Port: It would be inappropriate for lawmakers to take up extra issues during their special session

MINOT — A week ago, as legislative leaders negotiated with Gov. Doug Burgum on the terms of a special session, I reported that a school choice group was planning a push to have their issue be a part of the proceedings.

Now, as the stage has been set for a special session next week, I’m informed that the school choice group no longer plans to pursue a campaign.

Though I’m a proponent of school choice policies, I was happy to hear the news. A special session like the one that will commence next week isn’t the right place for a debate about weighty policy changes.

What precipitated this special session was a political food fight between a state pension board and the Legislature.

The former sued the latter, and while the state Supreme Court hasn’t yet weighed in on the issue at the core of the matter, which is whether the appointment of lawmakers to the pension board is a violation of the separation of powers, the court did find that an omnibus spending and policy bill passed at the end of the regular session earlier this year is unconstitutional.

North Dakota’s constitution forbids the Legislature from passing bills covering more than one issue. Lawmakers have been violating this provision flagrantly for years. The omnibus bill — it was the budget for the Office of Management and Budget — has now been broken down into 14 single-issue bills so that lawmakers can pass them and make them legal during the special session.

“We put fourteen separate bills in the OMB budget,” one frustrated lawmaker told me. “Shame on us!”

Yes, this whole mess could have been avoided had lawmakers been following the single-issue provision, but it’s been going on for so long it’s hard to blame current lawmakers.

Still, this special session should remain focused on passing the various components of the omnibus bill, and that’s it. “In exchange for the governor calling the session, legislative leadership promised Burgum lawmakers would consider some of the governor’s proposals, including on infrastructure, energy and tax relief,” my colleague April Baumgarten reports, citing House Majority Leader Mike Lefor.

It was important for Burgum to call the special session. Lawmakers are allotted just 80 days every biennium to meet in regular session, and they still have five of those days left for this cycle, but calling themselves back into session to use them would mean the bills they passed couldn’t immediately take effect without a 2/3’s majority vote adding an emergency clause. Given how fractured the NDGOP caucus is in the Legislature, getting to that threshold could prove difficult on some of the bills.

Bills passed by a governor-initiated session, however, take effect immediately, which is important. The OMB budget is currently unconstitutional, per the court, and if lawmakers don’t get their work done quickly, that could impede state government operations.

But Burgum asking for consideration for additional policies is a mistake in two ways.

Politically, it invites every lawmaker with a pet project or culture war bill in their back pocket to demand that their proposals get consideration, too.

As a matter of public service and process, it’s simply not defensible to consider significant, non-emergent policy changes during a special session.

This special session will not have the same fulsome process of committee hearings and public testimony that regular sessions do. Nor, by the way, can every group with a stake in a proposed piece of legislation be ready on such short notice to decamp to Bismarck to oppose or support bills.

Deep-pocketed, well-established interest groups have full-time lobbyists. They can participate. But what about smaller volunteer groups? Or just regular members of the public?

No, these debates should wait until the regularly scheduled special session.

“I’m a big supporter of school choice, but the only question I have is the reason we’re being called back. I don’t think that’s the reason,” Rep. Claire Cory, a Grand Forks Republican who sponsored school choice legislation earlier this year, told me when I asked her about the push for school choice during the regular session. “I think it’s almost, I don’t want to use the word inappropriate, but what else are we going to do if we allow this?”

That’s precisely my point.

Lawmakers got themselves into this special session mess by taking shortcuts. They should not compound the problem with more shortcuts that implement policy without the full scrutiny of the public.

Rob Port is a news reporter, columnist, and podcast host for the Forum News Service with an extensive background in investigations and public records. He covers politics and government in North Dakota and the upper Midwest. Reach him at rport@forumcomm.com. Click here to subscribe to his Plain Talk podcast.