c-span, your unfiltered view of politics. so we this year, c-span celebrates 45 years of covering congress like no other. providing balanced, unfiltered coverage of government, taking you to where the policy is decided with the support of america's cable companies. c-span, 45 years and counting powered by cable. on wednesday, president biden and first lady jill biden hold a dinner. watch arrivals live at 5:30 p.m. eastern on our website, c- span.org or c-span now, our digital app. we will feature highlights from the evening and toast given at

the dinner. watch the state dinner wednesday on the c-span networks. now onto north dakota for remarks on the elimination of income tax during the state of the state address. goals to increase financial literacy in the state. he is currently in his second term and will not be seeking re- election in 2024. >> oh, come on. good morning. thank you for the warm welcome

and for all the people that are watching online or listening remotely, thank you for joining us for the 24 state of the state. you have been welcome this morning and i want to give out a special shout out to a few people. i have to start out with first lady catherine and her family members, she is here with her sister julie and cousin lisa and watching online, the rest of our extended families. i think there are a lot of elected officials, when you serve, your family serves with you. at this time, i want to thank them for all of their support. today is a special day because it is jesse's birthday. one, two, three, yell happy birthday, jesse. this will be the largest group that has yelled happy birthday in her lifetime. here we go. happy birthday jesse. way to go. you guys did fantastic.

you saw her here on stage, how grateful am i to have such an outstanding partner and lieutenant governor, tammy miller. we had a historic year when it comes to milestones in progress. her background in finance as a ceo of a company with 4000 people operating in 29 states, you rarely get people that leave the private sector. first as chief operating officer, making a huge difference as we transform government and treat taxpayers as the customers that they are. i want to say thank you, tammy miller for your great leadership. kicking us off today, we have president steve easton here,

thank you so much for hosting us, i have seen a lot of clever ways to try and impress the legislature to give more money for improvements. pulling the plug right as we were getting here. president easton, that was brilliant. for legislators, look at the electrical back here. tammy did not think it past code. there are some updates that can be made. here we are in the auditorium. the namesake, as you know, she was the second rough rider award winner and won the highest honor for citizens in 1961. her success was as a broadway actress. mayor scott decker, the city commissioners, the whole group, fantastic job in the legislature kicking us off today, are majority leaders

were minority leaders and statewide electives, you have all been recognized, thank you for your important leadership. they are busy working in d.c., i want to say how fortunate we are as a state to have senator kramer and three people that are in strong powerful positions in d.c. and are good at their jobs as legislators. they push back on the federal government, let's say thanks right now. and we have got our supreme court, most of them right here, and some district court justices, we have three great branches of government in our state, we do collaborate, and over my time, does the

demographics of retirements is the major reason. we have set a record that few people know about. i have the honor of appointing 20 different district judges and two supreme court judges. sometimes you look back on history, the governor in eight years might appoint 2-4. we have done 20. the process has been an important one. as part of appointing 22 judges, you get to interview 75 different people in the judicial system. i always ask them, how much of your job as a judge advocate and defender working in our system in north dakota, or if they have been in private practice, working as criminal defense work. how much of your work would go away if we could eliminate behavioral health and the disease of addiction. i have never heard an answer below 75% of the work. think of what we spend on the

judicial system dealing with downstream problems of something we can work to fix up. keep that in the back of your mind when we are talking about behavioral health. we do a nice job on the backend. i want to say to our clerks and administrators also, around the judicial district, they work behind the scenes and never get recognized enough. they keep the wheels of justice moving in these districts across our state. thank you to all of those front- line workers in the judicial system. and since this is a day for reflection, this is a duty and honor to do that. after i appoint them, everybody calls them your honor. due to the legislative budget

cuts in the office, i have to write all my own jokes. i did learn this last week, how do you know when a joke becomes a dad joke. it becomes apparent. the toughest job for elected officials, we have great chairs right now and tribal councils. mark fox, marine veteran. chairman garrett renville, incredible folks. we have made so much progress

on the seven years we have been working. one of our main objectives is state and tribal initiatives. to build respect. the collaboration we have had is historic. the late senator was a cook out of service last friday. they came to his prayer service and gave him a star blanket for the work that he had done on making sure we have fairness and equity on those tax agreements. the tax agreements that have been going on for 20 years. public health agreements that improved emergency response. to work with the tribes on cybersecurity because they were being attacked through ransomware from foreign enemies. we look forward to building on all of this progress we have had.

we shared geography with them. i remind everyone, yes, there are members of tribes that are sovereign nations, they are a north dakota citizen. from a government standpoint, i would say and encourage all of you to join in strengthening the government to government relationship. this is the main conference that we have, you all are invited. every agency. we have great turnout from all of you, i want to say, when we have had federal partners calm, this is the best government tribal to state conference in the country. if you are in the private sector, there is economic opportunities as well. we are grateful today for the dedicated cabinet leaders that we have. it is so important when you are leading and credit goes to the governor and lieutenant governor, you cannot get any of

these things done, unless you have people that are driving the same direction. it has been such an honor to work with these leaders that we have. we have two that have joined in the last year. we are very much looking forward to working with her. she is off to a superstrong's start. we are digging in as hard as ever on strategic planning processes with all of you, over 75 agencies will be there and the budget process that follows it. we are committed to delivering a budget address next december before the end of my terminal. we will be delivered the best budget the state has ever received, we are super committed to that process to make sure that you have the very best starting point in the legislature to make smart investments to move everything forward. our i.t.

director has been running last year. we have been under invested. i want to say thank you to him for all of the collaboration we have had there. we have three new commissioners that started last week. one was an external hire. i deputy in texas, a much larger job moving here for the largest agency in terms of budget and people. brad hawk who has been part of our team for a long time, he is taking over and thank you to colby braun, he spent time last year in dickinson in new england, he knows the system and is fantastic. let's give them a hand and say, thank you. and of course, we have a small but mighty governor's office

team. we are not a big agency but we pack a wall up and get a lot done because that is the team that we have. they work around the clock and i know that every one of them will be running through the tape december 14th, not coasting to the finish line. get ready for things that will be announced this year that are not being announced today. we will keep driving the agenda forward. we did make historic progress working with all of you across so many things, some of the things that we have accomplished have been long- standing issues. we have a commonsense solution where none could be found before. these are benefiting our citizens in a huge way. some of you in a big way helped with that. one where we did not talk about the session at all, we solved it. we have been protecting over

25% of k-12 students in the entire university that the state owns, $60 billion in property value was completely stalled by the state of minnesota for 53 reasons. we work together and we got it done and we solved all 53 things with minnesota. now it is being built by 2027, we will have 250,000 people that don't have to worry about buying sandbags anymore. that will help economic growth continue in that market. pension reform, it has been tried. it happened this year. $1.9 million of unfunded liability. we met the obligations completely of team members and retirees. they are protected.

we have a plan to allow us and cabinet leaders to recruit young people to work for the state of south dakota. thank you, great job. this has been tried since 2000. we lose more than 100 people per year to offers in our country. we have a goal of saying that there is no acceptable number other than zero. oh, we got down to 75, that is a son or daughter or niece or nephew or someone you know. what we can do with human services, a lot of these are driving issues, it took the legislature to drive and get this thing done and we got it passed. one of the last seats -- states to have a primary seatbelt law.

there is nothing in the constitution that says you can drive, you need a license and you have to be vilified and not be impaired and you have to be qualified to do that. learning to drive is something you apply for and get the skill to do that. it's okay if we say that if you want to be doing that you have to achieve these things. good job, we got it done, that will save lives. corporate farming, we had the most outdated corporate farming laws in the country. compared to iowa and nebraska. killed. if you take a look around here, we were down to almost no sheep herds in the state. we had 12,000 dairy cattle in our state. importing milk into the state of north dakota.

