Covering fiscal, tax and agricultural ground with Rep. Mike Brandenburg

The Legislative Session has reconvened after crossover and Straight Talk host Emmery Mehlhoff visits with Rep Mike Brandenburg from Edgeley, North Dakota. He is a farmer and serves on the LaMoure County Farm Bureau Board of Directors and has served in the North Dakota House of Representatives since 1997. 

Emmery and Rep. Brandenburg have a laid-back conversation about hauling corn to the ethanol plant, drainage policy, property tax reform, North Dakota’s fiscal outlook, and much more. Join us for this episode. 

To see Rep. Brandenburg’s legislation and contact him, visit https://ndlegis.gov/biography/mike-brandenburg

Contact our host at emmery@ndfb.org

Don’t miss out on issues important to ag. Subscribe to NDFB’s Legislative Front. 

Transcript

[Straight Talk theme]

[00:11] Emmery: Welcome to Straight Talk with NDFB. This is your host, Emmery Mehlhoff. In today's episode, we travel to Bismarck to visit with Representative Mike Brandenburg from Edgley, North Dakota. Mike is a farmer and has served in the North Dakota House of Representatives since 1997. Representative Brandenburg visits with me about his history, some of the pieces of legislation that he has in the session this year, and the financial outlook for North Dakota. Join us for this episode.

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[00:45]Emmery: Well, welcome to Straight Talk with NDFB. Today. I have Representative Mike Brandenburg with me today. Mike is an old time friend of the North Dakota Farm Bureau. He has served as a delegate on our House of Delegate floor many times and he's been around for a long time, so I can see his face. But you all will know him by his voice. So welcome Mike.

[01:07] Rep. Brandenburg: Yeah, thank you, Emmery. And also I'm on the Lamoure County Farm Bureau board too, so I'm active. I just last couple, you know, last annual meeting, I didn't make it to, but I plan on being there in the future.

[01:19] Emmery: So you have been an important part of our policy development process and then also an important voice for rural North Dakota out in Bismarck.

[01:28] Rep. Brandenburg: Thank you.

[01:29] Emmery: Why don't you tell us a little bit more about who you are and the area that you're from. Representative Brandenburg and I were just joking before we got started about how he will often see our family in the ethanol line in Spiritwood. He hauls corn to Spiritwood. He has a little bit of a farther drive, I believe, though. So why don't you just tell us about where you're from, etcetera.

[01:51] Rep. Brandenburg: Yep. No, Emmery. I live in Lamoure County in a city north of Edgeley in Nora Township. And so that's, I'm Nora Township supervisor and I, our family has been there in Nora and Ray Township since 1902. So we are, you know, I'm a fourth generation farmer. My sons are the fifth and my, my grandsons and granddaughters are the sixth. We got 18 grandkids, so some of them are going to farm. We got nine boys and nine girls and, and so we're, we, we work on agriculture, raise corn and beans and farm in the Edgeley area, kind of north, northwest Lamoure County and parts of Stutsman County. And we do haul corn to the ethanol plant. I see your husband on the scale and we wave at each other and he's going the other way. I'm coming off or going on or one of the two. But yeah, we, the ethanol plant, we do haul a lot of corn there and you know, between our local elevator too, in Edgeley, as well as Verona, because when you're at harvest time, you can't sit in line for two hours. When you're, you got to do it when the off season, when you halt the ethanol plant. But they all have a place. So that's, that's our, our family. My, my wife and me, we live in northwest of Edgeley, as well, as well as the rest of our family.

[03:13] Emmery: And you have served in the Legislature for several years now. How many, how many are you working on there?

[03:20] Rep. Brandenburg: I came in in 1997, so this is my 14th session, 28 years. So I'm one of the good old boys they're trying to run out. I'm hanging in here, yet I got a little bit more time. But, but you know, it's, it's what, it's what I've been doing and I kind of enjoy it. And you often wonder why you do, but every once in a while you do something good and nobody knows you did it, but I do and I feel kind of good about that.

[03:48] Emmery: Well, and I think you are one of the few currently active farmers that serve in our Legislature as well. And that, that is a rare thing. It's becoming rarer than it used to be. I bet probably back in the day you could look at the, the citizen legislature of North Dakota and say, hey, a lot of those guys either farm or used to farm. And now you look at them and yeah, maybe they had farming in their background, but very few of them are actively farming it.

[04:14] Rep. Brandenburg: Yeah, no, Emmery, I would say in the, and we kind of talked about this, that there's probably five senators over in the Senate that are actively farming that probably about right. There's probably 10 farmers in the House that are actively farming and doing a day to day. Otherwise, you know, there's, there's probably another 10 to, you know, maybe 20 have some roots to the farm. But we're having less and less of people that our generation past that. 

And so when it comes to agriculture issues, they're all going get up and talk, you know, because they're, they're wondering, "Well, what do we do?" Like today we had example on dealing with, you know, wells out in western North Dakota with the grasslands and there was questions about the match money and how it works and, and you know, we had, you know, there's a lot of federal land out in western North Dakota with the Grazing Association and between Representative Kempenich and myself and then Representative Beltz too, we had to explain to them how it really works so that they'd understand it, because it was like, "Well, why?" 

