North Dakotans love Las Vegas. But it turns out Las Vegas might have a little love for North Dakota, too.

Ron Kantowski, a sports columnist for the Las Vegas Sun, recently penned a piece glowing about the Peace Garden State in comparison to Nevada, a financially beleaguered state that recently finished its legislative session with a $780 million tax increase to help close a $3 billion budget hole.

North Dakota's Legislature emerged in May with tax cuts, Kantowski notes. About $400 million of them.

"North Dakota is the new Rollie Massimino," Kantowski wrote on Wednesday, referring to the former Villanova basketball coach. "It has so much money it doesn't know what to do with it. It even has begun recruiting laid-off workers from Michigan and Ohio. If you're down on your luck and feeling unwanted, North Dakota just might be the place for you."

For Kantowski, there are just two problems with moving to Bismarck from sunny Las Vegas: "January and February."

Still, the state is receiving its fair share of positive national press for being one of two economic bright spots in the country, including fellow resource producer Wyoming.

Gov. John Hoeven recently appeared on CNBC's morning show "Street Signs" to talk about the state's 4 percent unemployment rate, the lowest in the nation. Nationally, it's 9.4 percent.

The National Governors Association released a report on June 4, detailing the dire financial situation most states are in, with the exceptions of North Dakota and Wyoming.

In a June 5 Wall Street Journal story, Raymond C. Scheppach, the executive director of the NGA, had this solution: "We all ought to move to North Dakota."

That's a lot of North Dakota love. As for California love?

"I'm also concerned about some of the states, like California," Hoeven told the WSJ. "At what point does their deficit problem become our collective problem?"

Tupac, eat your heart out.

Hot air

Americans for Prosperity, the group that unsuccessfully pushed the income tax-cutting Measure 2 in 2008, say they are returning to North Dakota this month to protest cap and trade legislation in Congress.

As part of its "Hot Air Tour," the group says that it will visit Bismarck and Fargo on June 23 starting at 8:30 a.m. with free food and free hot air balloon rides, so "you can fight back -just like we did with (the) tea parties."

Families are welcome. No location has been determined for the event.

(Reach reporter Brian Duggan at 223-8482 or at brian.duggan@;bismarcktribune.com.)