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

We're proud today to have the governor of the great state of North Dakota, Governor Kelly Armstrong.

Governor Armstrong, thanks for joining us today.

- Thanks for having me.

- You know, as we get started, we always do, we ask the folks, tell us a little bit about yourself and your background.

- Grew up in Dickinson.

My dad was in the oil and gas business.

I spent 10 years as a criminal defense attorney, ran for the legislature in 2012, served in Congress the last six years, and was blessed to be elected governor of the great state of North Dakota last November.

- Well, and with that said, you've just finished your first legislative session.

Maybe give us an overview of how you think it went from your perspective.

- Well, as somebody who's served in two different legislative bodies, I have tremendous amount of respect for what my friends and colleagues do down the hall of the capitol.

So North Dakota obviously is unique, 80 days every two years.

I think it's a great system.

Every member of the legislature gets to move back home and has to spend time with their constituents and their districts.

I think it's close, about as close to what our founding fathers thought a legislative bodies should be as that currently exists.

We got some wins.

I think there were some missed opportunities, kind of like every legislative session.

We're really proud of the property tax bill that passed.

We're proud of the Bell to Bell Cell Phone ban through K through 12.

We dealt with capacity to move natural gas out of the Tewaukon, both for the oil and gas industry and for, you know, industry value added ag along that line.

And we created a new cabinet position for a cabinet member of recovery and reentry.

Took some steps to solve the jail overcrowding crisis.

And, you know, we got a lot done and I thought it was a great session.

- Well, with that said, and you know, pretty much everybody knows, I think that property taxes were a major priority for you particular, I think it was one.

Can maybe you walk us through how that went and what North Dakotans will see and what benefit they'll have now with what passed?

- Yeah, so the first five minutes, my state of the state, we laid out a plan for 1550 property tax relief to primary residents, 3% cap on local property tax budgets, used Legacy Fund earning streams to pay this.

On the last day of the session, we got $1,600 in primary residential relief, 3% cap on local municipalities, property tax budgets, and we're gonna use Legacy Fund earnings to do it.

The process was long and winding to kind of, I said it's a little like running the 400 meter.

You go in a big circle and you end up right where you started, but the bill came through.

I think it's going to work.

What people are gonna see is $1,600 in lower property taxes on their primary residence.

So three outta four houses will qualify.

One out of three will pay no property tax in the next tedium.

And our hope and our plan and our advocacy is going to be to continue to have that Legacy Fund earning stream grow, so that we can continue to deliver more tax relief combined with the 3% cap on local budgets.

The relief will grow faster than the actual property tax bill, which is what I think North Dakota residents want.

The reason we chose primary residence was twofold.

One, we wanted to be able to deliver enough significant relief that people actually saw it.

And two, if you're using Legacy Fund earnings, we wanted to make sure it was going to North Dakota citizens.

And if you have a primary residence in North Dakota, you live in North Dakota.

- Well, with that said, you know, outside of the property tax relief, what is your view on how Legacy Fund money should be spent?

I mean, you're using it this way.

- Yeah, I mean, I think earnings for this, this is a direct benefit to North Dakota citizens.

It's important to recognize we are not touching the principle.

We are doing more things with Legacy Fund earnings to deal with road infrastructure.

I think that, I mean, people, you know, people really care.

It doesn't matter if it's a highway, state highway, interstate highway, county road, township road, you know, a lot of our economic activity in this state comes from places that aren't in Bismarck, Fargo, Grand Forks, whether it's ag or energy.

And so using those Legacy Fund earnings and to deliver back to North Dakota citizens, I think is one what the Legacy Fund was intended for.

And two, gives you an opportunity to get people to buy into that fund and protect it.

- Well, you vetoed a couple, two or three, yeah, some bills, the controversial Library Oversight Bill.

Can you talk about what this bill would've done and why you vetoed it?

- Yeah, I mean, first we'll start with the process.

This gave more process power to somebody complaining about a book than we have anywhere else in this entry code, more than, you know, a criminal victim, more than a civil plaintiff, more than a civil defendant, more than a fired state employee.

I actually said that in my letter.

It created a three-tiered system for anybody, by the way, that anybody doesn't have to be a North Dakota citizen.

Anybody can complain about any book and force three different procedural things to happen all the way up to a state's attorney in whatever county you live in, being forced to require a 60 day or within 60 days to write a state's attorney opinion.

So the framework for how to enforce this bill, quite frankly didn't make any sense.

