(upbeat music) - And welcome to "North Dakota Legislative Review" on Prairie Public.

I'm Dave Thompson.

Thanks for joining us.

Our guest today is the Speaker of the House, Representative Robin Weisz.

He is from Hurdsfield, North Dakota, correct?

- Correct, and thank you for having me on today.

- Yes, well, it's nice to have you on because we wanted to get a little perspective from somebody in the Speaker's chair.

And for those who don't know, tell me and tell our audience what the Speaker of the House does.

- Well the Speaker has quite a few duties.

Of course, the one that everybody sees is that of course I, as Speaker, I run the floor session.

So I'm in charge of making sure the bills get heard and those that want to speak are acknowledged.

I mean, I do control the floor.

I enforce rules of decorum, making sure they don't say anything improper on the floor and that they use the proper protocol.

And so running the mechanics of the floor is the job of the Speaker.

So that's probably the part that everybody sees, that I'm up there pounding the gavel after every bill and those kind of things.

But you know, behind the scenes, one speaker's job is to, when all the legislators introduce their bills, it's the Speaker's job to assign those bills to appropriate committees.

So as speaker and I work with the majority leader, and we assign the bills to ensure they're going to a proper committee.

If it's an agricultural-related bill, it would go to Ag Committee.

Human service issue, it would go to Human Services.

And so that's the role of the Speaker.

And then the Speaker's job to make sure that the rules are being followed, if concerning how bills can be heard, how they can be, say, divided or debated in separate ways.

As Speaker, I have to ensure that's being done properly and then the right motions are made.

And ensure that everybody's treated fairly.

You know, I'll make rulings on whether somebody can speak on a point of personal privilege for another.

In other words, saying a personal statement on the floor, because those are limited.

As Speaker, I decide who can be acknowledged on the floor.

For example, whatever the Dairy Princess or Miss North Dakota or the schools.

You know, one of the things we do like, and I think it's very important, whenever there's kids from school, as Speaker, I always recognize them, have them stand up and be recognized and welcome to the House of Representatives, because I think it's a good experience for the kids from elementary on up through high school to see the process and be recognized, and they seem to appreciate that.

- Now, you said really, you're in charge of decorum.

- Correct.

- There hasn't been very many instances where somebody's been out of line this time, have there?

- No, I mean, I think this session was, for the most part, pretty smooth.

But there's certainly, I think, have been people that have pushed the line to a point.

And I realize I may be old school.

I mean, I just think we need to always be civil, show respect, shouldn't ever say anything inflammatory.

And I have also made a rule that nobody should get up on the floor and ever mention a conversation that wasn't on the public record.

In other words, if you and I had a conversation about maybe one of the bills, I shouldn't be able to get up on the floor and say, "Dave Thompson told me he was fine with this," because that might have been the legislator's opinion, but that might not have been exactly what you said.

And so to me, those type of things should never be allowed on the floor.

We shouldn't be mentioning names on the floor.

If somebody testifies in a committee, puts it out on the public record, yeah, that's fine.

But I think it's that person that had that private conversation didn't necessarily want his private conversation splashed out to the whole world.

- Yeah, people are entitled to their private opinions, but that doesn't mean everybody else is entitled to your private opinions.

- Exactly.

That's a good way to put it, yes.

- And you did have one incident where a legislator from Bismarck had referred to Grand Forks and there was something about the casino.

And I know one of the Grand Forks legislators was not happy.

- That is correct.

And I'll be honest, as Speaker, I probably didn't really catch it till after the fact, but, and there was actually an apology that was given out over that issue, too.

But yeah, and I realize tensions flare.

We're all passionate about if we're for or against something.

And I understand that.

It's easy to kind of maybe push the edge a little more than you should.

And so we'll say things that probably shouldn't have really said.

And that's unfortunate.

That's why I've tried to, but of course, I can't read people's mind to what they might say until it's too late.

But there's been, I would agree, a few comments that I certainly thought were inappropriate.

In some cases, we've had discussions with some of the members on their floor behavior, and that I don't consider it appropriate, because we need to.

It doesn't matter how opposed we are on issues.

Everyone needs to be treated with respect, and nobody should be belittled or called a liar or accusing them of some sneaky business kind of thing.

