Lawmakers advance plan to spend $6 million more on staff

Legislative Council presents a plan to grow its staff by 50 people over the next five years to the Legislative Procedure and Arrangements Committee on July 11, 2024. Pictured from left to right are Legislative Council Director John Bjornson, Legal Division Director Emily Thompson, committee chair Sen. Jerry Klein, R-Fessenden, and House Majority Leader Rep. Mike Lefor, R-Dickinson. Sen. Merrill Piepkorn, D-Fargo, is pictured on the screen participating remotely. (Mary Steurer/North Dakota Monitor)

A plan to grow Legislative Council by 25 positions in 2025 cleared a preliminary hurdle Thursday after a group of lawmakers voted to forward the proposal to statehouse leaders for review.

Right now, the Legislature’s research arm has about 45 employees when the Legislature isn’t in session. That isn’t enough to keep up with the agency’s workload, which is expected to increase as lawmaker term limits take effect, said Legal Division Director Emily Thompson.

“We’re very type-A,” she said. “We like to do a great job, but the balls are starting to drop. There’s just not enough people.”

Proposed staff additions include:

• Policy analysts and legislative editors, as well as a team dedicated to evaluating state program evaluators.
• More human resources staff to handle hiring recruitment and training.
• More information technology developers.
• Two communications specialists, with one specializing in graphic design.

The new legislative term limits are expected to put even more strain on Legislative Council’s staff.

The constitutional amendment, approved by voters in 2022, bars North Dakota state lawmakers from serving more than eight years in each chamber. Up to 69 lawmakers could hit their term limits in 2028, and another 72 could reach the end of their terms in 2030, a Legislative Council analysis found.

At that point, it’ll largely fall on Legislative Council to train new legislators, Thompson said.

“All of that extra education, that institutional knowledge, has to stay permanent with someone,” she said. “If the legislators are going to turn over, that permanence is going to be the staff.”

Thompson pointed to Montana’s legislature for comparison. Like North Dakota, Montana’s statehouse convenes every other year. It also has a similar number of lawmakers: Montana has 150, while North Dakota has 141.

But Montana’s legislative staff has 152 people — more than three times the size of North Dakota’s.

Lawmakers on the Legislative Procedure and Arrangements Committee on Tuesday were largely supportive of adding the 25 extra positions.

“They’re working evenings, they’re working weekends, they’re working on their vacations and we cannot have that,” House Majority Leader Mike Lefor, R-Dickinson, said. “They need to be able to effectively deal with the continually increasing workload, and the fact that the term limits are just about upon us.”

Committee members voted to recommend the initial batch of hires for the 2025-2027 budget to Legislative Management.

Legislative Management will consider the proposal in November along with recommendations from other interim committees.

Legislative Council hopes to add an additional 25 employees during the 2027-2029 budget period, though that request will have to wait until the 2027 session for approval. That’d bring the agency up to 95 full-time employees.

If the plan is implemented without revisions, the Fiscal and Administrative Services and Operations divisions will roughly double. The Information Technology Services Division, meanwhile, will grow by 120% and the Legal Division by 150%.

According to a July memo by Legislative Council, it would cost about $6 million to add the first 25 employees in 2025, and another $6 million to add the next 25 positions in 2027. Those figures factor in salary, benefits, training and equipment.

While the Legislative branch considers growing its staff, the executive branch has been asked to downsize.

Gov. Doug Burgum in May directed executive branch agencies with budgets of $10 million or more to cut their budgets by at least 3% for the 2025-2027 budget years.

Legislative Council’s budget for the 2023-2025 cycle is about $20 million, which is smaller than most executive branch departments .

Thompson said the size of Legislative Council’s staff has long lagged behind other state agencies.

“We have 45 people right now to run essentially the third branch of government, which is supposed to be a co-equal branch of government,” Thompson said.

The post Lawmakers advance plan to spend $6 million more on staff appeared first on North Dakota Monitor .