The 69th Legislative Assembly adjourned May 3 around 4:00AM that Saturday Morning on the 74th day of the session. I thought it would be a good idea to provide some information on how we ended up and provide some insight in future articles on some of the details of legislation passed this session.
The budget that we passed for 2025-27 for all funding sources is $20.26 billion. However, only 31% or $6.26 billion is from the state General Fund. Federal Funds and State Special Funds make up $14 billion of the total. This is a 2.6% increase in the General Fund and 3.2% increase in total spending from what was passed last session. I will get into greater detail in future articles.
Lawmakers sent a total of 601 bills to the governor’s desk for consideration. Governor Armstrong signed 597 bills, including six bills that contained a total of seven line-item partial vetoes. Four bills were vetoed in their entirety which included SB2160- affecting state employee health insurance, SB 2307-Library content bill, HB 1540 School Choice Voucher bill, and SB 2261 tax credit for prison made produces. Governor Armstrong also used his line-item veto power on 7 other bills. Sec 12 of the AG Office budget which prohibits judges waiving fees to participants of the 24/7 sobriety program, Section 8 of the Park and Rec budget, providing legislator to be involved with naming or re-naming state parks, Section 6 of Legislative Branch budget that would made all of the 15th floor of the capital available to Legislative Council, it is now the home of Department of Career and Tech. Section 5 of the Ethics Commission budget would have provided additional statutory immunity for legislators. Section 9 of the Department of Commerce budget created a $350,000 carve out to build showers and rest area at the State Fair Facilities. Governor Armstrong also line item vetoed a section of Industrial Commissioners Budget. He took exception to a $150,000 for a Native American Homeless Liaison but by removing that section he unintentionally vetoed $25 million for homeless projects and $10 million to address homelessness issues. This is one item that may need to be addressed in a
special session. Budget bills take effect July 1 and policy bills take effect Aug. 1.
North Dakota lawmakers passed three ballot measures during the legislative session that will go to voters in 2026. The first one, HR 3003, would require 60% of voters to pas a constitutional ballot that would be brought forward by a citizen-initiated petitions and constitutional changes advanced by the Legislature. The second measure, SR 4007, would require the Secretary of State’s Office to deny any citizen-initiated constitutional ballot petition that is comprised of more the one subject. The third measure, SR 4008, would amend the North Dakota term limits. Currently anyone may serve no more than 8 years in each legislative chamber for a total of 16 years. This measure would leave the 16-year limit in place but would allow the legislator to choose if they wanted to server all 16 years in one chamber of spend some of that time in the other chamber.
This is a very brief explanation of how we ended. I will be providing more articles of greater details of this past session starting with the property tax relief bill that was passed.
Senator Don Schaible dgschaible@ndlegis.gov