running a dairy in oregon and they had 35,000 dairy cattle and we had only 12,000. we killed the industry, we killed it, we got a past last spring. he was created to us. we carved out and said, animal agriculture, we will protect family farming. corporations cannot own land here. if you and i wanted to start a farm together, we could not start a farm together here. we have the tightest protection of family farmers. we can keep the door open for capital to go into that. we have several, 12,000 dairy farms that want to build on our side of the river. we are bringing capital back which will save our

communities. that is fantastic. interest rates are super high right now. we have smart leaders and a couple years ago, we said, it might be a good time to borrow some cheap money and have some good ideas. so that the money that will flow into our spending for things like water infrastructure will not compete for the megaprojects off the table. that did not raise taxes at all and took advantage of interest rates. that would not happen with out rich warner sitting out here. thank you, rich. in this last year, a record 550 million income in property tax

with the prime sponsor being greg hedlund. he and i are completely aligned, we have to get north dakota down to zero income tax. thank you for being such a strong proponent of lower taxes in our state. that is just a few of those things. i could go on and on. we have so much work that is not done. we have so many challenges that lie ahead. we made headway last session with one of the biggest barriers to workforce participation because the legislature came to understand that what was holding us back with 30,000 jobs open in our state, every restaurant and manufacturer and every oil company in the state does not have enough workers and teachers and nurses, we have to make sure we are investing in

workforce infrastructure. one of the things it looks like is childcare. if you have two educated parents that are here or that want to move here, we had a legislature last year that told me personally that they finally got a spot where both of their kids were living in south dakota and they were going to come home because they are starting a family and they wanted to be closer to grandparents and they could not find childcare and did not move back home. it matters. now the next thing we have to go after is housing. this will be a big list. it is workforce infrastructure. we need the right incentives for us to be able to solve these problems. we have to work as wind across all these silos of state

government. when we fight back on federal overreach and what we have done with waters of the usa and other rules that are jammed down on us. you don't understand the amount of time and energy that the office and the land lords in these books, we are the sovereign states rights board because these rules are taking away the power of the state and moving it towards unelected bureaucrats in d.c. we have to keep fighting back on that. we have made great progress with capital investment to our state. this is how we grow in the investment in workforce. this is how we do it with reducing income taxes. this legislature passed 50 out

of the 51 red tape reduction bills, that is fantastic. building healthy and vibrant communities so that we can compete against every other state. if you are a teacher or a nurse, if you can do anything, if you can drive a combine, guess what, you can get a job anywhere in this country because they have jobs open, we are in a competition like never before, 10 million jobs open in america. some people move to states because it is warm, we have not sold out yet on our thing. we have to compete in other ways. one of the ways we compete is focused on innovation. we prioritize innovation all the time. people come to us, we have to stop some person from doing

that. we want to unleash the states full potential. innovation is forward-looking. regulation is backward looking. these federal rules, when they get in, will it meant that? who will monitor to make sure that company is actually following that rule. the federal government is like oh, we have to stop this issue. we have a government agent driving around north dakota making sure that someone is following it? it takes the federal government to go from an idea into implementation. we have ripped through four evolutions where you are doubling the power of the computer ship and when you are doing monitoring, we could be tracking all that electronically. digitally and remotely.

satellite, internet, upload, whatever. data that is collected automatically is cheap and if it is collected by humans it is inaccurate. innovation, not only when you make the rule, but the downstream cost raises for every product in america. our state needs to hold high innovation and not regulation. this is not been better, not with ai, and with natural language computing, it is unbelievable what we can do to transform the way we think about it. we have to do a better job of telling the north dakota story. one of the things that we learned this last year while traveling around the country, sharing the amazing story of north dakota, the rest of the nation does not understand us.

it's like a blank spot in their mind, i've never met anyone from your state before. probably because of our brand because we have north in north dakota, they are going to talk about how cold it is. yeah, it is super freezing. you know. when we were kids, we all froze walking to school. uphill both ways. 50 below wind chill. your cat froze and he would bring it in and thought out. we play right into it when we do that. here is the thing, we understand more than ever, in my lifetime, i have people working for me in 120 countries, they did not have the right to free speech, i had customers and team members

working around the 50 states, i know that we had a good thing going on here, when you see the rest of the country and what is going on in north dakota, we have the best of america right here, we absolutely do. one thing that we do know that we do, we feed the world. we are incredible, one of the top producers, we should make sure that every k-12 student and university student in our state and system understands and can recite this list. what do you do in north dakota? we feed the world. top producer of nearly one dozen commodities. top five of another eight commodities. corn and soybeans are shooting up.

we were the largest producing county a couple of years ago. that was not possible when i was a kid. during this last administration of ours, we went from zero processing plants to one open and two on the way, close to $1 billion of capital investment around soybeans. we see what is going on with corn and the ethanol industry. this is fantastic. energy. north dakota, you guys are an energy state? they did not know we are an energy state. how can we have people in america that drive a car and heat their homes, not know that we are the ones providing a big chunk of that. we are the number three oil- producing state and we have a chance to get up to number two. how many schoolkids and iowans

do we have in north dakota? that is a record and it is going up every month. the permits that we are getting right now, when i hear people say that we have to ban drilling on federal land, they have an image of a 1950s movie in black and white with oil flying all over and everyone is covered in oil. we are going to do that on federal land and ruin everything. i tell them that three quarters of the well permits we are opening in north dakota right now, the traditional well was two miles down and two miles over. 75% of the new permits, we could be drilling on land today from three miles away sending a check to the federal government to reduce the deficit and no one will step foot on blm land.

the oil industry is so effective and safe and smart that is compared to any other nation. we are losing the battle nationally and some people when you say you are an energy state, we are the bad guys. we are helping to stabilize the world so we do not have to buy energy from russia or venezuela where they use that money to support terrorism, we have to tell our story here. yeah, they know that we produce oil, how many people knew that in november we set a record natural gas production record, 3.5 billion cubic feet per day. per day.

3.5 billion cubic feet per day. unbelievable. clean natural gas to create electricity and fertilizer, all the things that we can do, these projects are amazing things they can do. we have been and all above energy state. it does not matter if it is the electricity plants with zero co2, that baseline power will help save the nation, every other state is shutting down their baseload when the demand for electricity goes up and up. the demand for electricity will go up for everything else, including demand for data services. everything with ai and being able to transform every industry requires a lot of power to run those data centers.

