North Dakota lawmakers pass Commerce budget without aid for presidential library

BISMARCK — The North Dakota Legislature sent the Department of Commerce’s budget to Gov. Kelly Armstrong on Friday without the $50 million in funding for the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library that was previously added to the bill.

Senate Bill 2018

saw over three hours of debate on the House floor last week

before passing

and ending up in a conference committee.

The version of the bill that

came out of conference committee

had about $70 million less in Strategic Investment and Improvement Funding (SIIF) than the version passed by the House. SIIF is a state reserve fund filled by oil and gas production and extraction tax revenue that is frequently used by lawmakers to backfill the state budget.

The presidential library accounted for $25 million of that amount, but Rep. Mike Nathe, R-Bismarck, said other areas were cut as well. Funding for the

“Find the Good Life” state tourism marketing campaign

was eliminated, while support for tourism development grants, a drone replacement program, the North Dakota Development Fund, the beyond-line-of-sight Vantis drone program, and science centers in Fargo and Grand Forks was reduced.

Lawmakers said they decided to push discussion of further funding for the presidential library to next session, when they would have more time to discuss it in a policy committee and the library will have been open for five months. The fact that the additional funding for the library was added in the House Appropriations Committee rather than a policy committee was one of the largest points of criticism when the bill came up on the House floor last week.

Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library

officials said they have raised $260 million to date and aim to raise $450 million in private donations.

Library spokesperson Matt Briney said the library is on track to close the funding gap before its grand opening in July 2026. The library

hit the halfway point of construction

in August 2024.

The previously proposed funding for the presidential library totaled $50 million — $25 million from SIIF and $25 million from earnings from the Bank of North Dakota. The funding would not have gone toward construction but instead into an operational endowment to cover staffing and annual expenses in perpetuity.

Sen. Michael Dwyer, R-Bismarck, carried the bill on the Senate floor and said the $9 million in funding for a drone replacement program, which would replace all drones used by state agencies that come from China with drones made by the U.S. or an ally country, was the concession the Senate made to reduce spending elsewhere in the budget. It previously went into conference committee at $16 million.

Some lawmakers in the House condemned the addition of funding for a drone replacement program because they said it was reintroduced from

a bill that was voted down earlier this session.

Nathe said it is common to put sections of failed legislation into other bills.

The total budget for the department was set at roughly $158 million, with approximately $42 million of that from the General Fund and $70 million allocated as one-time funding.