515: 'The idea that the pipeline is dangerous, I reject that'

Plain Talk

Senate Majority Leader David Houge, a Republican from Minot, says that if voters approve a ballot measure eliminating property taxes, state lawmakers will be left with a mess.

He said that the legislature's appropriators will be tasked with making big spending cuts. He said that members of the taxation and finance committees will have to find new ways to bring in revenues. He also said that reserve funds would likely have to be tapped to make up the roughly $2.6 billion in revenues property taxes generate for local governments every budget cycle.

But in 2012, voters rejected a similar ballot measure to eliminate property taxes, in part based on promises from lawmakers that they would fix the problem. My co-host, Chad Oban, asked Hogue why voters should trust them this time around.

"We have tried other things that haven't necessarily worked," he said, but this time he sees more willingness from his colleagues to implement things like caps on taxation.

We also spoke with Hogue about his recent letter to the editor, which he co-authored with House Majority Leader Mike Lefor (R - Dickinson), making the case for carbon capture in North Dakota. He likened the debate over the opposition to the Summit Carbon pipeline to the protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline, pointing out that in both instances, the opposition said the pipelines were unsafe.

"The idea that the pipeline is dangerous, I reject that," he said, going on to point out that capturing and sequestering carbon in North Dakota has many benefits for the state's agriculture and energy industries, though he also acknowledged that Summy Carton Solutions, the company behind the project, has made some mistakes.

"They lowballed some landowners," he said, and acknowledged that Summit may have been too aggressive in using a state statute that allows surveyors to go on private land without permission. "That was a misstep as well," he said, though he added that since Summit has "corrected" a lot of its mistakes.

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