Is it time for yearly sessions in North Dakota?

0:00Good afternoon everyone. This is Carla Rose Hansen. I am guest hosting for Tyler Axnis while he's out of town for Afternoons Live and right now we are talking about the North Dakota legislature and term limits which are going to start impacting people in the next couple years and have the potential of having some negative impacts and potentially some positive impacts. So with me to talk a little bit more about the impact that term limits are going to have on the institution of the legislature is representative Zach Ista from Grand Forks. Zach welcome to the show. Okay good to be with you Carla how are things in the Southern Valley today? Very nice we're having a beautiful day. So Zach you were on the legislative committee that heard the study that former Senator Aaron O'Ban was just talking about that looked into what the legislature could change in terms of how it runs things to make sure that it continues to do good work on

1:05behalf of the public and so you sat on this committee you heard the recommendations that that the study made in terms of better training for legislators potentially more staff maybe changing the timing of the sessions of all the recommendations in that report what what kind of stood out to you as like I never thought about this this would be a good idea to do. You know you know to answer that directly I think one of the most interesting suggestions that came out that study is what if we flip flopped when we are in our legislative interim the period between regular sessions and and when we have that regular session right now we hold an election in November and then that following January newly elected lawmakers hit the ground running that first week of January with a full on regular session what if we've turned that on its head and right after you got elected November you enter this interim period where you decide to committees that have a little bit more time to take a

2:07deeper dive into subjects whether that's the state budget or how we address child care funding or higher education or whatever that might be and give you chance to maybe approach a job with a bit more legislative training wheel right you could you know learn all the ins and outs of having this unique job but not with that high pressure situation for regular session when you have bills to come at you at day three and day four and you got to make a final up or down vote on that bill you may not even know where your parking spot is that was the most interesting suggestion that I thought they brought forward I think that is so true is like you know I remember when I started and you know the legislature meets every other year and so meeting in the even number years instead of the odd numbered years would really give legislators who are brand new you know a whole year to prepare and to dive into what the processes and what the issues are and I think it would really allow that new

3:11legislator to be more effective at the job and it is a job yeah that's I think maybe what gets lost sometimes in this discussion on term limit or institutional improvements but at the end of the day it's the it's a workplace a unique one to be sure but it's a workplace we all are professionals we you know we have to figure out how to function with all of our legislators legislators or co-workers and the professional staff that make sure the institution keeps running when we're not just in session in Bismarck and any opportunity we can get to sort of get new lawmakers acclimated to that aspect before they really have to make these difficult decisions and whether to vote yes or no on a bill that could have very big impacts across the state I think would run to our benefit that's right and I think another interesting impact that would result from meeting in the even number of years instead of the odd ones is the legislative session would then be a little bit closer to the next

4:15election and the benefit of that would be that the public would maybe have a better memory of what we did during the legislative session and make a decision in the upcoming election maybe differently as a result because they would maybe remember that they liked something or maybe they didn't like something that was done rather than having it be you know almost two years later yeah voters have busy lives they're just trying to figure out how to pay their mortgage pay their rent get dinner on the table any night to ask your average voter to have you know 18 months of memory of what was I really mad at my lawmaker about at the end of that session in May and now it's you know Vemper you know a year and a half later I think that's asking a lot of citizens and you know I suppose opponents of that concept would say well this is just going to lead to playing politics or grandstanding but you know I've come to learn in the legislature that when somebody accuses you of playing politics what they're mad about is your demanding they do what they know the

5:17voters want them to do but they really don't want to do I think on average that would probably be a good benefit to the citizens in our Dakota to have their lawmakers feel a little bit more pressure of that immediate political accountability for their vote yeah accountability is always a good thing and maybe some higher levels of trust with our government yeah so so as we think about term limits starting to take effect for example I'm in an even number district and the impacts will start in two years you know no longer be eligible to serve in the house in two years and then two years then after that for the people in odd number districts what are you personally most concerned about in terms of these terms that's going to affect what what what is the impact that you're most concerned about I think the most concerning impact to me is making sure the legislature can hold its own as a co-equal branch of government

6:19going forward for you know all the faults that voters find with those entrenched incumbents that you know they say with the term limits both that they don't want that North Dakota that's I totally respect that position having such frequent churn of different legislators every few years does risk losing some of that institutional strength that that we have and where the legislature loses I think that's black it's picked up by the executive branch by you know the bureaucrats that don't say that pejoratively like some do but those that are just career civil servants in our state agencies and of course the lobbyist class right those that have a financial interest in being there and advocating for their clients and the organizations they represent it takes a little bit of a while to get your sea legs as a legislator to know you know who to trust when they give you information who to be skeptical of how to ask the right questions to get it information somebody maybe doesn't want to disclose to you having some of those more seasoned lawmakers who are a death to that is