That doesn't belong on the floor of the House.

- And not to put too fine a point on it, I think it's fair to say that there hasn't been much of that at all, that things seem to be moving, people are making their points, and then getting out of the way.

- I would agree with that.

I think for the most part, it has gone very smooth for the most part.

And I've tried to reinforce that in our caucus meetings and stuff, too, that everybody stick to the subject, stick to the bills.

No, try not to bring your personal feelings into that debate on the floor.

If you want to have your little discussion behind the railing, so be it, but don't bring it to the floor of the chamber.

- Was there anything that surprised you as Speaker this time?

- I would have to admit, I've been in the legislature seemingly forever, and obviously I see what goes on every session.

Thought I know what it's all about.

Really surprised me how much more work is involved behind the scenes, especially the front desk and the work they do.

I don't know if anybody realizes how everything has to fall in place for this process to work.

It's complicated.

And everything has to work exactly so, or things come to a standstill.

And so I've really learned to appreciate, one, my assistant, who'd been terrific, and the front desk and all the work they have to do.

I mean you can't have a bill just vanish.

You know, where does it go?

You know, what happened to them?

So, I mean, the trail from the House to the Senate, maybe back to the House, and then to the Governor's Office, all those things.

And the getting everybody to sign, it's complicated.

And everything has to work without a hiccup.

So I've really learned to appreciate much more how much work goes into making the final product, because people don't, even the legislators don't see what all goes on behind the curtain, so to speak.

So that's been a, yeah.

- And this time, you're a Speaker.

Speakers normally don't sit on conference committees, but you're on a couple this time.

- Yes, I am.

And I assume that has a lot to do with the fact that I've been, I have chaired for 14 sessions, I believe.

So I think it had a lot to do with that.

The experience I've had over the years were, and I will say every session I know is different between the relationship of the Speaker and the Majority Leader.

And the Majority Leader, the floor, and myself have a very, very close working relationship and we work very well together.

And so part of that process, I think is where, okay, I would fit well maybe doing this.

So it's helping out the leader and the appropriations chair and others to help move this process forward.

So that's been a very good working relationship on my part and the floor's.

- Let me ask you about just overall the session, not necessarily you as a Speaker, but you as a legislator.

How does the session rank in terms of very heavy lifting issues?

- Well, I think this session has a couple very heavy, I mean property tax, which is on everybody's mind, that's been a major issue.

And of course, like everything, everybody has their own best idea and trying to come to some resolution.

That's been huge.

I think the fact that the revenue projections have dropped substantially has put a lot of strain, because I'll be honest it's pretty easy when you have two or three billion surpluses that kind of show up because our, we were conservative, which I like in our forecast.

All of a sudden that's gone, and now we have a revenue forecast that's considerably lower.

So that's put a lot of strain on every budget.

How do we, because we started out the session with 9 billion more of requests than was in the budgets, and that was with the earlier forecast that had several hundred million more in.

So the fact, I think, to get down to where we're going to go out of here, we'll have money in the general fund, we'll have money in our various stabilization funds.

That's, that's been a real tough lift here the last two or three weeks because everybody's project's more important than the other.

- Now the goal is 75 million in the general funding balance, correct?

- Correct.

We want a minimum of 75 million in general fund, and we'd like 200 million in what we call this, we call it SIIF.

It's a Strategic Infrastructure Improvement Fund.

And that's our goal is to have at least 200 in there and 75 million in general fund.

- So the way it stands right now, you're close, you think, or?

- We're close, yeah.

I mean there's a couple, three budgets that have to settle that, but assuming they settle, I think at the numbers that are being proposed, we should be okay.

But yeah, there's projects that are being trimmed or getting a haircut as we like to say.

- I've heard that phrase a lot this session.

- Yeah, the last few days.

Yeah, it's becoming common that you're gonna have to take a bit of a haircut, we're sorry.

So yeah, that negotiation, the back and forth has probably been more difficult than in some of the past sessions.

- And is it driven mostly by oil?

- Yeah our general fund income is relatively easier to predict and relatively stable.

I mean they can project our sales tax revenue fairly accurately, and yeah, it varies some, but same with income tax, corporate tax, excise tax, for example.

