Committee amends House Bill 1038 to broaden UAV data language, advances bill; rejects several landlord-tenant measures and sends amended 988 funding bill to app

Chairman Bartlett opened the Industry and Business Committee’s continued work on House Bill 1038, saying the panel needed to move quickly on the FAA radar feed portion of the measure and to protect an emergency clause tied to that feed. He told members the bill also included a program appropriation and that members had circulated several amendment options meant to answer questions raised in prior hearings.

The committee adopted a short, staff-drafted amendment that removes the word “commercial” from a phrase in Section 1 that would require the department and test site to “implement an enterprise uncrewed aerial vehicle data management solution.” Chairman Bartlett said removing “commercial” was intended to avoid excluding participation by the North Dakota Information Technology division and to keep options open for how the state manages data from uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs).

Chairman Bartlett described the $11,000,000 in Section 1 as funding to stand up a state data-pathfinder program: “That $11,000,000 is being used for the development of that program. We'll get access to the data… but there's a lot of behind-the-scenes work, creating the security, some staffing. So that's where those dollars are gonna go.” He also confirmed the committee wanted Section 2…