects, housing is infrastructure as much as roads or a water project is.

- And in terms of childcare, everybody talked about the Watford City example during the last session.

And have you seen communities adopt more of that Watford City thing where childcare is treated more like a utility?

- I haven't seen as much of that.

Watford City I think is often held up as sort of a gold standard.

I think we have a lot of providers here in Bismarck who do it well too, to provide more options for parents.

But I think from my perspective, what we need to do a better job of is supporting organizations that are taking an innovative approach and bringing in other dollars from their communities or from private businesses.

It can't be the state government that comes in and saves the day single-handedly on this.

We don't have the funding to do that.

And so to see community leaders step up and patch together different sources of revenue, I think that goes a long ways to helping with our childcare shortage.

- And of course recruiting workers.

There was an effort to perhaps defund what was the Office of Legal Immigration.

Now there's been some agreement on changing the name to, I think it's to the global workforce or Global Talent Workforce.

- Office of Global Talent, I think is the name they landed on.

- So what do you think about that?

- Well, I think that office has to continue to grow and show its value.

I think a lot of private employers are certainly looking to, you know, how can they utilize workers who are international or even, you know, to move here from a different part of the country.

And I think as a state, we have to show that we're welcoming to folks who want to come live here and work here, raise a family here.

And that goes beyond just having an office to recruit people here.

It means having community amenities.

It means having a low cost of living, safe communities.

Those are all things that folks look at before they decide to move across the country.

Not just, hey, did I get an email from this state agency or not?

- But you are hearing that there's still jobs open and they're still looking for people.

- Yeah, we have a very low unemployment rate.

We have a really high labor force participation rate.

Folks, if you move here, there's jobs here.

So I think we need to do as good a job as we can of promoting that.

- Remind me, what committees are you on?

- I moved over to the appropriations committee this session, last session, I served on the Human Services committee.

This session, I'm on the Human Resources Division of the Appropriations Committee.

So that's to go back to our conversation about the Department of Corrections.

That was our big lift in the first half of the session.

Second half of the session will be the Department of Health and Human Services.

- And you looked at the budget on Health and Human services?

- [Sean] I have, yep.

- Yeah, it's just a big budget just because there are so many things in there.

- It's about a third of the state's budget and they get a lot of federal funding too.

And there's uncertainty with that federal funding right now.

That's just the reality of it.

With a new administration, there's talks about reductions in Medicaid spending or pushing more of that back to the state.

So as I think as we look through it in the second section, I think we need to take a hard look at what are we prioritizing, what sort of certainty do we have with federal funding and what can we do to make sure our dollars are going as far as they can to serve folks.

Because especially in the Department of Health and Human Services, those are really vulnerable people.

It's folks with disabilities, it's elderly people, it's people who are below the poverty line.

And so it's an important, it's a lot of important programs and I think we need to make sure we're getting our dollars as far as we can to help those folks who rely on those.

- How much concern is there about federal cuts?

- I have to say in the Capitol, it hasn't been a topic of conversation every day, but it's certainly something that's top of mind to me.

I don't know if I would say it's a concern as much as we have to face the reality of it, we do get a lot of federal funding for a lot of programs, not just in human services, but transportation, education.

And so if we were going to go a different policy direction at the federal level and more of that money would either be block granted out to the state or not come at all.

I think as North Dakotans, we need to think how are we spending our state tax dollars in a way that's prudent in a way that make sure that these essential services are available for folks who rely on them.

One just specific example we had in the first half is the federal government provides grants for victims of crime.

Things like the Abused Adult Resource Centers, Children's Advocacy Centers.

And it's been on a steady decline the last couple years.

And so we appropriated $7 million to replace some of that federal funding that's been lapsing over the last couple years.

- And that's the good thing is the state has some money.

We're doing fairly well right now, so.

- We're very blessed and that's one of the ways we can both cut taxes and invest in priorities at the same time, I don't think I can think of a another state out there that is in as good a financial position as us when we have resources primarily from oil and gas revenue, but our economy's diversifying and we're fortunate to be in a strong financial position.

- So I've got this off the wall question for you.

There's in the house there was a bill that passed to go to annual sessions.

How do you feel about going to annual sessions?

Is that something the time has come or you're skeptical about it or what?

- I'm not opposed to the idea, but I think our system functions pretty well as is.

We budget on a biennial basis and we're busy.

Every bill gets a vote in the session, we had over a thousand bills introduced and that's, I think a good part of our process.

I haven't seen a really compelling need to meet every year, but that could change in the future too.

- Yeah, you make a good point because the North Dakota legislature is almost unique in that fact every bill gets a vote unless it's withdrawn and a committee chair cannot kill a bill.

You cannot stick a bill in a drawer in a desk and say, oh, I forgot about this.

- And I like that about our process.

- Very open process.

- Yeah, for sure.

- Are there any particular bills that you are really watching this session or pet bills that you have?

- Well, I brought legislation to revamp how our campaign finance system works.

We have pretty lax financial reporting in our state.

And that's something I hear from constituents.

I ran a competitive campaign myself.

I helped out on a federal campaign this last year and you hear a lot of feedback from folks about the role of money in politics and, to me, providing more transparency to that is a good thing.

And so I brought a bill that makes some small changes but does things like, requires us to report what we're spending our money on, how much money we have in our campaign accounts and provides some consistency between the different sorts of political action committees that we have in the state.

So that's something I spent a lot of time on in the interim.

It's something that passed the Senate 47 to zero.

And so that's something that I think will continue to make progress on in the second half of the session.

- And you saw some of the bills that might change the way endorsements are made, that one bill would've gotten rid of the primaries and gone with conventions.

One would've gotten rid of conventions and gone to primaries or go get signatures on petitions to get on the ballot.

So where do you come down on that?

- Well, I am supportive of having primary elections.

I was a vocal opponent to a bill that would've gotten rid of our primary elections.

I think we have primaries for a reason.

It gives voters a voice throughout the state on who they want to represent them.

And conventions can be chaotic.

There's no clear rules for the public.

And so I think they play a role in the process, but they shouldn't determine the ultimate winner of a election.

That's why we have primary elections.

- So keep it pretty much as is.

It seems to work.

- I think the status quo is what we're gonna end up with after the session and it's been working fine for our state.

- So we've got about a half a minute left, so I have to ask you a question I've asked everybody.

When does Sine die?

- April 28th.

- April 28th, okay.

And are you doing anything fun during this interim?

- My wife and I are gonna go to Arizona to get some sunshine and then we're actually gonna honeymoon after Sine die in May.

We're married for four years.

We haven't got a chance to honeymoon yet, so.

We're going over to Belgium.

- Well, I'd like to thank you, Sean, for being on the show.

- Hey, thanks for having me.

- Our guest, Sean Cleary, he's a Republican senator from Bismarck.

For Prairie Public, I'm Dave Thompson.

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