The Senate on final passage approved Senate Bill 2012, a bill funding the North Dakota Department of Transportation and amending multiple provisions of the North Dakota Century Code, by a 46-0 vote with one senator absent.

The conference committee report and final bill bundle appropriations and reorganize several transportation revenue streams, and add a provision to allow the state to enter rail passenger authority agreements. Senator Wojcick, the bill carrier, told colleagues the conference compromise preserves motor vehicle excise tax revenue, shifts some Strategic Investment and Improvement Fund (SIF) dollars, and adjusts distributions to political subdivisions to make payments more certain.

The bill matters because it determines how state, federal and legacy-related dollars will be allocated across highways, cities, counties, townships and public transit and establishes statutory authority to participate in a multistate passenger-rail planning effort. That affects local pavement, bridge and transit projects and how the state can match federal grants.

Senator Wojcick summarized the major resource streams in the package and how they were allocated. He said the budget includes about $518.3 million in fuel registration taxes, $175 million in motor vehicle excise taxes, and 30 percent of legacy earnings (approximately $175.2 million). He said the Strategic Investment and Improvement Fund (SIF) portion is about $429.6 million and that the package includes roughly $1.327 billion in federal funds for a total resource pool the carrier described as about $2.6 billion. Wojcick said the Department of Transportation’s total for operations, programs and match in the bill is $874.1 million.

Wojcick said the conference committee reduced the original allocations for the so-called "prairie dog" buckets and moved a portion of those dollars ahead of the $400 million SIF bucket to increase the certainty that political-subdivision payments would be made. Under the conference report the distribution buckets for cities and for counties and townships were reduced from about $115 million each to about $80 million each, with a trade-off that moves those amounts into higher-priority buckets, the carrier said.

The bill also includes a federal grant pairing Wojcick described as a $55 million federal grant with $55 million in matching state funds to cover work on a specified Highway 85 project (between Highway 200 and the Long X bridge), rather than using bonding that had been in earlier versions of the plan.

On passenger-rail language, Wojcick said the bill would allow North Dakota to join a multistate corridor planning effort (referred to as the Big Sky railroad passenger authority) so the state can participate in service-development planning for an Amtrak-type corridor that would run from Seattle to Chicago and pass through roughly 360 miles of North Dakota. "If we don't provide, it's gonna come through our state anyway and we're not going to have any input or be able to participate in the planning process," Wojcick said.

Senator Maguire and others asked procedural and allocation questions during debate; Senator Wozniak explained that the conference struck a balance between grants and direct distributions, saying the mix is "about fifty-fifty" in many cases and that the flexible fund slants somewhat toward grants. Senator Lee asked for clarification about the city allocation percentage and was told by Wojcick that "the city buckets fill just as they always have" and that larger cities would receive the funding they had previously received.

On the prairie dog distributions, Senator Beckenau clarified that Operation Prairie Dog "did pay out" in the 2021–23 biennium and that allocations were sent this year; he said projections showed the program might have paid roughly $60 million to $88 million per bucket in the next year under earlier estimates and that the $160 million figure in the conference calculations reflected combined projected payouts.

Procedural actions taken in the session included adoption of the committee on corrections and revisions of the journal, adoption of the conference committee report on Senate Bill 2012, engrossing and reengrossing of the bill, and final passage. The secretary recorded a final tally of 46 yeas, 0 nays and 1 absent. Later in the session Senators agreed to stand at ease until 9:30 a.m.

The enrolled bill, as read on the floor, creates new sections to chapter 24-02 and chapter 54-27 of the North Dakota Century Code related to rail passenger authority agreements and a legacy earnings fund, amends and reenacts various sections concerning the state investment board, the flexible transportation fund, the highway tax distribution fund, motor vehicle excise tax collections, the municipal infrastructure fund, and the county and township infrastructure fund, and repeals certain legacy-related definitions and distribution funds; it also provides for legislative reporting, effective dates and exemptions as listed in the engrossed bill text.

Questions remaining for implementation include the precise timing and mechanics of matching federal grants and the schedule for SIF- and legacy-related transfers; senators asked staff for further detail on those items during debate.