Well, they don't own the land. And, you know, cattle, they don't, you know, if you get a hot day, they're not going to walk more than a half a mile to graze. If it's a cool day, maybe they go a mile. They got to have water. So they take some of these old oil wells and convert them into water wells. You know, it's hard to put a bunch of money on land you don't own, especially when it's a federal land, because you don't know how long the lease is going to last. So this is what we're doing was that program. And, and so we explained it. It passed. Very few voted against it, but there was a lot of questions. And they said, well, it's a good thing you got up. And then I mentioned, you know, that you can have grass out there belly deep and the cows won't even go there. It's like a desert, you know. And so that's why people come up to me after it, "What's belly deep grass mean?" It was kind of funny, so I had to explain. "Well, it's a cow's belly, you know. You know, waist high, whatever."  But it was kind of cute. But people don't know. That's how, if you're not connected to agriculture, you don't know what that means. And so, yeah, that's, that's the things that we do in dealing with agriculture and in the Capitol here.

[06:17] Emmery: Yeah, and that puts you and the other Aggies in the capital with a heavy job with the lifting of the bills that are agriculture-related. And so on that note, I want to dive into some of your legislation this session. I believe one of them is 1208 relating to drainage. Let's just dive into some water issues right away. You talked about some of the grazing situations, and then we'll, we'll talk about some of the other bills you have.

[06:41] Rep. Brandenburg: Yeah, Emmery, I can't even remember all the numbers of my bill, so I'm just going to tell you what's going on with water drainage. And when we came here this session, there was no money there for water conveyance. And right now we've got $15 million dealing with legal drains. There's still, I think there's around 70 million for rural water projects. So it doesn't interfere with the rural water projects, but $15 million is dedicated to going to legal drains. And also before it was at 45% is all that the state would match where now it's going to be up to 60% match. So the local would be 40 and the state would be 60, which coincides with a lot of other programs that they have. 

And then we're also dealing with some of the cost-benefit analysis stuff, which really doesn't work when you get into agricultural issues because it works for rural municipalities and looking at how many points to get. But when it comes to agriculture, it really doesn't work because they don't put the cost-benefit analysis doesn't go into how it takes care of land and moving the water off the land and the salt salinity in the soil. All you can do is drain tile to remove the salinity in the soil. 

And so anyway, Governor Armstrong has been in, his staff at the water commission have been very, very workable and very accommodating. And I think we've got some good legislation. We're also looking at, you know, legal drain 11, which, you know, the Supreme's ruled there has to be a vote over there. And, and that bill has got good support. I believe that's going to pass, dealing with allowing Sargent County to have a vote without Ransom County voting. Voting because Ransom County doesn't pay the assessment, but yet they're in the watershed district. But since they've never paid the assessment because the fear has always been if they have a vote, Ransom County would vote no. Well, they don't pay nothing and then could fail. And so this would allow them to vote without Ransom County being a part of it. That's a big deal for Sargent County because they need to have a vote to move forward on that legal drain. And it's not just legal drain 11. There's probably 100 legal drains in the state of North Dakota. Sargent County's got nine. So you can kind of go up and down the valley all the way from Canada to South Dakota and go 100 miles from the Red River Valley. That's where the legal drains are. Devil's Lake has some. And there's some others around the state, but that's where the majority of them are. And so these, these issues have been ongoing. And so we're working on trying to resolve these issues. And I think we're getting some good things done with water conveyance this session.

[09:22] Emmery: Well, and legal drains are really one of those things, like you mentioned before, that if you're not in the agriculture world and if you don't have water. So if you're in western North Dakota, you might not understand how much these drains affect the farmers out there who are trying to do some drain tile, who are trying to move the water off their property, and how important this legal drain is for the agriculture community at large.

[09:45] Rep. Brandenburg: Yeah, well, and that's the thing, Emmery. In Sargent County, in five miles, the drain drops seven feet. I mean, it's just a little more than a foot a mile. And so you get a little bit of trees that back up the ditch. You get trees growing in the ditch, you get corn stalks in the ditch. And so they got to be cleaned out. You got to get these legal drains cleaned out so the water can move. Otherwise it just backs up and then you got a bunch of salinity spots in your soil. And that's a, that's a big deal for agriculture when nothing grows. And over time, that's what it does.

[10:23] Emmery: So on that note, you mentioned that the forecast, the revenue forecast came in a little bit under what it was projected. Can you just tell us a little bit about how that process works and what's even looked at that make the experts say, "Hey, we're going to get less money than we expected?"

