Legislature Hits Halfway Point - KXNet - Bismarck/Minot/Williston/Dickinson

Legislature Hits Halfway Point

The North Dakota legislature has hit the midway mark in the session.

Today the House and Senate finished acting on bills that originated in the respective chambers.

KX News asked House and Senate leaders to grade their work as they enter crossover.

Their marks average a B, with one Incomplete...

(Sen. Mac Schneider / (D) Grand Forks) "We should be talking about cutting property taxes, directing deeper property tax relief for North Dakotans, lets put this oil tax extraction tax cut on the shelf."

(Sen Rich Wardner / (R) Dickinson) "I think we have put away money for our priorities, we've got money into roads, water projects, you know $515 million into water projects across the state of North Dakota and it looks like we're going to stick to our $2.7 million that the governor proposed as far as roads and there's even a little more creeping in there."

(Rep. Kenton Onstad / (D) Parshall) "Overall I think we're in the right direction, we have some dollars we're putting it back, we're addressing some needs and so on, there's just further needs we need to work on and I hope we can do that in the next half."

(Rep. Al Carlson / (R) Fargo) "When you look at the things we said we'd touched when we came in, first one was infrastructure, $4 billion commitment to infrastructure, second one was property tax relief, $742 million in property tax relief, third one is water, over $680 million into water projects across the state, the three things I thought were really crucial we've accomplished, they've got a long way to go, but we had a good first half."

Legislators will resume their work next Wednesday with House bills moving to the Senate, and vice versa.