A farmer's take on the future of North Dakota property tax

In this episode of Straight Talk with NDFB, our host, Emmery Mehlhoff, continues the coverage of the 69th Legislative Assembly. The Legislature has just finished its crossover break where the bills “crossover.” During this break, our host visited with Rep. Robin Weisz from District 14. 

Rep. Weisz is a farmer from Hurdsfield who, during his extended time in the Legislature, has served as chairman of both the Transportation and Human Services Committees and now serves as Speaker of the House. 

Rural North Dakota is the focus of the conversation as Rep. Weisz shares his strategy to bring tax reform to all property taxpayers in North Dakota. His bill, HB 1575, seeks to bring property tax reform to residential, commercial, and agricultural properties. 

Join us as we dive deeper into what your future property tax bill may look like. 

Read HB 1575 here https://ndlegis.gov/assembly/69-2025/regular/bill-overview/bo1575.html?bill_year=2025&bill_number=1575

Subscribe to NDFB’s Legislative Front here https://ndfb.org/news/signup/

If you have any questions or input for the podcast, please contact us at emmery@ndfb.org. 

Transcript

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[00:12] Emmery: Welcome to Straight Talk with NDFB. This is your host, Emmery Mehlhoff. In this season of the podcast, we return to Bismarck to cover the 69th Legislative Assembly and talk about issues that are important to agriculture and rural North Dakota. During the crossover break, I had a chance to visit with Representative Weisz from District 14. Representative Weisz is a farmer from Hurdsfield who has served in the Legislature for several years. During his time he has chaired two committees and now serves as the Speaker of the House. Rural North Dakota is the focus of our conversation as Representative Weisz shares with me his strategy to bring tax reform not only to residential property, but also to commercial and agriculture property in order to benefit the entire state of North Dakota. Join us for this episode. 

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[01:06] Emmery: Welcome to Straight Talk with NDFB. This is your host, Emmery Mehlhoff. Joining me today during his crossover break is Representative Robin Weisz from District 14. Representative Weisz is a farmer from Hurdsfield. So welcome Representative Weisz. How are you today?

[01:24] Rep. Weisz: Well, thank you and I'm doing very well. And thanks for the invite to visit with your listeners.

[01:31] Emmery: Yeah, thanks for joining me on your time off here. So you are the Speaker of the House.

[01:37] Rep. Weisz: That is correct.

[01:39] Emmery: Tell our listeners a little bit about how you become the Speaker of the House. Is that an elected thing or is it a seniority thing?

[01:47] Rep. Weisz: Speaker of the House is elected by the whole chamber. Republicans, Democrats, what the normal process is, whoever the majority party is, which of course in this case is the Republicans, we have an election, people run to be speaker and then the caucus will choose who to be Speaker. But then there still has to be a vote on the floor of the House among all the members of the House to pick the Speaker. Though, of course, you know, the results basically are a done deal, because if the caucus voted, say in this case, for myself to be speaker, the minority party doesn't have the votes to override it if they did pick something else. In this case, they did cast a unanimous ballot on the floor for me to be Speaker. So to be Speaker of the House is, you do run for election within your caucus and then have a vote by the whole floor.

[02:50] Emmery: Is that usually contested amongst the caucus or is it usually pretty obvious who's going to be the next Speaker?

[02:57] Rep. Weisz: No, it's almost always contested. In my career, maybe only been a handful of times where only one person has decided to run for speaker. We've had two, three, four candidates all run for speaker at the same time.

[03:15] Emmery: Okay. Prior to serving as the Speaker of the House, you were the chairman of.. you'll have to remind me what was your, your responsibilities.

[03:25] Rep. Weisz: The Human Services Committee for eight sessions. And then I, prior to that, I served as chairman of the Transportation Committee for four sessions.

[03:34] Emmery: That's a big committee to chair. There's a lot of responsibilities and I think, I think that is the busiest committee in both sides.

[03:42] Rep. Weisz: You know, even though, you know, we often don't think of it. Human Services affects every, virtually every North Dakota resident. Whether you are maybe struggling in on Medicaid or that, or you have a parent or grandparent that's in long term care or, you know, you need health care services. You know, all of that runs through Human Services. So yeah, it's a big committee. It was an important committee. Just from everything from hospitals to nursing homes to, you know, Medicaid funding, public health, all of those issues. So yeah, we covered a lot of ground then.

[04:23] Emmery: And your background, you are a farmer and then...

[04:30] Rep. Weisz: My whole life! I've done a couple other things. I used to own a grain elevator for about 10 years or 15 years, I guess.

[04:37] Emmery: I've always wondered how it happened that you became the chairman of the Human Services Committee. Was it just long service or how did that come about?

