The state House, overriding protests from legislators who represent North Dakota's oil and coal country, has agreed to take school districts' energy tax income into account when figuring their state aid payments.

Excluding the energy money would harm the prospects of an education plan that overhauls how the aid payments are made, said Rep. C.B. "Buck" Haas, R-Taylor. Haas is a former school superintendent whose rural western legislative district includes some of North Dakota's prime oil-producing territory.

"The oil wealth, the mineral wealth, wherever it occurs in the state of North Dakota, is North Dakota wealth. The rich Red River Valley soil is North Dakota wealth," Haas said Friday. "I think it serves us ill when we try to separate ourselves from the rest of the state and isolate ourselves in our parochialism. … We have to think larger than that."

His speech came during debate on a plan, which was drafted during the last year by an appointed commission, that would revamp how North Dakota aid is distributed among schools.

It is designed to increase state payments to schools with less property tax resources to support each student. School districts with relatively low property tax rates and outside income, including oil and coal taxes, will get less.

Representatives voted 62-25 on Friday to approve the legislation after debating three options for handling energy tax money that some school districts receive. Each one offered a different way of counting the value of a district's energy revenues within a state aid payment formula.

One alternative advocated counting 100 percent of the value; the second, 75 percent; and the third, zero. The higher the included value, the better the chance the affected district's state aid payment would shrink.

House members voted separately on each choice. The 100 percent option got the most votes, 56, and was incorporated into the bill. The 75 percent option got 36 votes, the zero option 16 votes.

Work on the legislation is far from over. A conference committee of three senators and three House members will be appointed to work out its final details, a job that is expected to take at least two weeks to finish.

Several western lawmakers, including Rep. Bob Skarphol, R-Tioga, said during House debate Friday that school districts' energy revenues were not the only factors that should be included in calculating aid payments.

Skarphol suggested a similar calculation of the value of state buildings to the Bismarck school district, North Dakota State University's worth to Fargo, and the value of the University of North Dakota to Grand Forks.

"I sincerely believe that we need to arrive at equity in the funding of education. However, I do not think that oil revenue and coal revenue are the only issues germane to the equity issue itself," Skarphol said. "To single out mineral revenue as being … one of the primary contributions to creating (school finance) equity in North Dakota is wrong."

The education plan was drafted during the last year as part of an agreement to delay a lawsuit brought by nine school districts against North Dakota's education finance system.

Rep. RaeAnn Kelsch, R-Mandan, who was one of the members of an appointed commission that wrote the finance plan, said excluding energy income from a new school finance formula could restart the lawsuit.

"Make no mistake, we remove minerals from this formula, and it takes our equity all the way down," Kelsch said.

The bill is SB2200.