Dist. 24 Legislative Report
It has been a very busy session so far. I have presented two bills, HB 1415 to supply law enforcement with some funding to address the sex offender monitoring, and training personnel that could be dedicated to this population. We have one city that has over 90 offenders with 38 being high risk.
HB 1416 would provide more freedom of choice to select your health care providers if you belong to a plan that has a narrow network of providers. I will try to summarize some of the other bills we have been working on. You can go to the ndlegis. gov website to monitor bills you have an interest in as well as watch the video. Testimony that is written can also be submitted with the option of remotely testifying also.
Friday Jan 27th the House Ag Comm heard 2 bills. HB 1153 relates to splitting the corn checkoff funds 50/50 between the Corn Council and the Corn Growers. HB 1371 relates to allowing animal ag production on no more than 160 ac in aggregate using a corporate business structure. Greenhouse, aquaculture and hydroponic the same, provided it doesn’t exceed 40 ac. It also would provide the serving spouse wouldn’t have to divest in a family ag corp.
Thursday Feb 2 we heard HB 1278 which would have the ag commissioner study the issues leading to the decline in pollinators with a $25k grant. HB 1423 relates to not allowing counties or townships who are willfully out of compliance with the state model zoning ordinance to access funding from the insurance reserve fund for legal defense expenses. HB 1501 seeks to allow the ND Soybean Council to not be a state agency.
HB 1494: School meals this bill would fund breakfast and school lunch for all students in public schools.
HB 1151 is the hunting of large animals over bait is also in subcommittee chaired by Rep Dick Anderson. The bill will have several amendments added and in the future will be presented to the full committee.
HB 1512 relates to exclusion areas and factors to consider when evaluating applications and designation of electric energy conversion facility sites and public hearings; and relating to electric energy conversion facility exclusion areas.
HB 1260 relates to habitat development on private land and public access agreements and special antlerless elk depredation management licenses.
HB 1498: Relating to a sales and use tax exemption for certain sales made to senior citizen organizations and to provide an effective date. Do Pass 13-0-1
HB 1403: Relating to prohibiting governmental entities from interfering with parental rights.
These are just a few of the bills that we are working on, if you would like a nine page summary of more of the bills email me with the subject “Information” and I will gladly email it out to you.
If you would like to make a comment on a bill please email me at dhkiefert@ndlegis. gov Representative Dwight Kiefert