Cities in North Dakota will be receiving money from the so-called “Operation Prairie Dog.”
That program allocates money from oil taxes. The money is to be used for infrastructure spending.
"Based on the oil forecast for the rest of this biennium, we would expect that only the very first bucket in the operation would be filled," said state Budget Director Joe Morrissette. "That bucket did fill up in the month of November."
Morrissette said the bucket has $30 million. He said it isn’t likely the other buckets – including funding for county, township and airport infrastructure – will fill up for a while.
"There's $400 million that has to flow to into the Strategic Investment Improvements Fund, before any money goes into the other Prairie Dog buckets," Morrissette said. "We expect all the remaining oil tax collections to flow inot that fund for the rest of the biennium."
The money is allocated to cities in non-oil-producing counties.