7:22a current strength of a legislature but new folks that come into office in this era of term limits are going to have to realize they don't have the luxury of sitting back and learning from somebody else they can have to dive right in and be willing to ask with hard questions and make really quick judgments about who to trust and where to lead the state you know I think that's a real concern that as Aaron O'Ban said in the in the previous few minutes that shift in power and influence could really be to the detriment of the public because you know I like you said our our executive branch employees to who implement our our laws and give feedback on potential new laws certainly have a very valuable perspective they're doing this work every day lobbyists have a good perspective because they're often steeped in the details of a particular policy but when you're a seasoned legislator you know how to take that information from all these sources and really balance it out to make the best possible decision in the end and so

8:25we want to make sure that we're standing up as a strong equal branch the executive branch to make the best decisions possible yeah I know the slip side of that I think a lot of people would point out there's a fine line between being a seasoned wise legislator and being a suburb and calcified one that's just not willing to look at an issue differently or change your mind on something I think the voters are are trying to balance that when they in act or in limits so it's not all doom and gloom I think having term limits and new lawmakers come in at a more regular cadence does have an opportunity to bring in those fresh ideas also yep there's certainly some good from the change as well so thank you Zach we're going to take a quick break and then when we come back we're going to talk a little bit more specifically about one of the ideas from the report good afternoon everyone this is Carla Rose Hanson in for Tyler Axons on afternoons live and we're talking about the North Dakota legislature and the impact that term limits will have on our work in the legislature and on with me today is

9:30representative Zach is stuff from Grand Forks Zach thank you for joining us and talking about this topic you as a legislator heard a report that Aaron O'Ban was part of compiling that gave some suggestions on what the legislature could do differently to sort of mitigate the negative impacts from the higher turnover that will result from term limits the fact that we'll have more new people so one of the suggestions was annual sessions because it's thought that maybe that would help people get their sea legs under them a little bit faster this is a topic that has actually come up for years you know we've long talked about this as a way to be more responsive and a fast moving world sort of adjust our budget which is normally set every two years but obviously the economy goes up and down so now do you think that with higher

10:32turnover because the term limits that annual sessions are one of the answers yeah I do and I've generally been pretty supportive of moving to annual sessions since I came into the legislature at the end of 2020 and you highlighted a couple of really important reasons the way our budgeting happens in North Dakota and how much of it is tied to commodity prices primarily the price of a barrel of oil as well as being responsive to you know growing needs in a growing state but as we tied this notion of annual sessions to term limits specifically I think another consideration is who has the ability and willingness to serve in the state legislature because as we require more and more people to raise their hands and say I'll do it I'll run for office we need to be able to expand that pool of people and I think the fact of the matter is the current setup where we expect a lot of makers to be full-time in Bismarck for over four

11:33months every other year does make it difficult for a lot of different people across the state you know those who it works well for tend to be maybe later in their career maybe retired business owners or self-employed people but that boxes out a lot of people at the beginning or middle of the career maybe they have school age children skill at home and as a talk to folks in the hall at the Capitol this isn't really a left versus right Republican versus Democrat divide it does tend to be people that are in that state in life where they're still an employee of somebody they have an employer to answer to maybe they have school age kids at home and as we talk that's where I find myself professionally personally we tend to think it'd be a little bit easier if instead of you know having to block out January February March April the beginning of May maybe just January and February you know now that's eight weeks nine weeks of a

12:33session every year it's a little bit easier to manage an absence at work you don't fall out of every routine with your family at home you don't miss you know double the amount of milestones that year that your children had and I think I have to look carefully at that to make sure that we make service in the legislature that is something that is available to people the diverse set of life experiences I think we want that we want people with kids in public schools and kids you know paying for child care to make some of those decisions that impact families and not just relying folks that at the end of their professional life who now have the time to devote to four consecutive months at the Capitol that's right I mean you raised a great point that you know today we already have a challenge in recruiting great people to run for office and we do want good people because these are jobs we want people who are you know gonna put in the work and do a good job representing us at the Capitol but we don't want it

13:37to be harder to recruit people for those jobs and in terms of being more responsive you know you and I just finished up our second special session of the year so you know talking about needing to be a little bit more timely in our decision making it definitely hits home when you have to not just do your regular legislative sessions but two special sessions in the off year you know it definitely could be a little bit more timely so Zach thank you for joining us today and talking about the impact of term limits we are going to miss you as you leave to spend more time with your young family and the legislature but we appreciate you sharing your wisdom with us today. I thought it's good to be with you. Alright well thank you everyone for tuning in to Afternoons Live with Tyler Axis this is Carla Rose Hanson and we had some great conversations this afternoon talking about the impact of term limits on the legislature as well as things like suicide prevention and traffic fees so with that we're gonna go to

14:40the twins.