People who are familiar with my body of work probably aren't inclined to think of me when they have an appetite for warm, fuzzy, feel-good stories, and yet that's precisely the sort of story we began today's episode of Plain Talk with. Which is a good thing, because as we survey the political landscape, there's not a lot to feel positive about.

Joe Kolosky works for the North Dakota Department of Public Instruction. He says one of the favorite parts of his job is overseeing a program through which veterans of World War II, the Korean War, and Vietnam, can apply to receive the high school diplomas they missed out on when they shipped out to war zones.

The Legislature created the program in 2001 for WWII veterans, and expanded it to include Korea and Vietnam veterans in 2003, and since then it's issued over 300 honorary high school diplomas including, most recently, two Korean War veterans.

Koslosky says it means a lot to him that he gets to help these veterans, but more important, it means a great deal to the veterans themselves. Those who feel they or someone they know may qualify for it should contact the Department of Public Instruction. Officials only need you to fill out a one-page application, and provide a the veteran's paperwork verifying their service.

Also on this episode, Chad Oban and I discuss the recent FEC filngs in North Dakota's federal races, our thoughts on the likely outcomes of those races, and the future of the North Dakota Republican Party's dominance in electoral office.

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By the time her current term ends, Kirsten Baesler will have been the Superintendent of Public Schools in North Dakota for 12 years, having first been elected in 2012.

She's currently running against Jason Heitkamp, a distant relative of former U.S. Senator Heidi Heitkamp and a former lawmaker who served one abbreviated, two-term in the state Senate as a Republican from 2021 to 2022 (redistricting forced him to run for re-election after two years, a campaign he lost).

Heitkamp and Baesler met on this episode of Plain Talk for what has been, and perhaps will be, their only debate. Each presented sharply contrasting views of the job of superintendent, and repeatedly accused one another of lying or misleading.

For her part, Baesler championed her performance in office since 2012. "I've accomplished a lot," she said, noting that she's reduced the number of employees in her office from 101 to 82 while simultaneously maintaining the highest level of job satisfaction among state agencies. She also touted her background as an educator. She's worked as a teacher, and served in administrative and governing positions at the local level.

"A lot of people don't know who I am," Heitkamp said by way of introduction but pointed out that in addition to his legislative service, he's also served on two city councils and as a county commissioner. He also accused both the incumbent and public school educators generally of performing poorly.

"We can't afford another four years of what's happening in our state," he said.

The candidates took questions about student attendance issues, teacher recruitment and retention, vaccination rates, and classroom challenges related to mental health and education.

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On this episode of Plain Talk, Chad Oban and I spent some time talking about the column in which I outed myself as a Kamala Harris voter. Or, more accurately, I spent some time expanding on my explanation, and Chad listened.

But the more important part of this episode was our conversation with Sen. Michelle Axtman, a Republican from Bismarck who is something of a rising star in her party (she was transparent about her ambitions during our off-air conversation, saying her goal is to be elected governor one day).

Axtman is heading up a legislative tax force on the school choice issue that has drawn some heat for not being as open as it should be to the public, and some criticssay  (including Chad, who works for North Dakota United) not including as wide a swath of education stakeholders as it could have.

Axtman took those questions, and answered them, but also delivered a clearer picture of just what it is they're working on.

School choice is a fraught topic because, when most people think about it, their minds turn to vouchers. They envision parents getting money to use for private school tuition. That's the part that many public school educators and their advocates don't like. They're afraid that the money will drain resources from public schools and create more profits for private schools that are, for the most part, doing pretty well.

But what Sen. Axtman describes is a program that goes far beyond that.

Yes, it would provide some money for tuition, but the framework she and her colleagues are working toward could also make money available for people with children in public schools. Money that could be used to get a tutor for a student struggling with a subject, or to pay for online lessons to help a student pursue a particular interest like coding or languages, or even to help a student with special needs -- maybe they're dealing with dyslexia or another challenge -- get some help beyond what the schools can provide.

It's a fascinating proposal, and it will be a fascinating debate in the upcoming legislative session.

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We are 31 days away from election day and, here in North Dakota, the hottest race in the state probably isn't for the U.S. Senate, or the U.S. House, or even the governor's seat. It is, arguably, Measure 4 which, if passed, would eliminate taxes on property values and order the Legislature to compensate local governments for that loss of revenue at 2024 levels.

It's such a hot issue that when Prairie Public recently hosted a debate between U.S. Senate candidates Kevin Cramer and Katrina Christiansen, they asked the candidates about Measure 4, even though that issue really has nothing to do with the federal office they're running for.

