North Dakota’s Taxpayer Funded Lobbying Bill Needs Your Help
During the last election, as a member of the sponsoring committee for the Measure 2 tax cuts, I ran into a lot of opposition to the measure funded by our tax dollars. Specifically, the State Board of Higher Education instructed university personnel to use taxpayer resources and their positions of authority to campaign against the measure. This happened because of a loophole in North Dakota state law that disallows the use of taxpayer resources to campaign against a candidate or political party, but does not explicitly name initiated measures put on the ballots through the support of the taxpayers.
Thanks to the spotlight put on the totally inappropriate actions of government employees by myself and others, legislation has been introduced this session to close the loophole which allows this sort of taxpayer funded lobbying to happen. But, as you might expect, that legislation is under attack from the very people who exploit the loophole election cycle after election cycle.
So now the legislation needs your help.
The bill is in the Judiciary Committee, and if it is to pass the people in that committee need to know that the people of North Dakota are tired of fighting campaigns funded by their own tax dollars in order to get laws changed. Here is a list of the people on the judiciary committee:
Duane DeKrey – Chairman
Lawrence R. Klemin – Vice Chairman
Randy Boehning
Stacey Dahl
Lois Delmore
Chris Griffin
Patrick R. Hatlestad
Joyce M. Kingsbury
Kim Koppelman
William E. Kretschmar
Benjamin A. Vig
Lisa Wolf
Steve Zaiser
Here are their email addresses:
ddekrey@state.nd.us
lklemin@nd.gov
rboehning@nd.gov
stdahl@nd.gov
ldelmore@nd.gov
cdgriffin@nd.gov
phatlestad@nd.gov
jkingsbury@nd.gov
kkoppelm@state.nd.us
wkretschmar@nd.gov
bavig@nd.gov
lwolf@nd.gov
szaiser@nd.gov
Write these legislators, or call them and leave a message at 1-888-NDLEGIS (635-3447), and tell the respectfully to stop the use of taxpayer dollars in campaigns against initiated measures supported by those same taxpayers.
