Bjorn Altenburg

To serve the people of my district to the best of my ability.

A lifetime spent living and working in the district. An education in political science and environmental science.

Labor shortage especially daycare and eldercare. I would work with other legislators to form committees on the subject and investigate solutions. I think having talked to both nurses and childcare providers, major things that need to be resolved are working to keep talent in state and generally attracting talent.

Rising cost of healthcare. Almost everyone I talked to knows of or is effected by the extreme costs of healthcare, even with insurance the costs have priced many people out of the surgeries and medications they need. I think committees and investigating the issue with the resources of the state would help make the best options become more apparent. I think figuring out ways to reduce the costs between insurance claims and hospitals would be a good area to investigate first.

Affordable housing, even people living in homes are getting slammed with special assessments and rising costs of ownership. On a state level, trying to help across the state with stabilizing the housing market and investigating apartments and other living arrangements as a way to help take pressure off the markets. Still would want to sit on a committee and get a good state level picture.

Dealing with the daycare healthcare shortage, keeping hire ed especially NDSU as secure as possible, Lobby as much on behalf of the needs and requests of constituents.

There is no simple solutions, the labor market is a complex adaptive system. It will require well crafted and thought out solutions to address the multiple issues that led us to the labor shortage.In short I think we need to look at what we can do to incentivize domestic migration to the region, and to make ND as attractive as possible for moving here. Low taxes tend to be a driver, but more then that is needed to get people to come here. Looking at immigration programs and doing what we can to fill labor needs has historically been a way to deal with our labor shortages. However immigration is at the whims of the federal government and is not a long term or dependable answer to domestically declining populations.

I generally support the legacy fund, and using it to help grow investments in state and generally have money to help grow the states economy. Using that money to invest in ND to help grow are business here will help Fargo I think in the long term. Being able to leverage state loans and grants to grow the states and by extensions valley economy will be good. Keeping taxes as low for everyone is a good way to keep the economics of the sate fairly competitive. It's always a balancing act between goods and services and taxes though, need to find what's cost effective and practical for ND.