But oil is such a volatile, and of course it's a big part of our overall budget now.

So few dollar drop in oil or if just production changes from 1.1 billion barrels to 1 billion barrels a day, hundreds of millions of dollars differences in our overall money available.

So that's the reason it can become very hard for us to budget very accurately going forward.

- Now, our farm economy, how is it doing?

'Cause you do still farm, correct?

- Correct.

You know, the budget forecast do take that into account.

Surprisingly, when it comes to the revenue forecast, the up and down of the farm economy doesn't effect the revenue as much as you might think.

It certainly affects individual farmers, and in some cases your businesses that are really catered to ag, implement dealers and other.

But overall, surprisingly, it'll have an effect.

But it's not as great as you might think that it might have.

But certainly, I mean that's projected to be decreased, and you know, yeah.

And as a farmer, not looking totally rosy, but at least we've gotten rain.

That's a good thing.

- I understand.

But in talking to OMB, our sales taxes still seem to be holding in there.

- Yep, it has, surprisingly actually.

Now sales tax is a little more affected.

Also when, if the oil industry starts retracting, of course they buy a lot of stuff, then you might see a greater shift in sales tax, but I think mostly what you see is that sales tax, instead of growing substantially like it has been for most, looking like that's going to probably run pretty flat.

- At least it isn't negative?

- Right, yeah, I don't think, they're not, they're projecting very small growth, but still a bit of growth.

- Have you introduced many bills?

- Dave, no, I never have.

Trying to think probably the most I've ever introduced in a session was maybe six.

When I was chairman, I would, there was always bills that were related to the committee I was chairing that say, "Well, would you introduce this?"

Because it's related to long-term care or maybe the department.

And I'll introduce constituent bills here and there.

But as a rule I've always, especially as a committee chair, when I was committee chair, need to be in the committee working on what we need to work instead of chasing all over, introducing a dozen bills and trying to.

And not everything needs to be fixed every session either.

You know, a lot of the, I always find it interesting where, like new candidate, we all have new ideas.

I say, "No, you just have an idea that has been probably introduced six times and been defeated."

And you know, oftentimes the new ideas aren't new ideas.

- But maybe I think the seventh time's a charm maybe.

- Well, hopefully.

And you know, sometimes it takes five times before something passes.

But I've always never been big, you know, I've had a few and I've considered, I've done a few important bills over the sessions but never thought it was necessary to just introduce a pile of bills.

- Well, let me ask you about something because you chaired Human Services in the House.

- [Robin] Yep.

- And one of the big discussions, and what I'm hearing is one of the big, I'm not going to call them stumbling blocks necessarily, is the state hospital and where that's going to end up.

- Yes.

Right now the dollars have been moved over to the OMB budget and both the Senate and the House have agreed to 300 million.

And I know there's a lot of angst over spending 300 million.

Do we need a state hospital, et cetera.

But from my perspective, I think it's critical that we need to build a new state hospital to handle the needs of the state that's occurring.

And you know, it's hard to explain.

State hospital isn't a hospital as we think of it.

I mean it's dealing with very high-need individuals, in some cases violent sex offender, that treatment, very high-level of psychological issues.

So it's not a normal.

And there's a big demand.

I mean we have law enforcement being turned away, because they have somebody that needs to go, and there's no ability for the state hospital to take them and there's nobody else that can.

So I know people might see, do we really need to spend 300 million?

But I think it's a very necessary need.

And you know, let's be honest, that state hospital, it served its usefulness of 100 and whatever it is plus years.

- Absolutely.

And you know, the other thing that we both remember, the controversy about having the James River Correctional Center built close to the state hospital.

And now it looks like it's going to be, there's going to be some separation there now.

- And that is correct.

But we're still going to be able to utilize some of the services of the correctional, as far as some of the maintenance and I think food service, etc.

But yeah, there was certainly some issues where you're putting people in that you're trying to deal with their mental health issues smack dab in a sense in the middle of a prison almost.

Yeah, that doesn't always work well with the rehabilitation issue, yeah.

- At one time the thought was that the House would have gone for bonding for that, and the Senate was not keen on bonding.

- That's also correct, myself included.

I believe to me that's a legacy project.