And the other answer is, it's not just the, I mean we, I think most reasonable people can look at a book and be like, that book, probably not, absolutely not appropriate for six year olds.

But it's not only those books that can be brought into that fight and really important.

Obscenity is pretty easy to define.

The problem is, everybody defines it a little differently.

- Okay.

You also vetoed the Private School Voucher Bill.

What about what that was and why did you veto it?

- I think that's one of the missed opportunities this legislative session.

There were two different school choice bills.

One was in the Senate, one was in the house.

It's almost the exact opposite of the Bell to Bell Cell Phone ban in that the advocacy groups never really got on the same pages.

They never combined the best parts of both of those bills, which I think are needed to have a real viable plan.

This bill was only for private schools, would've only affected essentially the largest seven communities in North Dakota.

The other bill was more of an ESA account that affected all kids in the K through 12 education.

There were really good things in both of those bills, but I just really believed you needed them both, otherwise you have part of a bill.

We get one shot to do this right.

And we're gonna, I mean, it's a controversial topic.

It'll be a controversial topic whenever we move a policy through.

So I think, you know, just trying to get some, this is not one of those places where you just try and get something passed and worry about it the next time because we have to worry about referrals, we have to worry about all of that.

And school choice needs to be able to be for all schools in all districts in North Dakota.

- Okay.

Well let's move on to some of the overall budgets that you submitted and how they came out.

Let's start off with the human services part of it.

- There, so the human service budget has a little less than I think both the governor's proposal.

But one of the things I'm more excited about probably, it's kind of in the grind, is we've created a couple hybrid committees up at the legislature, which we worked with legislative leaders on.

One is on cash manage it for the state of North Dakota.

The other one is on efficiency.

You know, I came into the legislature in 2013.

Prior to that, we didn't really have enough money to adequately fund social human services K through 12, higher ed.

I mean, until, I mean, the Legacy Fund, but the flip side of that is since in the last 15 years, every one of these agencies budgets has grown exponentially.

And it's time to take a look and start looking at 'em and figuring out what works in those agencies that's under resourced, that we should divert more resources to.

What programs have we stood up in those agencies that have never worked?

Because I don't wanna give those programs less money.

I wanna give those programs no money.

And then I wanna figure out how we take the money that we're spending on a good, I mean, a lot of these things were good ideas, right?

We're underfunded traditionally, trying to do some different things.

But I would rather take the money towards programs that work.

And the other answer is, North Dakota's been blessed for 20 years, but our government has grown a lot over the last 20 years, and it's needed to, but we can't sustain that growth.

So it's time to take back, get back to our core functions, and go forward.

Human service budget's gonna be fine.

We're gonna be able to deliver the services.

We wanna figure out how we can do some of those things significantly more efficiently and have more of your taxpayer dollar going to the service provided.

And also make sure we're providing the service as quickly and responsibly as we can.

- You mentioned higher education there, just briefly.

How did higher education fare in this session?

- Higher ed did fine.

I think the longer conversation with higher ed, I mean, the budget came out.

It's one of the last budgets to work through.

Obviously we have our two research institutions in the Red River Valley, and we have schools all across the state.

It's our number one workforce recruitment tool.

I mean, and we have to continue to do that.

I think the longer term conversation about higher ed is more strategic and important because demographically, no matter how great our institutions are, 20 years from now, they're gonna have less students in there than they do now.

And we do a per pupil tuition model and we chase those tuition numbers, but we really have to start having a focus on how we're delivering the education in North Dakota for the jobs that are open in North Dakota and how we get to keep our high school sophomores, our high school juniors, to go to your North Dakota school and stay in North Dakota when they're done.

- Well, another subject that was somewhat controversial, I guess, the state hospital.

How did it fair at the end?

- It ended up, we recommended 300 million in our budget.

I think the original price was 345 million.

The Senate moved it down to like 275 or 285, and it came out with 200 million and a 100 million line of credit, which is sufficient to do.

That process really happened mostly last legislative session.

We need a new state hospital.

We, I mean, I think everybody understands it's not a want, it's a need.

The question is, is how do you build it?

How do you make sure you have the capacity?

How do you responsibly steward taxpayer money?

And one of the things that we try to really point out to everybody is the difference between 300 million and 285 million isn't huge unless the 285 million requires you to wait two years to build it, because you have to redesign the whole thing.