[04:46] Rep. Weisz: You know, the reality is when you're a freshman and we all get to put our choices down on the committees we'd like to serve. And not unexpectedly, I had Human Services as my last choice because frankly, I didn't know anything about it. You know, you pick a three day and a two day. And I had picked Transportation as my first choice. But you know, of course, being bottom of the totem pole, I got stuck on Human Services my first session and then I had the opportunity because I was gonna frankly look elsewhere. But the next session there was an opening. So I became, in my second session, I became the vice chair of Human Services, you know, which is pretty rare back then at least for, you know, second year or session. And then the next session I was given the chairmanship of Transportation. Well, when the current chair of Human Services retired and didn't run again theory, they promoted me to chair, Human Services. And I just been there ever since. So it's been a real learning experience, you know, when you really have no background.

[05:58] Emmery: What year were you originally elected to the House of Representatives?

[06:02] Rep. Weisz: I was elected in 1996. So my first session was in 1997. When I started, my hair was brown and I had lots of it. Not that way anymore.

[06:14] Emmery: You know, it's interesting, I really wanted to emphasize your service on committee you chaired, particularly because you are a farmer from rural North Dakota. And like you said, it wasn't your first choice, but through being on there and having the opportunity to serve as vice chair, even though human services is not your expertise, you developed expertise in that area just because of your service. And the thing that allowed you to do that was the time that you served. And I think that is really significant that we have a rural farmer who was chairing an important committee because of his, his time served. And I, I think that's something we're going to lose when, when term limits goes into effect. And it's just a sad thing to see it's going to be a dying breed of people who have that real knowledge of those things from the time that they've spent there.

[07:12] Rep. Weisz: Well, and there's no question of that. I mean I look around and I realize there's probably plenty who say I've been there too long but you know, the rural districts are already in the minority. If you were going to straight up vote urban and rural, we lose every time. We don't have the votes. I think the only reason that rural still has a seat at the table, if you want to put it that way, and has influence is because you have many of us rural with long-time service have gained the credibility, the knowledge, the respect. You know, I go down the list, you know, that have learned the system, understand what's going on and are able to move forward rural issues and all of us are going to be gone within four years. 

And to me going forward the urban just have a natural built in advantage because Fargo has whatever it is, 23 legislators for example. They're going to know each other. But when everybody's new that legislators say from Bowman may have never heard of the legislator from Grafton. By the time they are able to, you might say, form coalitions and collaborations, I believe the urban will control virtually all the chairmanships and all the leadership. I mean we're fortunate. I mean we have Represent Vigesaa chair our Appropriations Committee, rural. Representative Headland chairs Finance and Tax. I'm Speaker of the House. You know we have a lot of rural people. You know we have Representative Nelson as chair of the Human Resource subsection. You have Representative Monson chairs, and Representative Brandenburg sits on Appropriations. Those are important to ensure that our rural issues are heard and taken into account. And we will lose that. I think there's no question term limits is going to really dilute the influence of rural districts. And that to me is just really unfortunate.

[09:27] Emmery: You have all these issues that get a lot of media attention over the years and usually they're they're hot button issues where there's a lot of emotion or they're just politically interesting for the time. But I think a lot of the things that you, you don't often see hit the news is some of those issues that are very poignant to rural districts. And I think when it comes to how taxes are applied, how the rural representation is set up, how agricultural property is taxed, how rural schools are set up, all of those things, services, et cetera, they're not the flashy issues. And so oftentimes those don't get the attention. And so oftentimes I think people say, "Okay, all we need is to vote in principled people." And I think that's true. I think it's very important to vote in people who have strong principles. 

If you have a offset number where you have more urban people than rural people, you're really going to lose that rural voice. And you can have very principled individuals, but you're not going to have the farmer from Hurdsfield or the farmer, in my case, from Spiritwood, North Dakota, who really understands how the decisions that you guys make out in Bismarck really is going to affect the way that I can plant my crop or the way that I can run my cows or the way that I can drive on my township road and get my kids to whatever activity I'm taking them to. And so I think that's really where that rural representation is so important.

[11:03] Rep. Weisz: Yesterday I was busy with township meetings all day. I would argue that most urban legislators, I'm not even sure if some of them even realize we have township government, but those that do have no idea, for example, how township government works. And so when we've looked at some of these property tax reforms and et cetera, and I would bring up, well, what about... And their like, "Well, who cares? It's not our problem." Like, well, yeah, but it is, because that township has to live with it just the same as the city of Fargo. And some things don't work. 

These small political subdivisions, they operate differently. They're not the same. And think going forward we will, we'll lose that voice and understanding of how important, for example, a township is for making sure there's a road for that farmer to get that commodity to the county road and then to the state highway, for example. You know, without it, things can't move. I have urban legislative friends who don't even think the state should have any funding for any county or township roads because nobody lives out there. Total lack of understanding of what's generating the economy in North Dakota that somehow magically all this stuff will happen regardless that, you know, farmers will raise crops, they'll get them to market, and North Dakota will be the recipient of all that tax revenue that's created from that and the jobs that are created. Yeah, having that historical knowledge experience and real world experience I think is critical. And we're losing it every session, more and more of it, unfortunately.