I mean, the hospital is not a 10 or 20.

We're looking at hopefully 50, 60 years or more.

And to me that makes sense to bond something like that, make sure we do it right, and bond it and not tie up money that might be needed for ongoing other services.

But obviously there was a bit of a disagreement between the House and the Senate on that, and so that's where we are.

- That's still to be voted on, though.

- Correct, we haven't yet.

We haven't passed that out yet and voted on the OMB budget.

- So what's your perspective now on one of the other big issues and that's property tax relief?

- Well, I think, again, there's always anybody can find something to criticize.

Not enough here, not there.

I mean, my personal perspective, I certainly would have liked to have seen some property tax relief for ag and commercial businesses.

But I think in the end, we're still negotiating the final number, but I think the primary residences will see somewhere between 1500 and $1650 credit against their property tax.

So it's that substantial.

I mean that's going to go a long ways to taking some of the pressure off of the homeowner.

Also part of that bill is going to be to try to put a limitation on the local political subdivision spending, except with a vote of the people.

I mean, they'll always be able to go to the vote of the people and ask for higher property taxes for whatever their needs are, whether it's, you know, law enforcement or a new civic center or whatever, they still would have that ability to go to the people.

So that will be part of the package.

- But it looks like that one is settling now.

- It's getting close.

- Getting close, yeah.

We still have some time.

- Yeah, we still have some time.

Hopefully it will settle today or tomorrow morning.

- Well, I also have to ask you, because we are talking about a short time period here.

There was an effort to save some days in case you have to come back in and deal with like, federal budget cuts or something else.

And I heard some of the people in the leadership circle saying, "Well, maybe we just let the governor call us back into session."

- Well, I think from at least a House perspective, I can't speak to the Senate, but we definitely would still want to save some days.

I think we always want to have the ability, if we need to call ourselves in, to be able to do it.

Certainly, I mean, the governor would call us in if there was some federal shortfall that had to be addressed.

But you never know what the issue might arrive where we may want to call us in.

The governor may not.

He may veto something that we consider very important, and if we don't have some days left, we can't call ourselves back in to override that veto, for example.

So every session, we've always attempted to at least have three days, because it takes three days to really do anything.

- Right.

- Just the process takes three days.

- You have to get a bill introduced, and it has to be acted on.

And then second House.

- Right, you gotta have a hearing.

You gotta, and you know, that process going from the House to the Senate, et cetera, it takes three days.

So we've always tried to save at least that.

That doesn't always happen.

But we don't want to be completely on the whim of the governor.

But, I mean, I don't think there's any doubt that Governor Armstrong would, he would call us in to deal with any type of a budget crisis that maybe occurs because of some federal changes.

- You know, he's had a few vetoes this time.

- Yep.

- But how do you assess the relationship between the legislature and the governor?

- Well, I think it's been good.

I mean, I can't speak for everybody, obviously, but I mean, I think the governor's been very good about meeting with us, discussing his priorities.

And there's always part of the whole setup, there should be some tensions between the executive branch and the legislative branch.

I mean, it's kind of the way the system was designed to work.

But, no, I mean, I get along fine with Governor Armstrong.

I think he'd been very open about where his positions are, and we're able to relay our positions and have those discussions, and so, yeah.

Are we going to have some differences?

Yeah, there'll be a few.

- Of course, he has been a legislator, so he understands.

- And sometimes that's good or bad.

(laughs) It's good because he knows how the process works, but it's bad because he knows how the process works, so he also knows how to maybe work us a little better.

But I think it is overall a good thing, because he really does understand what our limitations are on the legislature and the role.

We're the ones that set policy.

- We only have a few seconds left, so I'm going to ask the question I've asked everybody.

When does the gavel fall signing day?

- Tomorrow evening.

- Okay.

- And I'm not putting money on that one, but.

(Dave laughing) - I normally don't win the pool the press room has.

- We definitely could get done tomorrow night.

- Well, Speaker, thank you very much for being here.

- [Robin] Well, thank you for inviting me.

I appreciate it.

- Our guest on "Legislative Review" this week, Speaker Robin Weisz.

He's from Hurdsfield, North Dakota.

And for Prairie Public, I'm Dave Thompson.

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