Signatures Submitted for Outdoor Heritage Amendment - KXNet - Bismarck/Minot/Williston/Dickinson

It's shaping up to be another hot issue on the November ballot.

Supporters of a clean water, lands and outdoor heritage fund deliver petitions to the Secretary of State for review.

The group collected about thirty-six thousand signatures--about nine thousand more than needed.

The proposes constitutional measure would take five percent of oil revenue from extraction taxes and go into a fund to support conservation efforts.

I think some people may have misconceptions about what it may do, that it may get in the way of progress or take away from other important activities in the state, but we've been very careful with this language to protect existing funding for things like infrastructure, education and really this is a value added proposition for North Dakota," says Steve Adair, Chair of the sponsoring committee.>>

A group called People First is speaking out against the idea.

Andy Peterson chairs the group and says while he supports conservation efforts, this proposed amendment goes too far.

When you take 5% of money and you put it into a constitutional amendment with no oversight, no accountability and your talking over a decade of a billion dollars, that's a lot of money that they could use that's unaccounted for

that is taken out of taxpayer accountability, we think that is a dangerous precedent," says Andy Peterson, President and CEO of the North Dakota Chamber of Commerce.

The Secretary of State's Office has until September 10th to determine if there are enough qualified signatures to place this constitutional amendment of the November ballot.