Aaron Birst joined this episode of Plain Talk to discuss Measure 4, and what's driving both the support for it and opposition to it. Aaron is the executive director of the North Dakota Association of Counties.

"The only tax people like is the one somebody else pays," he told Chad Oban and I.

Birst isn't arguing that there are no problems with local taxing and spending. "Do we need to have a conversation about how much we spend at the local level? Sure," he said, though he argued that Measure 4 just isn't the right fix.

"We can try something different. I'm just not sure we're going to find something better," he said. He also argued that passing Measure 4 could create legal and policy-making chaos that would be with North Dakota for a long time. "If this passes...we're probably going to have a decade of court cases to figure out what this means."

Also on this episode, Oban and I discuss the recently-released polling in North Dakota's statewide races, and some intrigue at the North Dakota Industrial Commission.

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Todd Reisenauer says he'd like to get elected to the North Dakota House of Representatives so that he can take Fargo-area District 46 in a new direction. He said he'd like to focus on issues like housing, healthcare, childcare, and property taxes.

What he doesn't want to do, he says, is emulate the approach taken by one of incumbents in that district, state Rep. Jim Kasper, who has been in the center of debates over social issues like book bans and issues surrounding our transgender neighbors.

"We can't have District 46 be the front lines of a culture war," Reisenauer told Chad Oban and I on this episode of Plain Talk.

The legislative races in District 46 are worth watching. The jurisdiction represents one of the few purple districts in North Dakota and has a history of mixed-partisan leadership.

Reisenauer said he admired the work done by another of the Republican incumbents in the district, outgoing Rep. Shannon Roers, who opted not to run for reeelction. He said he got interested in the race when he heard Roers was retiring, and that he wants to continue her work of making District 46 "a bipartisan, get things done kind of district."

"We're burning people out," Reisenauer said, addressing the polarized nature of politics in 2024. "I'm not an activist," he added, saying he has no interested in playing partisan politics and "selling fear."

"I don't want to be a part of that," he said, adding that he's "not afraid to say conservatives have good policy ideas, and that sometimes Demcorats overshoot."

Also on this episode, Oban and I discuss the vice presidential debate between Sen. J.D. Vance and Gov. Tim Walz, and the news of a North Dakota man, the son of a Republican legislative candidate in District 24, getting arrested for his alleged participation in the January 6 attack on Congress.

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Steve Bakken is the former mayor of Bismarck, and the chair of the committee backing Measure 5, which seeks to legalize recreational marijuana in North Dakota.

Pat Finken is a long-time advertising professional and political activist. He's a part of the coalition opposing Measure 5.

These gentleman came together on Plain Talk to make their respective cases. The contrasts in their arguments, as you might expect, were sharp.

Bakken says Measure 5 is a "very conservative" legalization that gives state officials plenty of latitude to regulate lawful use of the drug. The measure "gives all the power to the state," he said.

But Finken painted the measure as exacerbating North Dakota's existing problems with substance abuse. "The marijuana of today is not safe," he said. "It's ten times more powerful" than what Americans have may been smoking in past decades. He rejected the argument that marijuana legalization is inevitable, saying that even if North Dakota were the last state in the union without legal access for recreational use, he wouldn't mind it.

"I'm perfectly content for North Dakota to remain an island," he said.

Bakken, for his part, argued that Finken's alarmism is out of date. "That reefer madness mentality goes back to the 50s."

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Is Attorney General Drew Wrigley's office wasting money on unnecessary litigation? Is North Dakota's Republican majority in the Legislature being something less than good stewards of our fiscal resources by passing controversial bills that invite litigation?

House Minority Leader Zac Ista, who led his caucus in voting against approving attitional litigation funds for Wrigley's office at a recent meeting of the Legislature's Budget Section committee, joined this episode of Plain Talk to discuss it.

Though, given that one of the laws currently being litigated is North Dakota's restrictive ban on most abortions, that dominated the conversation, which had my co-host Chad Oban calling me "raging Rob."

Admittedly, I have been a bit feisty lately.

But abortion litigation isn't the only cost North Dakota is facing. The biggest line item for litigation costs recently is related to our state's suit against the federal government over the expenses associated with responding to the violent, protracted protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline. And aren't we prone to seeing the efficacy of any given litigation through the lens of our feelings about the policy being litigated? Isn't it natural that Democrats might not like the policy and legal priorities of a Republican majority, and a Republican attorney general?

Rep. Ista answered those questions and more.

Also on this episode, we discuss the odds of Measure 4 passing on the November ballot.

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If you read the ballot language for Measure 3 and still didn't understand just what it is the proposed constitutional amendment does, I wouldn't blame you.

I don't think that's anyone's fault. It's just a somewhat arcane topic, but that doesn't mean it's not important.

