News
Legislative assembly begins in Bismarck
Scott Wagar
01/06/2015
With the 64th legislative session beginning today, the state legislators will have a number of bills to take care of, but according to Sixth District Senator, David O’Connell of Lansford, and Bottineau County’s senior politician, there are three bills that will be getting a lot attention in this year’s assembly.
The first bill comes from Senate Majority Leader Rich Wardner of Dickinson, who has proposed an $800 million surge bill to oil communities to assist these individuals in infrastructure needs.
The bill was introduced by Kelly Armstrong of Dickinson and sponsored by all western legislators.
“The majority of the money would go to the Bakken, but fringe areas like Bottineau County would receive $15 million,” O’Connell said. “No strings would be attached in how to use it, it would be entirely up to the county commissioners.”
O’Connell added that money would also be allocated to not only the county, but cities and townships, too, in the county.
However, like the majority of any bill, there is going to be a fight for this money because politicians in the eastern part of the state want the money for their infrastructure needs.
“The catch is that we haven’t had any response back from the House Majority Leader Al Carlson, he hasn’t committed yet,” O’Connell said. “They want more money to go to Fargo and Grand Forks for flood protection. So, this could be a real fight.
“We wanted to have this bill out early, no later than the middle of February so they (government entities) can let out bids and so forth,” O’Connell said.
The state already has the $800 million in place, so there is no concern over oil and gas revenues.
The second bill has to do with corporate and personal income tax. Al Carlson of Fargo will introduce a bill that O’Connell stated calls to “phase out” these taxes so that North Dakota can see business growth and an increase in residents for the state.
“South Dakota doesn’t have any personal income or corporate taxes and they are drawing business without having it. So that is drawing a lot of attention in North Dakota,” O’Connell said. “However, a lot of legislatures are worried about this bill because they believe it might be too soon to do this.”
The bill calls for reducing these taxes down to zero in the next four years, but not eliminating the taxes altogether.
O’Connell added that Rep. Scott Louser from Minot has a similar bill which calls to cut personal tax to zero, but also not to eliminate the tax. O’Connell stated that this bill should receive attention as it is being debated in the upper and lower houses.
Another bill which O’Connell feels will gain a great deal of attention is the long standing debate over property taxes.
“The question which is going to be asked is how much is going to be put on property tax,” O’Connell said. “The fight is going to be over the last six years where we (the state) have poured in a lot of money for tax relief which includes about $396 million this last time; but, what has happened is as soon as we lower the tax the local sides have raised it.”
As an example in his own district, O’Connell stated that in Bottineau County during the last term, the county, which has a lot of infrastructure needs, received a 24 percent decrease from the state in property tax, but the county commissioners then raised property taxes to 19.6 percent.
“So, in the end the taxpayers roughly received a 5 percent decrease in property tax relief instead of the 24 percent,” O’Connell said. “The local people are asking for tax relief and they are not getting it.”
Whatever the outcome of the bills being introduced starting this week, one thing is for certain, the debate for or against them will be interesting.