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ND Legislative Update by Kayla Pulvermacher, State Legislative Director Today marks Day 60 for the 2021 North Dakota Legislative Session. We are still waiting on a couple of bills to get their final passage; but for the most part, our major legislative work has finished. Here’s a few interesting stats for you coming out of this session. Lawmakers started the session with 847 bills and 61 resolutions. As a legislative team, we monitored 32 bills this session, we testified on your behalf 15 times, we secured 1 emergency clause on a bill important to credit unions, and we helped created amendments for 6 bills that eventually went on to be passed. And probably most important: When we asked for our members to write emails to their legislators, they responded. Members wrote over 100 emails to legislators this session. Pretty impressive! I’ve had many people ask me what our major issues have been this session, and I don’t hesitate to tell them one word: Liens! A close second for us was abandoned property. I would like to spend a little time this week going into more detail on these bills. We spent a fair amount of time on HB 1366. In its original form, the bill allowed a repair shop to charge unlimited fees and transportation costs, on top of any repairs, to their priority lien against a vehicle or equipment. The financial community offered amendments that required repairman to follow provisions and protections that are required under Uniform Commercial Code, which the bill lacked. SB 2223 was probably the strangest piece of legislation that I’ve worked on as a lobbyist, mostly because I’ve never seen a bill take on so many forms. It began as a bill that made changes to the Deed In Lieu of Foreclosure process. Before the bill even had its hearing, it received amendments that changed it into a bill to affect those farmers who had federal debt management plans from 2006. It received another set of amendments before the bill was voted on, but ultimately, those amendments were not taken up. The bill received a “do not pass” from the Senate Political Subdivisions committee and failed the Senate. The abandoned property bills streamlined language in the Century Code to make it easier to remove abandoned property from homes, roadways, and self-storage facilities. SB 2191 follows the adoption of SB 2205 last session to streamline the foreclosure process for abandoned property without negatively affecting consumers or the integrity of title. Last session, personal property left abandoned on the real property was inadvertently missed in that bill and is now causing some delays in the foreclosure of real property that has been abandoned. The changes in SB 2098 will streamline the administrative workload for the North Dakota Highway Patrol and other law enforcement agencies. They will also provide a mechanism for tow companies to seek reimbursement to recover their costs for removing abandoned vehicles from the state’s roadways. The bill also allows for the posting of property on the official website for the unit of government that initiated the impound process. We worked with the bill sponsors of SB 2330 to ensure that the process included notifying possible lienholders of where property was going to be placed. The bill modernizes the state’s lien laws regarding self-storage units and brings it in line with the many sates that have improved their laws over the past 15 years. If you have any questions about these bills or others that we have talked about in past Memo articles, drop me an email at kpulvermacher@dakcu.org. Next week, we will go into the bills regarding the ND Department of Financial Institutions.
ND Legislative Update
by Kayla Pulvermacher, State Legislative Director
Today marks Day 60 for the 2021 North Dakota Legislative Session. We are still waiting on a couple of bills to get their final passage; but for the most part, our major legislative work has finished.
Here’s a few interesting stats for you coming out of this session. Lawmakers started the session with 847 bills and 61 resolutions. As a legislative team, we monitored 32 bills this session, we testified on your behalf 15 times, we secured 1 emergency clause on a bill important to credit unions, and we helped created amendments for 6 bills that eventually went on to be passed. And probably most important: When we asked for our members to write emails to their legislators, they responded. Members wrote over 100 emails to legislators this session. Pretty impressive!
I’ve had many people ask me what our major issues have been this session, and I don’t hesitate to tell them one word: Liens! A close second for us was abandoned property. I would like to spend a little time this week going into more detail on these bills.
We spent a fair amount of time on HB 1366. In its original form, the bill allowed a repair shop to charge unlimited fees and transportation costs, on top of any repairs, to their priority lien against a vehicle or equipment. The financial community offered amendments that required repairman to follow provisions and protections that are required under Uniform Commercial Code, which the bill lacked.
SB 2223 was probably the strangest piece of legislation that I’ve worked on as a lobbyist, mostly because I’ve never seen a bill take on so many forms. It began as a bill that made changes to the Deed In Lieu of Foreclosure process. Before the bill even had its hearing, it received amendments that changed it into a bill to affect those farmers who had federal debt management plans from 2006. It received another set of amendments before the bill was voted on, but ultimately, those amendments were not taken up. The bill received a “do not pass” from the Senate Political Subdivisions committee and failed the Senate.
The abandoned property bills streamlined language in the Century Code to make it easier to remove abandoned property from homes, roadways, and self-storage facilities.
SB 2191 follows the adoption of SB 2205 last session to streamline the foreclosure process for abandoned property without negatively affecting consumers or the integrity of title. Last session, personal property left abandoned on the real property was inadvertently missed in that bill and is now causing some delays in the foreclosure of real property that has been abandoned.
The changes in SB 2098 will streamline the administrative workload for the North Dakota Highway Patrol and other law enforcement agencies. They will also provide a mechanism for tow companies to seek reimbursement to recover their costs for removing abandoned vehicles from the state’s roadways. The bill also allows for the posting of property on the official website for the unit of government that initiated the impound process.
We worked with the bill sponsors of SB 2330 to ensure that the process included notifying possible lienholders of where property was going to be placed. The bill modernizes the state’s lien laws regarding self-storage units and brings it in line with the many sates that have improved their laws over the past 15 years.
If you have any questions about these bills or others that we have talked about in past Memo articles, drop me an email at kpulvermacher@dakcu.org. Next week, we will go into the bills regarding the ND Department of Financial Institutions.