State Rep. Corey Mock joined us on this episode of Plain Talk to discuss the proposal, which would make some changes around the Legacy Fund, which these days is sporting a balance of around $11 billion.

Currently, lawmakers have the statutory authority to spend up to 15% of the principal of that fund. Mock said that was written into the original amendment that created the fund to ensure that at least some of it was available to lawmakers should some emergent situation make it necessary. But when the Legacy Fund was created, nobody expected it to grow as far and as fast as it has. Mock said the original projects for the fund expected it to cross the $1 billion threshold by like 2021.

Clearly, we're well beyond that, but the Legislature's authority to spend as much as 15% of it has resulted in some lost opportunities. The fund managers have to keep those funds liquid, because theoretically the Legislature could come calling for them. Measure 3 shrinks that from 15% to 5%.

Given that the Legacy Fund is much, much larger now than we expected when that original 15% limit was written into the constitution, lowering still leaves plenty of money available to lawmakers in an emergency, but allows the fund managers to invest more of the principal and get bigger returns.

Also on this episode, guest co-host Jamie Selzler and I discuss the state of the presidential race.

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Are the proponents of Measure 2 "elite and out of touch?" Are they "condescending" and "disrespectful" to the electorate? Or do they view North Dakota's initiated measure process -- particularly when it comes to amending the state constitution -- as flawed and needing reform?

Measure 2 is a constitutional amendment placed on the ballot by the Legislature, which would prohibit people who aren't North Dakota residents from collecting petition signatures for initiated measures. It would limit measures to a single subject. And, for constitutional measures, it would raise the signature requirement from 4% to 5% of the state's population and require that those proposals be approved through two statewide votes: once on the June primary ballot and again on the November general election ballot.

Ellie Shockley, a columnist for the Bismarck Tribune, joined this episode of Plain Talk to make the case against the proposal. It's her words that I'm quoting above. She views this proposed amendment as motivated by a desire among lawmakers to diminish the will of the people in making policy.

Sen. Janne Myrdal, a Republican from Edinburg, also joined this episode, and she argued that it's become too easy for deep-pocketed, often out-of-state interests to hire professional signature gatherers (who themselves are often not North Dakotans) to force a vote on complicated policy proposals that aren't often explained well to the voters.

This point-and-counterpoint conversation at times got heated, because it deals with some of the bedrock assumptions we make about our system of government. The political power in our republic ultimately comes from the people, but as a question of process, is legislating what are often complicated policy proposals at the ballot box where a distracted electorate, already asked to evaluate candidates for everything from weed control boards to president of the United States, really a good way to make sound policy?

The Plain Talk Podcast is the voice of North Dakota politics. To subscribe, search for the show wherever you get your podcasts, like Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube, or click here for more information.

In November, North Dakota voters will be asked to decide the fate of Measure 4. If approved, it would amend the state constitution to prohibit taxes on property values. It would also lock in an obligation for the state legislature to replace current property tax revenues to local government with other revenues, but only at 2024 levels, with no mechanism to change that level in the future.

On this episode of Plain Talk, we had a debate about that proposal. Making the affirmative case for it is former Fargo City Commissioner Tony Gehrig. Making the case against it is Robert Harms, a former chair of the North Dakota Republican Party who also served in the administrations of former governors Ed Schafer and John Hoeven.

Former state lawmaker Rick Becker, the chair of the committee sponsoring the measure, declined to participate in the debate, saying the Plain Talk podcast is the only place where he won't speak about the proposal.

Both Harms and Gehrig agree on some key issues. They say that property taxes are a problem in North Dakota in need of a solution. They both also agree that taxing property values is problematic. As property values rise, they drive almost automatic increases in tax burdens that aren't tied to local needs.

Where they differ is the nature of the solution. Harms argues that abolishing property taxes would shift too much power over local spending to lawmakers in Bismarck. He also said that it "freezes some unfairness" in the state constitution by locking in funding for local governments at 2024 levels. A local government that made a big bond payment in 2024 would continue to be compensated for it by state taxpayers well into the future, even after the bond is paid off. A local government that kept property taxes low, on the other hand, would be punished for their conservative budgeting.

For his part, Gehrig argued that eliminating property taxes would be an economic boon to the state, drawing new investment. During his time in office, Gehrig was an outspoken opponent of policies that seek to incent economic development by easing or eliminating property tax burdens, but he used that stance as an argument for Measure 4. "If you believe those policies work, then you have to believe in Measure 4," he said.

The Plain Talk Podcast is the voice of North Dakota politics. To subscribe, search for the show wherever you get your podcasts, like Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube, or click here for more information.