biofuels, what is happening right here in dickinson, ethanol, other renewable fuels, the wind portfolio, we are providing energy cheaper and cleaner than anybody else. when someone says, what is going on in north dakota? the lowest average price of electricity in the nation from all segments. more reliable than anyplace else in the world. energy, best in america, north dakota. how about our military? americans should know that our airfares -- air force bases in the national guard play outside roles in protecting our nations freedom. how about the fact that we are

operating two of the three legs of the nuclear triad. we have a missile lane and a bomb lane. you and me, there is been a lot of conjunction, they have a new mission, the global hawks are now being referred there. with the largest unmanned aircraft in the world. 80 foot wingspan's are massive. they fly for 24 hours. they fly to the pacific and flyback. that is exciting and interesting. we are such a leader in aerial systems commercially and otherwise. they won the barksdale trophy. i did have a trick question this last year, this reporter

tried to trick me. oh, he will not know what it is. of the three legs of the nuclear triad, which is your favorite? we underestimate north dakota, this guy probably does not know what i'm talking about. i said we are the only state that has two out of three legs. my favorite might be the third, the uss north dakota. one of the largest submarines in the world. this lake is so big if we could get the uss north dakota we would move it back and forth we will have all three legs of the nuclear triad. that would be fun. catherine and i have been able to be in portsmouth for the changing command. it is such an honor for our state to be connected with that one piece of the u.s. navy and grade relationship between that

boat and many of the legislators. we should keep our relationship going. natural resources, wow, best in america, the gifts that we have been given, if you want to be grateful for something, be grateful for what god has given us in terms of natural resources. we have been richly blessed with the soils that we have across our state, that only happens because of the rich land we have been given. the record amounts of oil and gas production is our geology. we have so many other things that we can do here, diverse landscapes, stunning sunsets, people ought to know that our sunsets are the best in america. we don't have mounds that block the thing, there are no trees

that are blocking your view of the sunset. minnesota has five different cities of paul bunyan and you can barely see the guy because there are so many trees. he did all of his best work in north dakota. we are so humbled we don't even have a statue for him. don. with that, i'm sure it is the sunsets, how cool is this? over the majority of my lifetime, if you were born in the 1930s and lived up until this last decade, you would've spent your entire life and the only state in the nation losing population. between 1930 and 2005, one of them shrank, north dakota. less population than we did at the end of the depression. people say, how did that happen? well, it was a team effort.

i was battling that back in the 1980s, here we are and with our natural resources and innovation and the private sector investments i came in the western part of our state, that is how we drove this. that helped the revenue off the oil and gas industry which is a massive input that affects healthcare, education, roads, water projects. we could leverage that industry to improve every corner of our state. there is not a living person in our state that has not been affected by the oil and gas industry. these guys have good infrastructure, maybe i will move there. we have young people that are staying, one of the lowest birth rates to having one of the highest, we have a new all-

time high level of population, we had never been higher than 80,000 ever. an all time record high population. let's keep that going and if you have kids and grandkids, and if they are raising families, tell them, keep it up. that is helping on this thing. we are the fourth youngest date, we have the third happiest workforce in the nation. hawaii is ahead of us, i don't get that at all. we are number two in labor force participation. states that we are competing with that people are on the sidelines from the pandemic. people in north dakota know how to work. not only have we become younger and happier, we are the second

best state to raise a family. tell everybody you know. tell people. this is best in america. we have safe cities. you want to raise a family, do it here. we were named -- thank you state water commission, second- best infrastructure in the state. which includes our investors in the high-speed bandwidth, we have the best broadband infrastructure. number two in childcare, amazing. best state for business friendliness. one of the best places to do that. along with business friendliness, we were named second year in a row, best state to start a business. i have been involved in business startups in north dakota, it is better now than it was in the 1980s.

we actually care and have examples and mentors and programs that help people. one of the reasons is because the failure rate is lower. that is way higher than other states. way to go, north dakota. thanks to conservative budgeting, strong revenues, and a ton of investment by the private sector that creates all this wealth, guess what? our state is in the best financial state it has ever been. yes. on june 30th, we closed out the record general fund ending balance of $1.5 billion. for people not familiar with the budgeting process, normally, when you plan the budget you plan to end the budgeting process with 50

million to create a little cushion in there. 1.5 billion. that was the ending balance. we had an estimate that it would be high. it was 300 million higher than that. when we were back in the special session, you might say to yourself, we should give some of that back to taxpayers, retry through the special session, we have a bill that got through one of the chambers, we ran into a roadblock, we did not get it done, to be competitive in attracting the workforce, to keep our business is open, and attract capital, workforce used to travel capital. the company would announce that we are opening up a big plant here. i've been on the phone with the

head of adm. they have 30,000 employees and they operate in 80 different countries. the board has already approved $350 million for jamestown. we have this deal, he is like, can we hire 75 people in jamestown? we are having a hard time hiring there. can we actually get workforce? capital follows workforce. we have to solve the workforce problem. if we solved it for the energy industry, we only have 39 riggs opening right now. we have a record high but i want to make sure that everyone understands that we are not where we could be if we solve the workforce, we could be even much higher. to be competitive, we have the

money to do it, get to zero income tax. why does that matter? well, part of it matters because we are competing against states that have income tax. think of it like your checking account. we have reserves, think of that as the savings account. our reserves have never been higher. get this. budget stabilization fund and strategic investment improvement fund which i call general fund two. we have a proposal to have that whole thing go away. you can get rid of that whole shift. some things get applauded from the treasury office. these dollars flowing. look at this scale compared to where we were when we took office. this is a reflection.

if you go around the other reserves, this is just a couple of them. we have so much cash in so many different places, it is seven times more than when we took office. in term of the trust funds, including the legacy fund, it did not exist 10 years ago. they get a giant check every month. 30% of the tax revenue goes into that. will taxes, we take it off the top. if you do not make income as an individual, you do not pay income tax. we take 10% of your revenue, not 10% of your income. it is a revenue tax. there will be money coming in every month and growing and growing you will blow through $10 million before we get to next summer on the legacy fund. and now sits at over 6.1

billion and last year, we kicked $500 million a payment out of the trust fund for common schools that goes out to reduce property taxes. without anybody paying attention. we do so much to reduce property tax already. we predict we will end the budget cycle in 2025. here after six months in december we are already running on hundred 54 million ahead of forecast through the next six months. things are cooking along and that is great. north dakota, we are hiring. we found out this morning again today that we are tied with maryland for the lowest unemployment rate in america. thank you to all of the private- sector folks that are hiring. and we talked about new

business startups and how the economy stays vibrant. 8000 new businesses registered to open in north dakota in 2023. we will continue to have demand. we have 15,000 in job service. the numbers always double. if you look at healthcare organizations they will post five positions and leave it posted forever. most of them might have 10 or 20 times more positions open than what they are posting. we have this big workforce challenge. this is where the state is. we are stronger than ever. unbelievably strong. we are underestimated. that is the state of our state. we are so good at so many things

and we have never been stronger financially, economically, we have never been stronger. we are underestimated by people externally and we have to change that. the way we get capital and get people to move here, people underestimate how beautiful it is. they underestimate everything about us. we are competing and we have to tell our story differently and better. we will shift gears right now and something we want to do is honor those who serve. we are honoring those americans that we know in north dakota. we cherish our god-given freedoms. we do that. sometimes the service demands

ultimate sacrifice. the whole state stood frozen when they saw the news that the police officer was fatally shot when he was taking action towards an assailant that had ambushed two of his federal officers. who i have had the honor of meeting. along with a bystander that moved to north dakota a few weeks earlier. we have one person shot and killed and people who have taken multiple gunshots down, a citizen that is injured, seriously, and zach robinson takes action and puts himself at risk to neutralize the shooter. that individual had 1300 rounds in his vehicle. we came very close to having

something that would put us at a different level of national news. in our state, the best in america, or men in blue responded. last month, the county sheriff's deputy was killed in a crash trying to protect his community from danger. if we moved to the military side, this is not a fatality, still a tragedy. on christmas day, and native, suffered a serious head injury in a drone attack on a u.s. military base. he was not flying a helicopter, he was database. we are thankful that he has been transported back to the united states with that head injury. he is breathing on his own, i spoke to his dad last night, he is at walter reed with his wife

and mother and other family members and i did share with him that i was going to share with you today that we should all hold garrett in our prayers for a full recovery. these are people that are serving our country in fighting for liberty. should be grateful not just on military honoringful days not on memorial day, veterans day peace officer remarked that we to a great job as wars erupt around the world, we are reminded that freedom is not free. we should be grateful, not just on military honoring days but we do a great job and all of that. we have to make sure that we are doing that every day. right now, if we have anyone who has served, any active military or veterans or anyone that is in law enforcement, past or present, if you can stand right now, we would like this chance to say thank you to