And then when you go out and get bids two years from now, I mean the cost savings have to be so significant at this point that you can do it and you don't lose the opportunity cost by waiting two years to build.

Because when you, with these type of projects, every month you wait to build is somewhere between 500 and 1 million dollars a month that you can just see an added cost.

So we're excited about state hospital.

I think it'll be, I mean it's a long time coming and it will give us an opportunity to treat those people in our state that actually, I mean, some of the most vulnerable people in our state that actually need the services that North Dakota provides.

- Okay.

Well, we could spend a lot of time talking about the state hospital, but let's move on to other subjects here.

What about the status of the Theodore Roosevelt Library?

- Theodore Roosevelt Library is set to open on July 4th, 2026.

We're excited about it.

There was talk later in the session about helping them figure out an operations endowment.

I'm supportive of that.

I think this is gonna be one of the greatest projects we have that didn't make it through.

Obviously the library has been, some of the way in which we fund the library at the legislature has always kind of been a flash point.

But as somebody who grew up in southwest North Dakota, we're gonna have a real opportunity to showcase our state to the world and we're really excited about the project.

- Yeah.

You know, there were some, let's say cultural war type bills and amendments that came up that never really passed, like the 10 Commandments in School bill.

What's your view on bills like this when they come up and maybe get voted on, but yet they stand little chance of ever getting passed?

- You know, one of the unique things about the North Dakota legislature is committee chairs and leadership have the least amount of power of any legislative body anywhere in the country.

When I was the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, the only real power I had with that gavel is when I scheduled hearings.

Somebody who spent six years in DC and couldn't get bills to the floor because some staff on some not on a ways and means or financial service committee didn't like my idea.

I think North Dakota's system is significantly better.

They had over 1000 bills this time.

That's probably too many.

But every bill gets a committee vote and every bill gets at least one floor vote.

And that means, I mean, every bill that, a rank and file member of the North Dakota legislature has more autonomy and more authority over their constituency than any other legislative body I've ever been a part of.

And I don't think people really recognize how unique it is.

Does that cause silly bills to get more attention than they probably should?

Absolutely.

Guess what?

That happens everywhere.

We spend a lot of time in DC in six years talking about silly issues that we're never gonna pass.

I like how the North Dakota legislature works, and I think it's, I mean, you don't have to like every particular bill, you don't have to like that bill is taking up more time in an 80 day session than you think it probably should.

Again, everybody has their opinions on those things.

The problem is everybody's opinions are different on which ones are important and which ones aren't.

But our legislators have more power and more autonomy and to with that, more responsibility, I think, than any other legislative body in the country.

- You mentioned the cell bill, Bell to Bell Cell Phone bill and it's ban.

What does that look like and when will it go into effect?

- It'll go into effect next school year.

That was a really unique and interesting, I think good example of how a legislative process works.

We had supported Representative Jonas's bill and representative and Senator Ackman's Bill.

One was in the Senate, one was in the house.

Neither one of them were a Bell to Bell ban.

Both of them got watered down from what they were originally introduced to as the course of the SE session went.

This was always gonna be an issue for our administration.

But when you get sworn in December 15th and the legislature meets January 6th, you have some issues you want to take on right away and some issues you just know are gonna have to wait till the interim.

This was always gonna be an interim issue.

And then, you know, we started talking to people.

This is one of those weird things where the data tells you the same thing you see anecdotally, right?

The data says our K through 12 kids have more anxiety, more mental health issues, bully.

Being a 12-year-old always was tough, but at least you had to be in the same room before for somebody to bully you.

Now you can be bullied without ever leaving your house.

Teachers want it.

I said this and I stole this line from somebody and parents wanted teachers to do it.

Teachers wanted principals to do it.

Principals wanted school boards to do it.

School boards wanted the legislature to do it.

So we decided to do it and we brought it up late.

We brought both bill sponsors in.

We got huge buy-in from both chambers.

Nobody cared about the credit.

Everybody just recognized that we shouldn't wait two years to do this.

And so we moved it forward.

So it'll go into effect in August.

We weren't, we didn't micromanage how schools deal with it.

You know, some schools have kids drive to CTE and we wanna promote that.

I mean, if you're using your cell phone to take pictures of taking apart carburetor that you're putting back together, have at it.

I mean it's, I mean, but in the main buildings from bell to bell, we're gonna take, we're gonna make those phone free zones and we're gonna want kids looking, doing what we're doing, having a conversation, making eye contact.