[10:42] Rep. Brandenburg: Well, Emory, this thing, this, this. The state runs on three things. Agriculture is a third, energy is a third, and oil is about 80% of that. And the other third is all the rest. That's how the state runs. Now, you could say it might be 31 or 36 or whatever, but that's pretty much how it floats around a little bit. And agriculture right now, as you know, you farm, you know, you farm, the corn prices aren't so hot. You know, soybean prices aren't so hot. You know, so the ag sector is down, and then the oil price too has went down. And so when the oil price was lowered down, I think we're at $58 a barrel the first year and 56 the second year. Last session, we were in the 60s, 65 and 67. It's $10 a barrel. Now, that could change if something happens and oil prices go high. Everybody would be happy. 

But it wasn't that long ago, in 2015 and '17, we were dealing with $40 barrel of oil and the Prairie Dog [fund] didn't fill. And there's a lot of cuts made and it wasn't very much fun up here, and it wasn't fun back home. The only way we're going to be able to work ourselves out of this is to develop our oil industry, because we were at 1.5 million barrel barrels of oil a day. Now we're at 1.1, 1.2, somewhere in that range. It changes in every month. But for every 100 million barrels of oil that we produce a day, that's another $500 million a year for oil, a biennium. But if you can go, we can get back up to 1.5 million barrels a day and stay at that $60 range. That's $1.5 billion more. It takes care of all our problems. 

But in the central part of the state where we live, you know, we lost three legislative districts this last three districts, 20, 26 went out west, 23 went out west, and the district 10 went to Fargo. And along with that is the people that live there. So, you know, if your kids and my grandkids, because you know that if they're going to stay here and work at jobs, we got to have. We got to have something for them to do. They got to have a job, they got to make a living. And, and so that's. That's some of the reasons why I'm doing what I do.

[13:06] Emmery: And on that note, I just, you know, property tax reform is the biggest topic at the Capitol. It's something that we've talked about on every podcast here. What is the outlook so far? I mean, we're right after crossover. I saw that 1176 went through the, the governor's property tax reform package went through the Senate Tax and Finance Committee today. So what are we looking at here? What is... Is agriculture going to get any relief reform or really what's the outlook here?

[13:37] Rep. Brandenburg: Well, Emmery, that's all over in the Senate right now. And, you know, we passed them all over here in the House and send them over to the Senate.

[13:44] Emmery: And give it to those guys.

[13:46] Rep. Brandenburg: Yeah, yeah. We did a good job. Well, the discussion is, is a lot about what are we going to do for agriculture. And so... that's, that's a big part of this discussion where it's going to end up. You know, you've seen the debate that happened over in the Senate with Senator Erbele's bill, because that, you know, ended up being a 24. What was it? 24. 24, yeah.

[14:09] Emmery: Yeah. Tight.

[14:10] Rep. Brandenburg: And so then it failed. But we do have some good things happening with flex funding for transportation. There's $223 million in that. And what that means, that's for the cities and the counties and the townships, like, for a township would amount to somewhere around $25-$30,000 a biennium, for road funding, which is a big number, too. So all them things are kind of in play. It's, you know, there's a... I would say that property tax for the rural area, we're pushing on it, but there's pushback from the urban areas on that, too. But we do have solid support for road funding, which is a important part too, for, for our rural, you know, our roads are, that's a big deal, too.

[14:56] Emmery: Yeah, no, I mean, get, get out to the field. Getting close to that time of year. And some of those roads are just frankly unpassable and so.

[15:07] Rep. Brandenburg: Spongy. Yeah, they're gonna get spongy, aren't they?

[15:09] Emmery: Yeah, that's when you.

[15:10] Rep. Brandenburg: That's when you gotta load the truck back a little less.

[15:13] Emmery: Well, thank you so much, Representative Brandenburg, for visiting with me today. I hope that spring isn't next week or the week after for your sake, so you don't miss your, miss your planting. But I hope, you know, for my. I hope that, you know, it's a little sooner than later. And yeah, I really appreciate the work that you're doing out in Bismarck and always enjoy visiting with you. So...

[15:32] Rep. Brandenburg: And just so you know, my son Micah, you know, he's, he's boss man out there, my son Marcus, too, and, and anyway, he called me today and he said, "How long are you going to be up there?" I said, "It might be the end of, end of April." He says, "You better be home by the end of April."

[15:49] Emmery: He wants his employee back.

[15:52] Rep. Brandenburg: He says, "You know, we're going to be in the field spreading fertilizer maybe next week, you know." And I said, "Well, that's... I'm here. I'm doing the good work." Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's something like that.

[16:02] Emmery: They were rock picking here today, so. Yeah.

[16:05] Rep. Brandenburg: Really?

[16:05] Emmery: Yeah, they were. I'm pretty sure he was just showing off, but there's somebody out rock picking, so.

[16:10] Rep. Brandenburg: Well, you know, they've been hauling corn to the ethanol plant and then they, you know what they say, you know, "Dad, your truck is sitting by the shed."

[16:20] Emmery: All right, well, you better finish up your work and get back in that truck, there, Mike. All right, we'll talk to you later.

[16:27] Rep. Brandenburg: Nice talk. Bye.

[Straight Talk stinger]

[16:28] Emmery: You've been listening to Straight Talk with NDFB. To contact us, visit us at emmery@ndfb.org.

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