you. as we have said, in addition to our words and applause, we have to make sure that we are showing gratitude for law enforcement and that is why the legislature did such a great job, we have great strides in being the most military friendly state in the nation. if you look at the people who stood up that are an elected leader, that makes my heart burst with pride for all of you continuing to serve. we have taken steps over the last few years, we have expanded tuition assistance for guard members and cut red tape for military childcare providers so they do not have

to reapply redundantly in north dakota. contributing to our communities, we are home to 13,000 active duty service members with their families they make countless contributions. always ready, always there. they are there when we need them in a crisis. they only exist if there are high-performing leadership and we are very fortunate that meeting the national guard these lasting years, if it is soldiers serving at the southern border that can visit multiple times, and serving overseas, his leadership has ensured that cardmembers are well trained and prepared for their mission. i have general doorman here this year, i can see if i can

see him and say thank you. go ahead and stand up, sir. thank you so much. our dedication to the military is unwavering. i could not of been accomplished without military issues in north dakota. there is still more work to be done. we want to keep soldiers on top because in the coming months, we want to double down to not only be the most military friendly state but we also want to keep driving across other issues. across the working group with the national guard developing proposals related to childcare and to have that ready for the next legislative session so we can keep moving towards being the most military friendly state in the nation. we have no doubt that north dakota will forever be the place

where it is the best place to be a military member. we have to take care of those members after they are out of the military. this is 2024. we want to make sure we are doing the right thing. we have a lot of work to do on the posttraumatic things that happened. every year in our country, was two asides, completed suicides, take the lives of over 6000 veterans and servicemembers in the united states. even when we are in conflict, we are losing more people to completed suicides then we are to actual combat. as general doorman reminds us, governments are left without the behavioral health and medical support services they need to manage their invisible scars. i assigned a proclamation declaring 2024 hours the suicide prevention awareness

year. developed in conjunction with the american legion's be the one program. to connect with veterans that are struggling with the thought of suicide. honored to have here the legion commander, clarence carol. the third vice commander, jacob holt, here with other members that we recognize, thank you for all the work that you do. n legion building up the n governor's challenge led by north dakota carrots and partnering with all military veteran organizations to leave no veteran behind. these individuals have answered the call for their country when they served the north dakota we know -- and if we need to know each veteran will know the citizens of our state and our government in this state is behind them and that we have their backs. one thing we could all do right now to immediately start raising awareness for our veterans and our citizens alike because we have issues with non- metairi e in north dakota we know we are behind them and we have their

back. we start raising awareness for our veterans because we have issues with non-military behavioral health issues but we have to expand the 988 suicide line. it can be called at any time. effective immediately, what we are doing across the governor's office, we will display the 988 icons that will link people to the resources we need. people know what to do in an emergency, call 911. 988 is the place to call if you know someone in need of a behavioral health issue. even if you have an inkling of concern you can call this number. we ask everyone to display this

988 icon and you care about people and care about her veterans and help raise awareness around suicide and let's destigmatize the fear of asking for mental health report. on the behavioral health side it helps in all parts of society, not just in veterans public from the start seven years ago one for strategic initiatives. who knew we would be facing a crisis that did not even exist then. the last three years under joe biden it's been a new record of overdose deaths and now we are well past the 300,000 mark in the nation and we lost the equivalent of five vietnam's overdose deaths, over 122,023. it's over 300 people a day that we are losing and it is

unbelievable. what we are focusing on here in north dakota is recovery. substantially increased recovery support service for individuals that got involved with the criminal justice system and the most expensive sway to treat behavior health problems is incarcerating. if you violent crime is necessary but sometimes we need services upfront that keep people from getting in a situation where they have to conduct property crimes to pay for their addiction. this has more than 1700 participants and served nearly 6300 individuals for coordinating career -- care providers and it reduces recidivism. if we get them out we can keep them out and help them get a job and a place to live. we keep them out and now we have more people that can work for us and we are spending less

money on the backend on incarceration so it is a win for everyone. substance abuse to sortie cultures, 7000 axis. thank you. legislature $18 million to help support. this is a drop in the bucket compared to what we pay on the backend for ocr and all of the county and city jails around the state and our whole justice system. it could be 75% related to addiction and behavioral health. we did not have enough providers in our state and not anywhere close enough for the program that came up is let's get people with the lived experience that can help others stay in recovery and now we have a thousand support specialists and over half of them had criminal justice interaction. these are people who might have been unemployable and are working having a job keeping other people sober and in

recovery and an expensive solution which is back in criminal justice. recovery houses is another issue. we say no discrimination. if you have a felony we can discriminate where you work, live, there is no such thing anymore as i have served my time and now i've paid my debt. if you have a felony you are 30% or 40 more% more felonies today and you can get a felony pretty easily and you could be stigmatized your whole life. 670,000 people had been served since 2022. again this is helping keeping people productive, being better neighbors. as opposed to being better prisoners. the behavioral health workforce we've made great strides for

people facing addictions and we know our states are increasingly challenged by workforce shortages and in addition we are working with the company and university leaders in the healthcare system in the private healthcare system and in partnership with north dakota hhs it will be held by facilitating conversations across the state regarding behavioral health workforce specifically and expects legislators to see new legislation to help solve the problem. what this has done is make great strides to eliminate shame and addiction and resurveyed addiction in the north dakota stigma of addiction and we have made progress. more than 21,000 people have participated. joining this movement to help individuals find hope and

recovery and now it's time to make sure we have the workforce in place. there is one person that made a huge difference. it was somebody who had the courage to stand up and share her story to people across the state and the nation. when she tells her story she moves people. i know she has saved lives and change lives. she's celebrating her 22nd year in recovery after a decade of struggling with the disease of addiction and with her incredible work to drive policy and trade solutions. again, if you could please help me welcome the most courageous first lady in america. [ applause ] >> we know that addiction does

not discriminate. it affects every family, especially law enforcement officers and they deal with the far-reaching impacts of addiction on every single shift. ask anybody that simple and this is what they are dealing with. same with the court's. it's important we support the men and women in uniform who protect our communities and we back the blue with our words and back with our actions. we did that by providing retention process and law enforcement retention pay from state income tax, and we helped offset routine health medical exams. in addition to law enforcement with other people in our whole state. we want to support all law enforcement officials making

this the place where law- enforcement is respected. let's respect law and order and respect those people who do it and get those people come and work here. let's pay a profession that someone is respected. every time we see someone in law enforcement we say thank you. thank you for your service. think about that. think about fargo last year. they really are the thin blue line. we have to extend this to our emergency responders, firefighters, ems officers and others. we have people who drive around in an ambulance and they all deserve our gratitude. so much is volunteer. we have over 300 -- 3500 licensed emergent service personnel. a lot of them work in the rural

rotations for free. nearly 7000 firefighters and our role firefighting. we only have 685 full-time firefighters and we have 10 times as many who volunteered to go help save their neighbors. most of your calls are not fires. sometimes it's ems related for the firefighters. we are grateful for their service. if there's people here today or ems personnel or firefighters. if you have today or have volunteered, stand up and let's say thanks to any of you. i'm sure there is some here. [ applause ] >> here in starr county we have

an incredible individual, he served as chief of the gladstone fire department for 45 years. 45 years serving the citizens of his community and surrounding communities. in putting others and putting other people safety ahead of his own. he did not stop there. he was active in the local and state organizations. sadly his family's community lost joe to a battle of brain cancer last july, but not before he received the spirit of excellence reward. we know joe is with us in spirit today and we honored to have contact with us in the center of the auditorium. joe's wife, renie, the two children, the family, joe's mother, ruth. they are all here in the audience today.