It's just, again, it's one of those things you know what the data says, but you also see it through a weird, weird set of circumstances.

When the bill was being reconsidered on the Senate floor, we were down at Fort Yates and they have a bell to bell ban, and we were in the lunchroom and you know, you have those circle tables and there's eight kids sitting around and they're laughing and they're talking and they're probably doing too much.

And then you go to a school that doesn't have it and you walk into a lunchroom, it's pretty quiet in that lunchroom and nobody's really communicating with each other.

- Okay.

How involved were you during the session?

I mean, are you actually lobbying for things or are you sitting back kinda watching and just waiting for bills to come out?

- I watch very little floor session.

I would get what you would call FOMO, fear of missing out.

As somebody who served in the Senate, served in the legislative process, we made a conscious effort to weigh in on things that, you know, when the governor's office weighs in on absolutely everything, then where does it move the needle?

So we spent a lot of time with a lot of different people on property tax.

I think we absolutely drove the speed in which we got the cell phone bill through.

But that was only because we had legislators on both sides of the chamber that were all in to help.

And then, you know, when we're dealing with budgets and we're dealing with programs, I mean state hospitals and stuff like that, I have a really talented staff that really wanna work hard.

They don't care about credit, they don't, I mean, they don't wanna step on legislators, but we stayed in touch with them for a lot on different issues.

But I didn't weigh in publicly on very many issues.

We had an open door policy.

Any legislator from either chamber, either party can come down, see us anytime they want.

They utilized it.

We wanna make sure that they know that we're part of this process and we wanna be a part of this process.

So use the veto pen four times and thought those, I mean obviously none of those were overridden, so we were pretty comfortable with that at that point.

- Of course, you just came from DC last year and sitting in your first year as governor.

What about the tariffs that now are being thrown around and in place?

How are they gonna impact North Dakota and especially North Dakota farmers?

- I mean, we will wait and see.

So I ran for congress in 2018 when China put retaliatory tariffs on soybeans under the first Trump administration.

And, you know, shortly thereafter we ended up having better trade with China, less corrupt practices.

You know, tariffs are one barrier to entry, but you know, we always talk about tariffs here, but the vat tax in the EU is really detrimental to North Dakota.

But I don't think you can sugarcoat the fact that North Dakota's a commodity based economy.

We sell oil, natural gas, and ag products, and we don't want, I mean, you can talk to any North Dakota farmer that exists.

We don't want more programs.

We want access to markets.

So we've been through this before.

As we work through this, if we come out with better trade deals, then it was a good thing.

If we end up in 36, 40, I mean 36 month struggle where we're seeing real depressed prices because we're losing access to markets, then they're gonna have, I mean our friends in Washington are gonna have to figure out how we continue to have the safest, most secure food supply in the history of the world.

- Energy's a big thing in North Dakota, obviously.

So how did the energy regulation bills fare this session?

And can you update us on that?

- So we talked about our state of the state making sure that we had capacity for moving natural gas out of the Balkan.

I think for as valuable as natural gas is to the state budget, it's almost, it can cause us problems.

And the reason being is you wanna be able to get that 10% off of a barrel of oil that goes into our tax coffers with significantly more than a 10% off an MCF of gas.

So we've always known, we have to have takeaway out of the Balkan.

The industrial commission budget has 100 million dollars of line of credit, which is in order for us to buy capacity.

The problem with these pipeline projects is they take a long time to build, they're expensive to build, so you have to have end use contracts in order to get it.

And you know, I would like to see this pipeline all the way to Fargo, but that last mile in Cass County can't get laid until that first mile gets laid in Williams or Don or McKinsey County.

And so we like the way that looked.

It also has the added benefit to, you know, every one of these communities from the western part of the state to the eastern part of the state, big or small, two things you need, whether it's for value added ag or attracting industry, whether it's a data center or any of those things, you need power and you need water, and we can provide both.

We can provide that power and get that product out of the bucket.

- Yeah.

So with all that said, and of course North Dakota's economy, how is it positioned coming out of the session going forward?

- I think it's positioned really well.

I think we're excited about trying to get back into some of the base budgeting in the agencies and figure out how we can, you know, flatten out the growth in government and make sure that we don't get overly bureaucratic.

But, you know, weird things.

Like I've never thought the cold and the wind was one of our best selling attributes, except if you're trying to build a data center.

The cold and the wind are best, are really good attributes.