[12:51] Emmery: So you mentioned how important the rural voice is for township roads, for example. But I want to dive a little bit into your voice from farmer from Hurdsfield, into this property tax conversation. So, this session the governor promised in his State of the State address some sort of property tax reform. And it's been the hottest topic at the Capitol and there's a lot of different ideas out there. Your idea is encapsulated in House Bill 1575, which doesn't just take the residential or the homeowner approach, but it really dives into all of the segments of property tax and residential and commercial and agricultural, which obviously is the agricultural aspect is the one that affects the majority of our listeners. One of the biggest checks we write is property tax. And so if you could please just tell us a little bit about that bill and what your vision for property tax reform in North Dakota looks like.

[14:00] Rep. Weisz: My bill, and I want to caution when I say it's my bill, it truly is a bill that melding together of ideas from several legislators that we've worked on. So I certainly can't take credit for everything that's in there. Just nobody else wanted to put their name on it initially because it is quite a contrast, I guess, to the other major property tax bill, 1176. 

So there's a couple of things that we tried to look at in this bill. And one, I'm convinced that every property tax payer should always have some skin in the game. You know, under the other proposal, potentially you could have a large swath of the voting not paying any property tax at all, and all the load would be on ag and commercial property. You know, under that case, if you're going to vote on a bond issue for anything, whether it's school or a new civic center or new park or whatever, why wouldn't you vote for it when you're not paying for it? And then of course, that whole burden would have ended up going on to ag and commercial, which don't have the votes. 

So my plan, I think is fair across the board. I would have liked to see maybe some little different ratios, but I mean, the Legislature is always about compromise. So under my bill, all residential gets the 30% reduction and there's no application process or anything. The resident doesn't have to do a thing. They will just see a 30% reduction in their property tax bill. Ag and Commercial will see a 15% reduction, same thing, no application process or anything else. I had preferred a 20% reduction, but like I said, it's full of compromise. So that's the relief part. And it also has in there the homestead credit which has a small bump and a renter's credit which has a small increase. And that's the same in both bills. Both 1176 and 1575 all contain a little higher homestead credit income level for, you know, the seniors that qualify, and changes the renters credit from 400 to $600. So that's identical. So on the relief portion, I mean it's about $600 million, but it's across all three. And I believe the Legacy Fund was meant for everybody, not just a certain class. So I think this is spreading the Legacy dollars across the table. One of the things that really got me to push this hard was that under 1176, the 42 most rural counties have about a little over 30% of the taxable value. They were going to get about 12% of the relief.

[17:04] Emmery: Can you say that one more time?

[17:05] Rep. Weisz: So the 42 most rural counties in North Dakota contain about 30% of the property tax value. You know, so 30% of the property you might say is contained in those 42 rural counties. And yet they were only going to get about 12% of that whole release. You know, to me that just inherently unfair. You know, to me it wasn't just about the farmers. It's about, you know, my whole rural district. I mean I have seven rural counties that are within my district and they weren't going to get anything out of this hardly. And to me that was just patently unfair when again the Legacy Fund was for everyone. 

So 1575 does change that mix. I wouldn't say it makes it even, but it certainly helps that I think the relief, if we're looking at long-term relief and it's very simple to implement for the political subdivisions, again there's no application process. They don't have to try to calculate who the primary residence or who isn't. But then the, the other part of this and public has made it very clear they want reforms. And so within 1575 is a cap. And I don't like caps per se. I mean I'm certainly believer in local control, but I also realized that unfortunately, every time the state has bought down property taxes, it doesn't seem like it holds on the local end. And, you know, that's too bad. And we can debate why and all the other issues. So it's important to have some sort of a limitation. But also I think it was important to have a cap that still allows local control, the people to decide if they want to increase their own taxes or not in a way that for our particularly small political subdivisions, that is doable and reasonable. Because if you look at, and I'll just use Bismarck, I think less than 20% of the city of Bismarck's revenue comes from property tax. So actually limiting property tax had very small effect.

[19:25] Emmery: Wow.

[19:26] Rep. Weisz: Now I'll use McClusky in my district. You know, besides probably Prairie Dog funding, virtually all their funding comes from property tax. They don't have a, you know, no major retail because they're all going to Minot or Bismarck, you know, so it's not like McClusky can generate millions in sales tax because they don't have a retail trade because the big cities have already taken that over. So any cap limitation is going to have a way greater effect on my small towns, my counties, because they're way more dependent on property tax. 