symbolically, not only for joe and his incredible service to gladstone, this kind of story happens over and over saying this is the best of america thank you joe and the family. thank you all volunteers. let's give them a hand. the thf this whole section. the thf if you are a first responder or if [ applause a] >> we want to turn actions into ideas. that is the theme of this section. if you are a first responder and are related to one or no one, if there is a better way for us, i say us, state and legislature, support men and women in uniform, law enforcement, call or e-mail and write the governor's office. we will share them and turned it into legislation and we will keep doing what we've been doing. we cut red tape and we get the reader of the restrictions they

need. keep those ideas coming. we want to support workers not only for their physical health but the safety of the overall health of the community. one of the ways we do that is with accessible and affordable quality childcare. a balance sheet helps us make these investments in one of the biggest obstacles which i talked about earlier and still remains comes childcare availability, affordability and quality. 66 federal funds went into the north carolina childhood initiative. thank you legislation for doing that. what is happening with that investment more than 4800 working families have received help with help childcare costs just within the first six months of this biennium. businesses helping businesses.

close to 5000. when we talk about solving an issue with 30,000 jobs open we've got 5000 people that came back from the workforce. other things we are doing to support workforce, north dakota to support h2h visa program and if you are informing you know how critical and important this is. others may not know to get caught up in this discussion about immigration. we have had h2h visa workers from countries like south africa come from north dakota and an incredible 42% increase from two years before. they come back and work for the same farm families and you would not have gotten a crop if it weren't for the h2h workers. we have to make sure we keep that pipeline of people that

come here and they have the cdl and the equipment and they are key to what we are doing in congress this last year established the office of legal immigration to attract international talent. we have a great pipeline of workers. we want to make sure we have the basis figured out and help our ag workers on h2o. it's a great inclusion program which provides expert assistance from international people. the academy reset the funding would be available to keep construction contact -- on track were students can pursue high demand in the trades. one is right here, southwest air a career and technical education. students from seven high schools around this region and the state utilize the state of

the art facility that helps identify interest and build skills and enter the workforce more quickly. we have one of those here today. a senior at dickinson high has been enrolled in the welding, automotive tech and diesel programs. they have developed valuable skills and have identified his career path by becoming a welder, we are short of those all over the state. last fall he was placed in fisher industries to earn credit while on the job. he is still getting his education is getting paid and earning credit and to build that the local employer he is going to earn a degree in welding technology. a local company will help pay him to get further education. it's working, these partnerships between companies and our education system filling the gap. i want to say thank you and

they represent more than 25,000 students around the state who are taking advantage of these things. lance is right here. let's give him a hand. stand up. where are you, lance? he is right there. okay. >> transforming education is our next topic. with lance the story shows us that with teachers and educators state leaders use innovative approaches to great experiences outside the traditional classroom and students thrive in the economy wins. just over 10 miles away janice weikert a music teacher in southpark public school for 18 years. look at her unconstrained

innovation. her dedication to students is her subject, which happens to be music. she was selected nationally as one of 50 band directors who make a director with school band and orchestra national magazine. one of the things she's done is brought together 300 students from over 1300 schools to trade -- train a massive marching band. i skipped the story about me having to go to the music camp up at the border because i wanted to go to football camp but my mom would let me go unless i went to music camp. but anyway there is a reason why i'm not playing a trumpet today. but any way, she is a fierce advocate for students. it is such a cool idea to bring together the schools. she is here with us today. where are you, mrs. swagger. a national recognition. go ahead and stand up.

[ applause ] we have a task force we put together for retention and recruitment of teachers. the career is rewarding and people that teach save lives and to us understands the challenges teachers are facing and that's the result of a workforce shortage. improvement task force bring proposals forward and it will help support our leaders and or teachers and help her students help them and grow into the best versions of themselves. over the next several months they will keep going. the task force will engage with experts and they are digging into data. our schools are the career cornerstone of our community. this is one thing for us to get them into the school system teaching and then they teach for a year or two and dropout.

we can get people to retain a little longer that could help serve our long-term pipeline. mrs. swagger who we just introduced, and all of our integrative teachers. they deserve our deep gratitude and they are dedicating themselves to help drive our future and the students represent 20% of our population and they represent 100% of our future and their instrumental tour success. if you are a former educator and you been teaching it any level, please stand up and let us say thank you to all of our educators. >> at my very first date of the state i talked about innovation. progress has been made but

there is more to do. this week is school choice week in north dakota. when we talk about innovation it almost goes hand-in-hand with competition. the best innovation comes when you compete. our first cyber madness competition for high school and middle school students. great innovation and an fantastic experience. school choice has become a political debate about a public school versus a private school or religious school. it should be centered around at all. school choice and competition is how to be centered around students is in their experiences. and school choice could include like how do we expand the ct programs that lance has been involved with? we have set the table and we have created a set of rules and regulations and every k-12 school has innovation to better

their students. we've driven innovation and the school won national award. other districts offered one. during the interim the legislatures are engaging in school choice study. really support that. from open enrollment to educational savings accounts and they will look at everything and we will work to bring a comprehensive proposal that brings innovation and students first to help make sure we can drive k-12 education forward in our state. we will have our governors summit on june 17th in bismarck. we invite you to be there. mark your calendars. it's been incredible bowl with keynote speakers and great ideas have come out of that. we would love to have more legislators join us. shifting higher education has

always been part of higher education. students can decide to i want to stay home or go far away. guess what. every university in america is facing these unstoppable forces, cultural economics which are blowing up and forcing campuses to be more economic and meet these demands will require not just alumni donors but partnerships between the private sector and the public sector to identify where is the demand for graduates. and if we create student opportunities that lead into careers, you get more support from the private sector. it can't just come from checks of the state of north dakota. there has to be a private sector component. the scholarships created in 2019, last year there was 220

scholarships provided to north dakota students who went on to fill careers identified as part of this program. we encourage all the players consider participating in this successful public private partnership. when we look ahead to the future. we were joking earlier about infrastructure in this hall we have to focus on. where the bulk of our additional money and higher ed has gone into buildings. $404million in buildings across our campus. we got the money and we did it. that alone will not drive success. some places where we put $150 million in new buildings are homeless. new buildings won't drive it. the university has to work on

their strategic vision for 2035 and urge the nine study groups to focus on future business models and how that will shift and focus on more collaboration systemwide. eliminate duplication and make ourselves more competitive? how do we make sure that we accept the reality of these forces changing higher read. it's not going to be back where it was. the days of students sitting in classes listening to lectures are over. we need our lead -- institutions to do different things. a nonstate tuition, come here, play sports and you get not only an undergrad and a masters in four years. they are giving more value for the same time they are there. provide flexibility to make sure there are wide varieties in models. one thing we need to do with all students and maybe adults as well, we have to make sure

our students are well-versed in financial. only 37% of north dakota adults feel confident in their own knowledge of their finances. and today we set a goal here making north dakota the most financially literate state in the nation by 2027. the superintendent of public construction, the state treasurer, thomas piedl, they are leading this effort and coordinating with the bank of north dakota which is a great entity to be working with and also the governor's office, the securities team, other state agencies, we will announce the full plan in april of financial literacy month. i want to thank kiersten. thomas, thank you for your leadership. this is a fantastic program and we need to keep driving through that. on the housing side we have to

