Jill Schramm/MDN Rep. Paul Thomas, right, speaks at Saturday’s legislative forum in Minot as Jim Newman, far left, and Rep. Jay Fisher, listen.

Preventing foreign adversaries from owning property and businesses in North Dakota is turning out to be complicated, legislators told the crowd at a Saturday forum, sponsored by Minot Area Chamber-EDC.

The House Agriculture Committee has put hours of work into Senate Bill 2371, which deals with foreign ownership, said Rep. Jay Fisher, R-Minot, a member of the committee. He said the committee has been working with the Attorney General’s Office to determine how to legally structure a policy and keep it workable.

“We’re still trying to move something forward because it has been a concern to my constituency in District 5,” he said. “Other states are watching what we are doing as well. But it is very complicated.”

Among sponsors of SB 2371 are Sen. Bob Paulson of Minot and Reps. Fisher, Jeff Hoverson and Scott Louser, all Minot.

Rep. Paul Thomas, R-Velva, a member of the House Agriculture Committee, said foreign involvement isn’t always obvious but requires following a company’s ownership trail.

“We actually found out a lot of our wind towers, when you trace them to the end, are owned by the government of Italy,” he said. House Bill 1135, relating to a prohibition on foreign ownership of agricultural land, includes an exemption for leased land, such as wind tower leases. The bill passed the House and is likely to pass the Senate, he said.

During the debate on various bills, Thomas said, legislators discovered foreign ownership already exists in companies that have been positive for the state. An airplane parts manufacturer in Grand Forks with a long history in the state was bought out by a Chinese company that’s controlled by the Chinese government, he said.

“A tremendous company – 450 North Dakota employees,” Thomas said. “Selling around the world, looking to expand – just a great, great — what you would say – North Dakota company. So we were really concerned about any implications there.”

Legislators attempted to address those situations in House Bill 1503, which relates to foreign ownership of businesses, by requiring security reviews by the Attorney General’s Office into these transactions. However, the Attorney General’s Office determined if it is to look at every individual, entity and potential case coming into the state, it will need 10 full-time employees and funding to defend against the expected lawsuits.

“We know our goal here is that we don’t want to have foreign adversaries that can do harm to us owning and operating businesses in our state. We can all agree on that. But we need to get there without harming us as individual private citizens here, as well as all the businesses that are operating here,” Thomas said. “So we essentially turned that bill into a study.”

The Senate killed HB 1503 with the understanding that its content is being rolled into SB 2371, which is where the current focus of legislators lies.

Thomas said Paulson is taking the lead in working with the Attorney General’s Office to craft language that enables the state to do as much as it can to prevent foreign ownership without creating harm on the back end. Constituents need to recognize that the Legislature is not ignoring their wishes on this issue even though it appears legislators aren’t doing enough with the content of these bills, he said.

“Rather, we’re taking a step-by-step approach to do this right and make sure we don’t have any unintended consequences,” Thomas said. “The concept we’re all behind. It’s just the practical implementation of them is way, way more difficult than any of us really knew right away.”

Bill includes potential study funds for four-laning

By JILL SCHRAMM

Associate Editor

jschramm

@minotdailynews.com

A portion of the funding needed for an environmental impact study on four-laning U.S. Highway 52 between Minot and Voltaire has potential to come out of the North Dakota Legislature, according to Rep. Dan Ruby, R-Minot.

An amendment was placed on a bill relating to uninsured motorists that would transfer $900,000 of unused money in a fund for uninsured motorists to the highway department, Ruby said. The money comes from a dollar assessed on vehicle registrations.

Ruby said the unused money was to have been turned back to the state general fund.

“There’s some competing interests in the $900,000,” Ruby said at a legislative forum in Minot Saturday, citing a proposal to use some of the money to add staff to the fire marshal’s office. Nor is the money adequate to fully cover an environmental impact study, he said. An environmental impact study is roughly estimated at $5 million.

However, Ruby added, “Seeing an opportunity to move almost a million dollars into the highway fund seemed like a good idea to kind of kickstart it and get it going.”

Ruby said it typically takes about six years to get construction going, and that clock could start for the four-laning of U.S. 52 once the environmental impact study is done.

Ruby also said a vetoed proposal to increase the speed limit on interstate from 75 mph to 80 mph might be resurrected in connection to increasing fines for speeding violations.

He said Gov. Doug Burgum’s veto message to the House Thursday basically advocated for a primary enforcement seatbelt law. The message directly preceded a House vote to pass the seatbelt bill, which enables law officers to stop motorists on the grounds of not wearing a seatbelt and issue tickets.

“”I’ve been here long enough to know when I’m seeing a setup being done,” Ruby said.

Whether a higher interstate speed limit is revisited will depend on interest by the sponsor of the vetoed bill in amending it into another bill, Ruby said. There has not been enough support in the Senate to override the governor’s veto.