I thought it was important that we have a cap. And this is actually a bill by another legislator that was melded into my bill that does have a 3% cap. But it does make it easy for that political subdivision, by a majority vote of the people, they can raise their mill levy for six years by a vote of the people. And they can plan ahead. You know, and if the people say no, okay, the county, city or township, whoever, obviously will have to live with that. But it does make the process a lot simpler for them to determine that, you know, going forward, we have to have more revenue, our insurance costs. We need a new blade, hire an extra deputy or whatever the case may be. They can make their case to the people and have it in place going forward when they're going to need it. And so I think it's a lot easier for them. It still provides for local control, but yet there won't be any of these 10, 20% increases year-to-year that have happened in some locations. So that's really the makeup of the bill to me, it's simple. It's clean. It offers relief for everyone. We can certainly debate, you know, if it should be more here or less there, but it goes across the whole span. It does have reform. It will force the local city, county to justify if they need an increase over that 3% cap. They will have to go to the people on the way this cap is set up. It allows them to plan ahead so they can have a vote in advance to say, "Yeah, we'll give you five more mills." Or "We won't." Well, but then they know going forward, somehow they, they're going to have to keep their budget within that level. And they may say, "Well, you know, we'll have to lay off a blade operator. We won't hire the deputy," or whatever.

[22:08] Emmery: Just to summarize, there's, there's still this other bill that exists out there. And as this next half continues, we're going to see a lot of melding and a lot of you said compromise, a lot of things happening and occurring to really resolve what our ultimate property tax reform is going to look like. But I think what you're saying is really the principle of the matter is that instead of just seeing one really one part of the property tax side just eradicate all of their, their buy-in, so to speak, you're really looking at relief across the whole state. And so looking at, okay, let's give the homes a significant part of this property tax reform so that the people can see that. But let's also not forget commercial and agriculture. I mean, those are the people who have most of the skin in the game. 

I mean, I think the thing with agriculture that's so significant is it's such a unique business where it is family owned in North Dakota. And you're talking about not just our rural land, but our rural families who are willing to come out and they're willing to live in an area where there isn't as many services and there's not as many school options and there's not as many people. And they're willing, they love that. They love the lifestyle. They love planting the crops and raising the cattle and the sheep and whatever livestock. But the concern is to push any sort of property tax reform in such a way that moves a significant portion of the tax load to those families is concerning. And so I really think that the principles behind what your bill does and what it, what it functionally does in whatever form it ends up taking, will hopefully move North Dakota in the direction of holistic property tax reform that takes everybody into account. 

And as much as we want to incentivize families and homeowners to move here and buy a house and live here and send their kids to school, we also want to incentivize businesses to set up and do business here in North Dakota. And they're going to pay that commercial property tax. 

And we want to encourage more young people to come back and take over the farms and increase the number of farmers in North Dakota. And in order to do that, we also don't want to burden them with all of the responsibilities of the property tax. And I really like what you said. If the majority of the people aren't paying the property tax, then when the bonding issue comes up to build a new school or a new whatever, and they're not paying any property tax, they don't mind throwing in an extra 30 bucks or whatever it's gonna be to build that. But really, the commercial and agricultural people are gonna see that load increase. 

And I think the cap side, too, is definitely an appropriate thing. You know, I understand the caution, but at the same time, like you said, you know, the state has given all sorts of relief to the counties. And just to say, okay, you really need to get in line here and show that this means something. And in order to do that, putting that cap on of 3% and say, okay, you're accountable to keep your increases low. And I really think that if there's an emergency or some sort of disaster comes and they need to increase the mills or they need increased taxation to pay for something, giving that to the people to decide really makes sense. And I think I just am grateful for you and the other rural representation in Bismarck to really look at the state as a whole, at all of our industry, at all of our families and say, "Okay, how can we really give the most relief to everybody in our state?" And thank you for going through your bill and for representing rural North Dakota and Bismarck.

[25:54] Rep. Weisz: Thank you for inviting me. And again, I'll say this, that it's very important from a rural perspective that they need to make sure their legislators understand the importance of rural. And what a key it is still to the state of North Dakota. Ag is still, number one, that message needs to be out there. Legislators in Bismarck need to know just how important ag truly is yet to the state.

[26:22] Emmery: So North Dakota is still primarily an agriculture state and will continue to be so for many years to come. Well, thank you, Representative Weisz, for joining me today, and I hope that you have a safe trip back to Bismarck tomorrow.

[26:37] Rep. Weisz: And it'll be tonight, the early day tomorrow, already, so.

[26:41] Emmery: All right, well, we'll see you on the House floor. So thank you again. Have a great day.

[26:46] Rep. Weisz: All right. Thank you!

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[26:50] Emmery: You've been listening to Straight Talk with NDFB. If you have any questions or input for the podcast, please contact us at emmery@ndfb.org.

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