draw new workforce to ensure everyone has access to safe and quality housing. childcare housing, we are competing with tail. the housing market is private activity but there is gaps and hidden subsidies and penalties affecting how our communities are being developed and this affects families and communities and employers. and some prudent public sector influence or investment can make a difference help us solve this problem and i gave the example earlier about a family not moving back because they could not find childcare. we've given job offers to people to move here to our state to take a job with the state and part of their searches they come and look around and say can i afford to get a house. if they can't upgrade their housing they might say no to the job. the job pays 20 grams more but

if my housing costs are higher and better off where i met. in the fight so with high interest rates i can't move. discussing stickiness in the workforce market because of the high interest rates. we had to make sure north dakota is a better place to work and play by addressing the housing challenges that many of our communities face. we are going to need 9000 additional units of housing just now through 2025. in the next two years 9000 more units. fortunately we have a blueprint out there on how to address these issues. that blueprint is what we need to get to the starting line for child care. there was 14 months of

collaboration across the childcare spectrum. what we are announcing here today is we are going to do the same thing and we have a series of listening sessions held across north dakota and it will be a platform for north dakotans as individuals. employers are trying to recruit people from out of state. from developers and all people saying what are the hurdles, what are the solutions? just like we did childcare, availability, affordability. those are the things. we want to hear from renters and homeowners and anybody who has the future and the future of the economic success of north dakota. if we don't come together to create the right framework we can end up with the declining economy. following these listening sessions at collaboration with state agencies like our north dakota workforce housing, and all the other agencies we have

working on this, we will create a strategy. and it will bring legislature if there is a component. we want to ensure that every north dakota and has an opportunity, or if they want to move. they have a safe place to call home and to raise a family. the best place to work live and play was focused on supporting healthy vibrant communities to track 21st century skilled workforce. skilled workforce, effective infrastructure. main street brings it all together and all these policies put together and we are so fortunate. we have 107 different communities throughout the state that have participated in the main street program. they have engaged in visits with state agencies. they are engaged in building up

their community. the success has demonstrated potential for change and all kinds of communities, especially in rural areas. we note the training only happens when you have local readers. local leadership is the key. someone who grabs the ring and says we will make our community where kids want to grow and come back here to raise families. we have examples of that happening in western north dakota. we have an exam -- karen is making her mark she is the leader of the bowman county development corporation. she has son for nearly 11 years. she embodies the spirit of building healthy communities. whether it's hosting or serving on the statewide development council. we know karen is changing the trajectory and its leaders like

karen across the state that are tracking the next generation of north dakota and her efforts are to be recognized. karen can you stand and let us acknowledge everything you are doing? thank you. [ applause ] commerce, and this office is going to pull together a number of things that's going to be >> we will be launching the office of community growth development which builds on the development of the main street initiative. we are creating that within the department of congress. this office will hold together a number of things and it will be a central route of communication where we try to maximize the impact of the initiatives and focus on empowering rural communities. we can allocate resources more strategically and understand and attacked the unique challenges faced by rural

communities supporting community development. we will not do this alone. this new office will work with community organizations, businesses, local government and develop comprehensive long- term strategies that are tailored to those communities. we are excited about that. we are moving ahead, for the first time in a long time we are creating a new state park. one of north dakota's most scenic treasures. if you have not been to the gorge i encourage you to get there. the legislature passed $27 million for maintenance and upgrades for the infrastructure and the visitor experience across all of our 14 state parks, which saw near record visitation last year, and the year before that. still, there is a lot more work to be done to include -- improve the quality of light. trails is a key piece of infrastructure and the extensive trail focus, they are

doing the first ever statewide town. there are more than 2000 trails? the next phase we want to focus on, a lot of these trails are disconnected and we could spend a little money and connect trails to make them more efficient for walking or biking in the summer or snowmobiling in the winter. when we have recreational opportunities as part of life, hunting, fishing and camping we know that brings us back to helping us attract the workforce north dakota game and fix and parks and recs great leadership there. jeff and cody we are making great progress. destination development new initiative passed by the legislature, congress ordered $25 million of grants to expand existing ones to help create destinations that could be,

what can i do in north dakota? what are the things to do there? what are the places to see. we have a $1 million grant for this new program and if you have not been there and check it out. there is more than just really, really old homes there. really exciting stuff. theater roosevelt presidential library. it started right here on this campus of having the library. come july 4, 2026, on a nature's 250th birthday we welcome another attraction when the presidential library and museum opens. it will be a global institution and rooted right here in north dakota and inspire people across the globe to get into the arena. just like tr was healed and inspired by north dakota landscape and the way of life he came here in the 1880s after losing his wife and mother on

the same day. people get confused when we think library or museum and they might think of objects underclass. it is a captivating digital experience for visitors, it is leaving -- waiting on new technologies. your kids and grandparents are going to drag you here and they will want to come back again and again. the library will be an experience. it will become a tourism powerhouse in northwestern north dakota. the roosevelt center here has a strong, strong connection to the library, and, of course, the center is a key part and therefore part of our higher education system. this is a place where they have been working for close to a decade digitizing copies of

roosevelt's riding and other materials and closing into i'm sure $100,000. he wrote. he wrote more than jefferson. part of the mission of the tr presidential library and partnering to advance the study and advance the study of tr. the most incredible collection of papers around that study is now coming. "the theodore roosevelt" and tsu will be home to the coveted and expanded private research from pool supplies winning author and his wife. those works transform the way we think about the 26th

president. it's an impressive collection. for the generosity in support of mark brinkmeyer. and his wife vicki. the collection figures and extensive assertion of notes and memorabilia surrounding the three books that are about theodore roosevelt, and more. right now this does not happen without the tr center and without the theodore roosevelt presidential library all working together. that confidence led to this donation. congratulations to those entities and this is an amazing collection. it's not going to harvard or yale and it's coming to dsu. and looking forward when we

think about the economic opportunities here i know people are getting charged up. construction has been going all winter long on the library thing. wherever you are, all of these present gateway opportunities for us and mount rushmore they have faces on a mountain with 300,000,000 visitors a year. you go there take a picture and 45 minutes you are out of there. and then you spend the next few days going to private sector tourism opportunities. the opportunity for private sector investment surrounding the tr national park in library with that as an anchor has never been greater. get your head on. we need more hotel rooms and restaurants and western north dakota and more opportunities. vibrant communities and amenities are needed. we need that to make sure we

keep up with our burgeoning economy and it creates a stable business environment and that first step is economic development. the last 30 years we've had leadership that understands the importance of building and are states reputation. we've had business leaders and partners how capitol and talent come together to move it forward. the talent now follows investment capitol and flows along the path of least resistance. to get capitol we remain looking for more and our growth this is the fastest in the u.s. we said, we wanted to have the hihihihihid and how are we coming on that?

we moved down from the top eight here. this list might be small to read. every one of those states on their is a blue state. we are the only red state. new york, wall street, massachusetts, biotech, washington, twitter, amazon, california, silicon valley, colorado, i don't know that the legal marijuana, i'm not sure. new jersey clothes to new york. you have financed driving the gdp's. we are not attacked, we are not silicon valley or finance and here we are on this list. way to go, north dakota. we have an opportunity if we keep doing what we are doing and driving forward with this private partnership we do that and with the industry is now

