Plain Talk With Rob Port

The Legacy Fund was launched in 2010 when North Dakota voters approved a legislatively-initiated constitutional amendment to create it. Now, thanks to the share of oil tax revenues it receives, as well as the investment returns its generated, it sits with a balance of about $10.7 billion. And it's become something of a political football. It can seem as though we are endlessly debating how the fund is invested and what we should do with the fund and its earnings. On this episode of Plain Talk, a couple of Republican lawmakers from District 12, in the Jamestown area, talked about legislation they'd like to see passed during the 2025 session which, they feel, would help inform those debates. Because one of the biggest problems of the Legacy Fund is that we don't know how a lot of the money is invested. Rep. Mitch Ostlie, and Rep. Bernie Satrom, estimate that about $3.1 billion of the fund's investments are opaque to public scrutiny. "Where are the dollars invested?" Rep. Ostlie asked. Their proposal is called t