North Dakota lawmakers are putting in some long hours this week as they push to finalize work on bills before crossover. That’s the point at which the House and Senate exchange the bills each has passed.

Lawmakers seem to be on a roll. They plan to take Friday off, and if they do they’ll have used only 36 of their maximum of 80 days so far.

Anger and insults

There was an ugly moment this week when state Rep. Mary Schneider, D-Fargo, rose to insult Rep. Chris Olson, R-West Fargo, over a bill he introduced on the issue of refugee resettlement.

The amended iteration of the bill, which made it to the House floor, would merely launch a study into the social and fiscal impacts of resettlement, but Schneider was still seeing red.

“It was conceived in ignorance and fear, and born in prejudice and suspicion,” a visibly angry Schneider said during a four-minute jeremiad. “The study is given life from a mean-spirited bill, and it guarded that nature in its current form. It’s designed to look for and report only the negatives.”

Olson stood after and asked for an apology. House Majority Leader Al Carlson, R-Fargo, also rose to warn House members about insulting one another.

Interestingly the voice of reason was Rep. Kathy Hogan, a Democrat who represents the same Fargo district as Schneider. She praised the imperfect but “very, very important” study. She noted that the last time the state studied refugee resettlement the result was more funding for English language learning programs.

Hogan’s remarks made Schneider’s rant seem like so much petty grandstanding.

Casino suffers

The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe has taken a big financial hit from the pipeline protests.

Last week on SayAnythingBlog.com I picked up a report from a tribal newspaper noting that the revenues for the Prairie Knights Casino, which is located near Cannonball and the protest camps, were down some $6 million in 2016.

Casino revenues are the biggest part of Standing Rock’s budget and are used to fund everything from infrastructure loans to reservation social programs.

I interviewed LaRoy Kingsley, a spokesman for the casino, who acknowledged the losses and said the casino is working on a “heavier PR” campaign to bring people back.

Kingsley said the casino has been hurt not just by the protests but also a downturn in the state’s economy and some ugly weather over the winter.

He points to the casino’s positive economic impact in the region, calling them a “good corporate citizen.” Still, social media in the Bismarck/Mandan region is rife with people calling for boycotts of the casino. It will be interesting to see when, if ever, those hard feelings fade.

Wind debate heats up

A Bismarck-based political wag was remarking to me this week about all the economic stimulus from wind energy lobbyists parachuting into the Capitol to fight bills targeting their clients.

Earlier this year a House bill aimed at taxing away some of the wind industry’s federal subsidies failed, but in the Senate, amended legislation would put a two-year moratorium on new wind energy developments.

The amendments “hog housed” the original bill, which is to say they completely changed it. The legislation as introduced by Sen. Jessica Unruh, R-Beulah, would have blocked power rate increases necessitated by compliance with green energy mandates in other states. It also would have ended wind’s preferential treatment in selling energy into the power grid.

Sen. Dwight Cook, R-Mandan, introduced the amendments. The wind industry would probably prefer Unruh’s version.

Port, founder of SayAnythingBlog.com, a North Dakota political blog, is a Forum Communications commentator. Follow him on Twitter at @RobPort.