N. D. Attorney General Checking Meeting of Workers’ Comp Agency

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A former North Dakota Workforce Safety and Insurance executive says he walked in on an illegal meeting of agency board members in a restaurant, and he has asked Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem to investigate.

“They are breaking the sunshine laws. This is why we’re in the problem that we’re in,” said Jim Long, who was fired in March from his WSI job as chief of support services.

Long believes he was dismissed for disclosing possible agency wrongdoing to the Burleigh County prosecutor, allegations that WSI officials deny. Two separate examinations of the agency have been critical of its past management practices.

Bruce Furness, Workforce Safety’s interim chief executive, said on June18 any violation of North Dakota’s open meetings law was accidental.

In an interview, Furness described the May 21 meeting as a working dinner that included him; the board’s chairman, Mark Gjovig; a consultant, Stacy Sjogren; and Mary Thompson, who is the agency’s information services project manager.

Furness said he and Gjovig were going over the agenda for a May 22 meeting of the full board, which has 11 members. The group later was joined by Mark Jackson, the board’s vice chairman, and board members Mike Gallagher and John Dyste, Furness said.

Dyste came into the restaurant separately and was invited to join the other board members, Furness said. He said he had not expected Gallagher and Dyste to show up.

“It wasn’t a private thing at all. There were a number of people around,” Furness said. “We sat where they put us. We didn’t have a special arrangement.”

Gjovig and Jackson are two of the three members of a board subcommittee, called the Governance Committee. If two members of a three-member committee meet to discuss business, North Dakota’s open meetings law requires public notice.

“A request has been made to the attorney general to determine if the board violated any open meeting laws that apply to WSI,” Furness said in an e-mail to agency employees last week, referring to Long’s request for an investigation.

“We are currently in the process of providing the AG with information for their opinion,” Furness’ e-mail said. “Meanwhile, I want to assure you that this incident was not planned, but was an oversight which we regret.”

Long said he was told of the meeting early that evening and went to the restaurant to see for himself. He said he was dubious of Furness’ explanation that the appearance of several board members was inadvertent.

“They had a huge table set up, and they were obviously doing business,” Long said. “They had a quorum (of committee members) there, and they were talking shop.”

Separately, Forum Communications Co.’s state Capitol reporter, Janell Cole, requested an open meetings legal opinion from Stenehjem about a separate June 10 meeting of an ad hoc subcommittee of WSI’s board, during which the possibility of raising board members’ compensation was discussed.

The meeting was held by telephone conference call, and it appeared from conversations among members Bobbie Ripplinger, J.P. Wiest and Dyste that they had already talked about the issues and each other’s opinions about them, the complaint said.

Ripplinger said in an electronic mail message that she had asked Dyste and Wiest beforehand for suggestions on topics they wanted on the meeting’s agenda.

“I assumed it was proper, as chairperson of a committee, to gather the agenda topic information from members in order to prepare the agenda,” Ripplinger said. “If that is improper, perhaps committee chairs should be so instructed.”

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Received Id 1166234522 on Jun 18 2008 21:01