$40 billion of capitol trying to come to north dakota for value added and never a number like that in our history. we have a chance to keep moving up on this list. again, we have to lead with innovation. and what will happen this spring, here in oil and gas, we are going to produce our 5 billion-barrel of oil since the early 2000's and the horizontal drilling was the key thing that assess getting to that 30-foot strip of hardshell and turn it into a liquid. if you stack those barrels and the end it would go around the globe 110 times and that is what 5 billion barrels is like. the enormity cannot be

overstated. oil and gas generates more than half of the tax revenues that we choose to fund government. everything from highways, bridges, and we know what it does. the consumption is happening in the world that is driven by consumer demand and that consumer demand you don't have to have an opinion or belief in climate change or not climate change. i can explain why someone would buy organic milk for twice as much in regular milk. people will pay a premium for materials. plastics. if you have less carbon intensive product you will sell more perfect the market is pushing for that. north dakota has a secret recipe. we were given all the soil in the minerals. we've been given the most unbelievable capability to deal and benefit with co2 storage and utilization.

whether it's coal plants or our oil and gas, we are a leader and we are leading in the nation. this is not a new thing. we've been doing this for decades. utilization and sequestration is the process of capturing the co2 from these energy producing processes and then we are making ethanol and coal we can use them for value-added resources. carbon is a extremely valuable commodity. it drives me nuts that people are saying it is a waste product. people would buy and pay for it today and enhance uses and greenhouse agriculture. food processing, water treatment process just getting going. they have a list that is so long, they brought in a decent 12 by 12 thing and that's a cool granite tabletop and that's cool. that's a manufactured product

that 30% of weight of that countertop has embedded co2 unit. we can better make cinderblocks and building materials. we can put asphalt down because carmen is so strong. if you want lightweight strong product purchased a carbon fiber bow enamel. they are looking on it -- working on it with the string so small that can lift piano. and we have a gift of enough underground storage space disorder the nation co2 for the next 50 years. we can't sort it all and we can't grow crops. there is 50,000,000 tons of extra we can store some and 20 years from now when products will be glad we have it. we have an advantage because we

are one of two states that have been granted primacy out of two of six wells. competition is coming. we have permitted six storage facilities with the total capacity for co2 and they encompass 43 square miles underground. thank you, legislature, you said, that was the landowners. somebody else might own the minerals. over 90% of the land rovers said, yes to getting a check for the co2 storage. there's a pipeline from a plant wyoming through montana to southwestern north dakota and they are bringing that in and they push it down while in the

pushes it out. they are seeing increases in their oil production in these vertical wells in boulder county where they are getting back to their 80% of original production. guess what? they put more co2 down when they burned the barrel of oil when it comes up in the production is corbin -- carbon neutral. that's the story we need to tell before they go on the agenda of we are shutting down the coal industry, the oil and gas industry. that the agenda of the government. it's not political. we have to tell our story of how we can produce energy cleaner, safer and smarter. the whole aspect is going to expand agriculture. anybody that has anything to do with biofuels or ethanol will expand the markets.

if you care about the electricity in the coal which has been the backbone and central part of our state for decades and decades, it will save the coal industry. if you care about the fact that oil and gas, all the things you care about, the oil and gas industry can extend the life by decades and reduce carbon intensity. on top of that, on top of that, there is more stuff coming. we believe the demand for energy is coming. whether it is opportunities to the central part of the state where we could have the lowest carbon product in the nation. people talk about energy transition. there is no energy transition because what we need is energy

addition. the world by 2050 will need a lot more energy. we can do all the renewables and soldiers but that has to be on top of what we are doing to get to their demand load we will have your prices will just keep going up and we will kill manufacturing and outsource our manufacturing and the environment will be worse. the best way to do it is have north dakota that has the best opportunity of any state. in country and oil and gas and we have an opportunity to benefit more than anybody in helping a nation become more secure and prosperous. not only energy independent but dominant and healthy environment because it will be done cleaner and safer here. since the beginning of our administration, it's been approach. last year we had a significant

milestone. hydrogen selected for the largest grant that north dakota has received from the federal government, $925 million from the u.s. department of energy. i signed on with three fellow governors along the northern tier and the committee to develop the regional say it -- area and help to harmonize regional supply chains. marathon petroleum, xcel energy and others. advancing agriculture as our demand grows and so does the demand for high quality low cost food. when you have a tight labor market you have a decreased workforce and the other is to increase productivity in the one way you do that is through automation and part of automation is autonomous. and so with the opening of our first dedicated soybean plant in spirit with and another plant, and another in grand forks we are producing 75% of

scored beams at home as opposed to shipping them out. its value added agriculture. we add value here before it leaves the state. soybean oil near jamestown is being shipped by rail to dickinson and turned into renewable diesel at marathons refinery in dickinson. it's a fantastic angle. the soybean meal is produced by these facilities and they will help us get back into the game because what comes off of that soybean now is the fantastic input. dairy cattle or finishing beef. it can help us with our modernized farming loss and it can attract much more capitol. in terms of ua asked again, strengthening our status as a nation, we have invested $130 million just since we took

office in december of 2016. the north site celebrated its tenth anniversary and the air traffic control for unmanned aircraft. they will translate into high- quality jobs for our citizens and will attract talent across the country. ag contact. we take a look at the major manufacturers, and others that came to north dakota and part companies and they were interested in precision agriculture. that continues today on autonomous farming to the technology being developed in grand forks and fargo and think of grand firm as the next grand sky. it expands with the $10 million investment from the state. you can see the dust blowing in

those tractors don't have people. they are autonomous. we don't have to look beyond the skies or on the ground when we think about our economy. sometimes the answer is at our feet. we know there is a lot of discussion about shifting to ev. the nation did a study of where the highest concentration was, they are in the cold that the current administration and prior administration wanted to stop developing. economically we have the ability to those minerals instead of relying on china's minerals, goes into batteries and it sounds your other electronic devices cobalt, nickel graphite, 20 different minerals. the domestic supply for earth minerals is being mined in north dakota thanks to technology developed at unt

college of engineering and minds. when we track these rare-earth minerals, the coal burns cleaner. it helps coal-fired plants to operate more efficiently. this is innovation versus regulation. somebody want to regulate it out of business. others say let's innovate, create great jobs here at home and the carbonized so we can have a stable base load and not have run out and back out bills that our neighbor minnesota is passing. this will create more opportunities to move here and develop a supply chain. north dakota can lead the way here again and we are on the cusp of several other game changing projects, all by trenton. they will process nickel and

other minerals for batteries, iron nor in minnesota but they will bring that into that project here. our economic future unbelievably bright and when we have that we have the money to invest back into infrastructure. we need modern infrastructure. we will continue to invest. 40 years ago 2020 state of the state we said, we are announcing a 10-year infrastructure plan. the list of projects never shrinks and we don't get it completed. since that report we have dedicated through legislation $163 million above the normal federal aid program. while states only do it from the fence ours is feds plus the state. and that makes a huge impact in townships and counties and roads and bridges. $226million when into roads urges. we invested more than 3 billion into roads and this creates a new flexible fund which

supports both state and local network supporting infrastructures in cities and townships. north dakota we are moving up and people look at those when they decide if they will and i want to thank them for the great job in this wealth we have and critical water supply and general water management. it would not have been possible with the help. the state water commission will allocate 600,000,000 more water projects easing the burden on locals and making them more resilient. the water supply to go to 1/3 of north dakota citizens.

