Lawmakers are eager to get to Bismarck for a special session of the legislature next month.
Senator Tim Mathern has drafted a proposal to address the state's revenue shortfall. He says further allotments need to be done strategically, and with careful consideration for the Departments of Human Services and Corrections. Mathern says the state is shooting itself in the foot if it makes automatic cuts that leverage federal matching dollars for entities like nursing homes and health care providers. Mathern says his proposal will leave about 87 percent of the current cuts in place. He says property tax relief, mental health and addiction treatment, and childcare assistance grants can use 25 million dollars from the Budget Stabilization Fund, 249 million dollars from the Strategic Investments and Improvements Fund, and 25 million dollars from Bank of North Dakota profits - and all three entities would have money in them leftover for the following session.
"This proposal brings in new dollars to the state of North Dakota - 56 million new dollars. We need those, our citizens need those, so let's get the discussion going. This puts the cards on the table and gets us ready for the special session."
Senate Majority leader Rich Wardner is unsure if taking money from those funds is the right way to do it. He cautions that with oil revenues down in North Dakota, there is no way to know just how much will be leftover for the following biennium. But Wardner says he is looking forward to the discussion on how to address the budget, and agrees that across-the-board cuts won't be the right way to go.
"There's some more allotments that are going to be made, but it was pretty clear at the Governor's news conference that we would not cut Human Services and Corrections anymore because they are very critical and they just couldn't handle the cuts. We have some things we aren't willing to touch, either. We're willing to take a look at it and discuss it - in fact, the more I work on it, the more eager I am to get to talk about it."
The session will run August 2nd through the 4th.