State lawmakers passed "historic" legislation during the 2023 session, but much of the progress was overshadowed by extensive debate on culture war issues including books bans and gender identity, Gov. Doug Burgum believes.
“The amount of time that ... spent on some of that stuff, you’d think it was the only thing happening in our state,” he said. “I talk to real people, creating real jobs, building real companies and hiring people, and some of the things the Legislature is focused on is not what the citizens are focused on.”
Burgum during a Tuesday meeting with the Tribune Editorial Board noted that he had laid out his top concerns -- among them workforce development, income tax reform, child care assistance and state worker pension reform -- in his budget address last December and in his State of the State address in January. But action focused on those issues “all showed up in the last 48 hours” of the four-month session, he said.
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“It’s a missed opportunity,” Burgum said. “When you spend all the time, all the press, all the messaging around (culture war issues), then people miss out.”
"Some of these culture wars, there were 22 bills just on one topic," he said, adding that the issues are "not an epidemic" in North Dakota.
Burgum cites numerous successes resulting from the session that ended in late April, including more than half a billion dollars in tax relief; large investments in child care, education, workforce and infrastructure; reductions in red tape; state worker pension reform; support for law enforcement and the military; money for a new women's prison in Mandan, and a strengthening of the state's animal agriculture industry.
The Legislature also passed culture war bills revising the state’s near total ban on abortion; targeted sexual content in public libraries, with some lawmakers advocating for making librarians subject to criminal charges; and showed an elevated interest in gender identity issues, a trend nationwide in conservative statehouses.
Burgum signed the abortion bill as well as legislation to criminalize gender-affirming care for transgender minors and to restrict transgender females’ participation in sports. The governor in March vetoed a bill that would have placed constraints on the treatment of transgender K-12 students, but in May he signed another bill that incorporated some of the elements from the first bill.
Burgum signed a bill to remove or relocate “explicit sexual material” from public libraries’ children’s collections, and vetoed a more wide-ranging book ban bill that included potential criminal penalties for librarians.
Burgum drew criticism for some of the bills he signed. He said with a Republican supermajority in the Legislature increasing the odds of veto override votes, he had to "pick his spots" on vetoes.
“We try to think about it not through a political lens,” the governor said. “We try to think about it through a policy lens, and a policy in terms of what’s the right thing for all of North Dakota.”
He also said, "In today's world -- I think we got quite accustomed during COVID -- that whatever decision we made there was going to be some group that was not happy."
Burgum acknowledged that not everyone views culture war topics in a negative light.
"The majority of North Dakotans are wondering why the Legislature spent that much time on some of these topics, and there's another set of people that these are super-important topics to them, even if they don't currently exist in North Dakota," he said. "I think that's the times that we're living in."
Socially conservative legislators said the bills were necessary to protect the unborn and children, to uphold biological truths and the integrity of women's sports, to protect female students in bathrooms, and to deal with issues that are being debated nationally.
Critics of some of the laws said they illegally discriminate, are unnecessary, reduce freedoms and are harmful to already vulnerable transgender youth.
Burgum future
Burgum drew attention during the session with a March trip to Iowa, home of an early caucus that's considered a critical part of the presidential nominating process. The trip included a meet-and-greet event with him, fueling speculation about a presidential bid.
Burgum said the 48-hour weekend trip included about a dozen events and was an opportunity to gather ideas including on the topic of value-added agriculture.
He did not specifically address a potential White House bid when asked by the Editorial Board, but he did not rule one out, either. He said any decisions about his political future are likely a month away. His second four-year term as governor ends next year.
“We haven’t made any decisions about 2024,” Burgum said. “We’ve been focused on doing the job that we’re in right now which is for the citizens of North Dakota.”
He went on to say, "I'm pretty energized about the work we're doing, and I feel like we got historic wins that we achieved. But I also feel like we've got a set of, right now anyway, we're also focusing on what were the missed opportunities and where did we come up short."
Last bills
Burgum on Tuesday signed the last of the bills from the session. He had 15 business days to do so after the Legislature adjourned on April 30.
There were 932 bills introduced during the session; 590 made it to the governor's desk, and he signed 583 of them into law. He vetoed seven bills, and made three line-item vetoes in Senate Bill 2015, the budget for the Office of Management and Budget, which he otherwise approved.
That bill is generally the final piece of legislation passed by lawmakers before they leave the Capitol. It's sometimes referred to as a “Christmas tree” bill since ideas and spending that didn’t fit elsewhere can be affixed to the bill like ornaments. But they're also subject to Burgum's red pen.
Burgum rejected lawmakers’ late push to use more Legacy Fund earnings for the 2023-25 state budget. He also vetoed a restriction on the spending authority of the Capital Grounds Planning Commission, and nixed a retroactive date for a property tax exemption for buildings and land belonging to certain nonprofit public charities.
