The State Bar Association of North Dakota Winter 2013 Gavel Magazine | Page 4

63RD LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY

SIX SBAND MEMBERS SERVING AS LAWMAKERS
Senator David Hogue has represented District 38 in Minot since 2009. A Republican, Hogue is serving as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, chairman of the Senate Majority Caucus, and is a member of the Senate Natural Resources Committee. “I am working on several measures related to reform of the initiated measure process,” says Hogue of his legislative focus this session. Hogue has been in private practice for 25 years and is an attorney with the Pringle & Herigstad Law Firm. Senator Mac Schneider represents District 42 in Grand Forks, and has been a member of the Senate since 2009. During this session, Schneider, a Democrat, is the Senate Minority Leader. Due to the responsibilities of this position, he does not serve on any committees. Of the legislation he is sponsoring this session, Schneider says, “One requires disclosure of corporate and union political contributions and independent expenditures in the wake of the Citizens United and American Tradition Partnership cases. Others relate to making higher education more affordable, and advancing initiatives to create an endowment to permanently fund scholarships for North Dakota students.” Senator Connie Triplett has represented District 18 in Grand Forks since 2003. A Democrat, her committee assignments are the same as the last session, Finance and Tax and Natural Resources. During this session, she says she is interested in a variety of issues that affect her constituents in Grand Forks, including funding levels for higher education generally, and UND’s plans in particular. She will be following how appropriations affect tuition levels indirectly, and says Democrats will also be working toward a tuition cap to influence tuition levels directly. “Personally, I have a strong interest in seeing our legislature develop a balanced tax structure which the majority of North Dakotans will find acceptable so we can get away from endless tax adjustment bills and initiated measures,” says Triplett. “I believe that most legislators agree that we need to do more at the state level to allow local property taxes to continue to decline. The legislature has already significantly increased state funding to education in the past two sessions and will likely do more in the current session.” Other bills Triplett is working on relate to preserving North Dakota’s history. One would transfer primary management of Fort Abraham Lincoln from North Dakota Parks and Recreation to the State Historical Society. Another would appropriate money to the State Historical Society for archaeological studies on the Killdeer Mountains, focusing on land owned by the State and on private land, to the extent she says landowners are willing to cooperate. “Another bill I have introduced would direct the legal staff of Legislative Council to produce written opinions on the constitutionality of proposed legislation

North Dakota’s 63rd Legislative Assembly has been underway since January 8, and among its 141 citizens Legislators are six lawyers, four in the Senate and two in the House. They are bringing their legal backgrounds to their work on a variety of committees and leadership positions and have introduced and are supporting legislation on a number of different issues. NORTH DAKOTA SENATE Senator Kelly Armstrong is the session’s only new lawyer-legislator. A Republican from District 36 in Dickinson, he has been a partner in the Reichert Armstrong law firm since 2006. Armstrong has focused his practice on criminal law, but is now spending more of his time on his family’s oil and gas and farming operations. He is a vice president of Armstrong Corporation, an oil and gas firm in Dickinson. In the Senate, Armstrong is vice chair of the Transportation Committee and also serves on Judiciary Committee. Following graduation from the University of North Dakota School of Law in 2003, he lived in Norway for nine months while his wife, Kjersti, whom he met through the UND/Norwegian exchange program, was finishing law school. She graduated from the UND School of Law in 2006. Armstrong has two children, Anna Constance, 5, and Elias Patrick, 2, and he is a volunteer fireman and president of the Dickinson Baseball Club.

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The Gavel February 2013