Say Anything Blog

Its been news for a while, but the Heritage Center is launching a 60-million-dollar expansion project. Sounds like great news, right? Sure, if private donors are willing to fund it. Unfortunately, the Heritage Center is only anticipating 12 million from private donors, and it wants to use 36 million dollars from the state. Its already secured 1.5 million by a vote in the 2007 session. My position on this is that quite frankly, it seems that no one is ever at the Heritage Center. Sure, its a great place to learn about North Dakota history, but it usually sits empty, and what sort of return do we as North Dakota citizens get out of this? Why should we constantly pump millions upon millions of tax payer dollars into this museum? The answer is - we shouldn't. Instead, the Heritage Center needs to look at ways to do a more modest expansion using private donations. They shouldn't be expecting the legislature to give them a blank check.

We built the Heritage Center with state funds back in the 1980s, and from there on out, private dollars should have been used to fund it. Instead, we've seen millions of state dollars thrown at it, and now they are requesting 36 million more. Here is a list of the 56 representatives who supported the bill. Let them know that the Heritage Center needs to find a way to fund itself using private donors.