we have western states, people saying take a pipe from the missouri river and ship it to colorado and goes to california because they are running out of water. legislators, we have to complete water flowing out of the missouri to the northern part of our state. that was the vision of the gerson project which was started in 1960. we are on the cusp of making that happen but we need to finish those projects before other states decide they want to come in and start shipping out water west. and speaking of taking care of business we want to make sure our state is as friendly as possible when businesses interact with the state. it citizens shouldn't have to come to 100 different websites to find out how to interact

with each different agency and that's why the work has begun. rather than forcing users to walk in separately for business registration. over here for licenses. the business gateway will have a single sign-on. they sign-on once. we know who they are in their address. we know who the contacts are. and when we get done with the business we will do the same thing for citizen gateway so a citizen doesn't have to go to a different place for hunting tribes -- license and pay their taxes and dozens of other things they do and we want to be a simple consumer experience. 50 bills signed by this last legislature, and again we are encouraging renovation to red tape -- reduction 2.0. if you are frustrated with how you are interacting with the state and you have an idea on

how to improve it and there's redtape in a way for family or small business or a student, send us your ideas. we want to know about it and turn it into legislation and this legislator made it happen. and we want to protect our citizens data. we have a huge commitment and moral obligation to do that. thanks for the induction of ai, we dramatically increased our cybersecurity operations center they are responding to 4 billion attacks some of those had to be handled with some sort of manual action. you want to make sure our team members and everyone we are working with that we can make

sure we secure the privacy and the integrity of that data. to better understand the risks and benefits the state has gone through a partnership with private sector partners and more than 16 team members have taken part to grow their understanding and develop a list to be evaluated. some of these are in the way. we can reinvent government and be more productive. some of the free tools speak 23 languages and can cold. every state team member as a copilot that can sit next to him that can write first draft reports and translate documents and help to coding solutions. and reduced the cost to help keep citizens dollars in their pocket by beaming more efficient. we want to make it the most attractive place to live and work and play for all citizens

and we know the pocketbook weighs heavily. weather to relocate or stay here, the legislature has spent generous. they had picked up the tab, largely without restrictions. i just want to remind people. los that number continues to climb.s on top of the 5.5 billion we passed the homestead tax credit which is very popular legislature could not fix north dakota i'm telling legislatu on top of that 5.5 billion, it is very popular. legislature is different. this will not fix your local problem with a blanket property tax. very widely across the state,

we don't always know how to show you. it is widely different of the value of 1 million in a different place. we are looking at the wall disparities in local tax rates and local spending. in terms of their breath, they are growing like crazy. they are getting bigger than the population is going. they are increasing the linear feet of infrastructure for all of the property taxes that are going up. the solution is not for us to take someone else's tax dollars and send them to that city. keep doing what you're doing. you don't give people more of something when they are doing something that is not economic. you figure out a way to have those restraints. the so-called proposals that eliminate property taxes, they are just reached distribution schemes. the use someone else's tax money to you -- pay other

taxpayers. the people paying don't make the decision. we want to sustain a local, political, subdivision. somebody else comes in and has to pick up 100% of the tab. that's not north dakota. that makes no sense. we have already begun with discussions with legislators. they are looking at the committees to study this issue. the issue is not the subsidy or revenue transfer. they want to reduce the signs and size of government. these approaches actually lower the cost. when we look at the income tax in our state, we reduce the amount of money that comes from the government. they have to get smaller. when we send $5.5 billion to local subdivisions, they go wow, we can raise this tax. people are going to raise the taxes right now. we think they have been frozen at a certain level. people are raising them right

now. any property tax relief that the state does, should be targeted with a $159 million homestead property tax. if you haven't already done so, apply for the primary residence credit. at the same time, we should focus on what we can control. we can control income taxes. last year i signed over half $1 billion. this includes the largest income tax relief in state history. 358 million. fantastic. that is how much income tax they will eliminate completely. 3-5 taxpayers. that is real relief. it reduces the amount of revenue collected by government. guess what? we are competing. these incremental steps, we have got the revenue. we have the reserves and the ability to do it.

it is time for us to say goodbye. this is the state income tax once and for all. >> [ applause ]. this is the one tax collected by the state, used by the state, controlled by the state. it is not relying on local assessments, or some other political subdivision. deciding how they are going to spend. they are on the edge of their study. they have new facilities. it doesn't depend on any of that stuff. this is putting money back directly in someone's pocket. not transferring to a political subdivision. nine other states. look at this map. looking at wyoming, texas, alaska, this is what we compete for directly with energy workers. we need to be on a level playing field with them.

we would have more revenue coming into the state of north dakota for all other sources. that is something that we have to get to. in closing, i just want to state first of all, thank all of you. wow, we cut half of what people suggested we do in this thing. we got 1000 words the last three days. thank you for listening through all of this. thank you to all the people that submitted the that was amazing. we didn't have time for it. i just want to say again, north dakota is the best of america. i have something to ask you. the next time you hear someone underestimating our state, or saying that north dakota is implying that we are too cold, distant, or to specially populated, if someone says that to you, we have to take a

different approach. instead of us playing along. we have false humility, and incredible pride. it is really cold. they can never make it. i don't even need a coat. it is only 20 below. best place to raise the family, we are on that. we know that your kids are never going to be wimps. they are never going to be able to stand up. we are so blessed with all of our god-given resources. one resource we have, we have great people. the thing to challenge that i want to do for everyone, we have to be believing in ourselves. we have to believe more in ourselves. if you have the opportunity to see the looks around, it is just not bravado. we are the best in america. teddy roosevelt said, believe

you can, and you are halfway there. we think that he said that. it is the idea and belief. we honored the first responders. we secure our border. we help our communities. this really hit me less bring. from friends and family members, they have been friends for 50 years. he just passed away last spring. he spent his whole life in the ranger township. this included slope county. he had an opportunity that was invited to speak at his memorial service. think of the 90 years that he

saw. riding a horse to one school. living in a place where there wasn't a love or electricity. all of this that occurs that he had seen over his lifetime, i was there. half of slope county was there. this was about 400 people. actually. big turnout was there at the slope county. i saw the women that were preparing the food. they were recognizing people that have the branding. grandkids of neighbors. i saw all of these multigenerational families running in the same branches. doing the work, coming together every spring to help each other out. there is so much that goes on in our state.

it is people that actually care about their neighbors, and take action around that. i thought to myself when i was standing up there, i got emotional remembering that moment. i recognized friends. wow, this really is the best of america. when we talk about the four values that we really drive towards our administration, we lead with gratitude. we have so much to be grateful for. the innovation only comes if we drive curiosity. i know for certain, we have to have curiosity. check your sources. if someone disagrees with you, be curious about what they think. talk to people that think about things differently. when you learn new things, you have to have the ability to say wow, i used to think that was

true. it turns out that it actually is and true. some of that humility has to come through right now for our country, for us to be able to heal. some of these things that we thought about, outsourcing our energy to all the adversaries that don't have the biggest polluters in the world, may not help the world environment. maybe the solution is right here. gratitude, curiosity, humility. so many people in this room have had courage. they are jumping into the arena. they are trying to be able to serve, to take risks, to run for office. it takes courage to be a participant. in the famous words of theodore roosevelt, you have to have courage to be in the arena. when you think about the purpose statement that we set out and designed seven years

ago, this is what we really believed. we get up into state government, and i know all people that i worked with in the office, they have people that get up every day. our job as the state of north dakota, we are empowering people and improving their lives. it is not a goodbye or a farewell. i do want to say that you can count on us to keep chasing this purpose statement. i know working together, we can empower people. we can inspire success. if we believe in ourselves, and we learn to tell a story, we will want to be the blank spot on the map in people's minds. they will understand who we are, what we do, how we feed, how we feel, and how we protect the world. this is the innovation. not regulation. it is helping us achieve our

full potential. >> thank you for being here today.

thursday, japanese prime minister, will meet with president joe biden at the white house, and attend a state dinner in his visit to the u.s. that joint meeting begins 11:0a.m. thursday. this is part of the pre-mobile video app. look like on cspan .org. cspan, is your unfiltered view of government. tune in late-night for these television companies and more.