We have the right business climate, we have the right fiber layout, and we have the right energy climate and the actual right climate, climate.

And so we have real opportunities I think to you know, lead the way in some of this emerging technology that also utilizes our two best resources.

Agristo is gonna come into Grand Forks, which is a potato processing plant, great for economic development in that area.

Really great for our Red River Valley farmers.

Still staying true to what we do, which is value added agriculture.

And I think we're really positioned in a great spot.

- Well can you talk a bit maybe about your staff and all the work they do during the session?

Because obviously you do a lot of work, but what about your staff?

- So I always say my greatest political skill is luck.

And that is very much true.

My chief of staff was my chief in DC, prior to that she was my executive director at the state party.

So she's like legitimate, like how do you find your, how do you pick up chief of staff?

Find your best political friend in the world, make them your chief of staff.

We got retired General Al Dohrmann of the North Dakota National Guard to come in and be our COO.

And then I've got a staffer, Aaron Weber, who's our policy director who came from Senator Hogan's office.

He's a Wishek kid.

Connor Swanson, who worked for me in DC and worked for the legislature out here was a Bowman kid.

JC Schafer, who's the only one on our staff that never worked a North Dakota legislative session, she's from Carson and we stole her from Governor Pillen down in Nebraska.

And then we have Maria Neset who stayed over with from Governor Bergham, really, really understands education funding.

Has really, and we made her, she came in and she is Michelle Strand's chief of staff and also does a lot of that stuff.

So Mike Noaski, air comms guy, Mike Kennedy, they stayed from Governor Bergham staff and our entire front office is just, I mean, you can't have all those meetings if people aren't running around doing the schedules.

So we just couldn't be more proud of how they handle the legislative session.

- Yeah.

Do you think the legislature is fine meeting every two years?

Or do you ever foresee a change in that meeting every year?

- Earlier in the interview I told you that each and every legislator has more autonomy and authority than any legislative body.

I don't know how you do 100 bills in a annual session.

We're constitutionally mandated that you can only do 80 days every two years.

I think the problem with annual sessions is there's no way to do it without capping bills or not allowing every bill a floor vote.

And I think that if you decide you have to have annual sessions, I don't know how you could possibly, and this isn't as the governor, this is somebody who served there, right?

Like I've been in that process and I just, I would caution my legislative colleagues to not lose what makes North Dakota special.

And if you're going to have annual sessions, I don't know how you would do it without capping bills or figuring out a different way to time manage bills.

And there's no way you can possibly do that without galvanizing more power and committee leadership or legislative leadership.

- Yeah.

If there's one or two things you could change magically, is there anything?

- One, I think they should just listen to me whenever I tell 'em to do something.

I absolutely do not believe that.

It's a, magically change?

You know, everything about democracy is messy, but I don't believe that there's any other better way to do it.

I think North Dakota for as crazy it is and as many headlines as it gets, you know, they forget about all the good work going on on a DOT budget or on a water commission budget.

I think having more interaction in the interim, which we magically can change turns out, between the legislative committees and the executive branch committees that they're working on, we need each other to create efficiencies.

Like I could do efficiencies in all my agencies without the legislature.

Like we could do that.

They're my agencies.

I mean, they're part of the cabinet.

But the way to do it well is to get buy-in from the legislators because next session we're gonna have to come with some thoughts and some concerns about that.

So I think it's a great process.

I think that it could always work better.

I think anytime you change the process, you are taking control away from one group and giving it to another group.

And I think you have to really think about how that works.

- Governor, we only have about 30 seconds left.

What's the best thing about being governor of North Dakota?

- The meetings start when I say they start.

Everybody in the capitol's getting used to meetings starting on time and it's fantastic.

The best parts are people.

Easter egg rolls in the front lawn, getting to go watch "Fantasia" at or "Anastasia", not "Fantasia" at BSC, crashing fourth grade classes as they're doing a tour of the capitol, grabbing a bunch of people, having 'em come down and take pictures in the governor's office.

That's the best part.

You can see North Dakotans every single day and promote the heck out of this place.

- Governor, if people want more information, where can they go?

- You know, any North Dakota website, we deal with.

Armstrong ND, that's where we run everything on Facebook and we have official, unofficial.

If you can't find us, then we will talk to our comms people and make sure it's out there more.

- Thank you so much for taking the time.

- Thanks for having us.

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

And as always, thanks for watching.

(upbeat instrumental music) - [Narrator] Funded by the members of "Prairie Public".