Say Anything Blog

Misusing government resources is a serious charge, but even to a limited government type of guy like me this seems rather ticky tacky.

BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) A prosecutor says he’s still considering criminal charges against the former chairman of North Dakota’s workers compensation agency.

Pierce County State’s Attorney Galen Mack says he’s reviewing a state auditor’s report. It says Robert Indvik improperly used a Bottineau County cell phone and pickup for Workforce Safety and Insurance agency business.

Indvik resigned as chairman of the WSI board, and he’s quitting his job as Bottineau County’s road superintendent.

The report says Indvik used $2,717 worth of county cell phone time over two years doing WSI business. It says he pocketed $225 in mileage money from Workforce Safety that should have gone back to the county.

That works out to about $113/month in cell phone charges, plus the gas.  But did the cell phone time really cost Bottineau County any money?  Was his cell phone usage within the allowable minutes on the cell phone plan, meaning it didn’t cost the county any extra, or is the state’s attorney basing this accounting on a per-minute charge?  Seems like an important distinction to me.  If he didn’t cost the county any additional money, where’s the violation?  Perhaps he violated policy, but that seems rather minor.

As for the mileage money, that small of an amount could be an accounting error.  It’s a long way from Bottineau County down to Bismarck.  Maybe he forgot to reimburse one trip.  Big deal.  This certainly doesn’t seem to be the sort of thing that’s worth the time of a state’s attorney.  In fact, this case seems so flimsy it’s little wonder that Mr. Mack is only considering the charges instead of actually filing them.

If he had something, he’d file.  As it is, he’s just spreading innuendo.  Which in and of itself seems like a rather irresponsible thing to do.  Criminal charges are a serious matter, and impugning someone’s reputation with innuendo like this is not an appropriate action for a state’s attorney.

Which, to be frank, rather smacks of a desperate attempt by Democrats in the state to keep the WSI issue in the news in the wake of twin audit reports which completely exonerated the agency.

Which has me wondering what Mr. Galen Mack’s political affiliation is.

I also wonder why this sort of small-time nonsense is newsworthy, but revelations concerning inappropriate workplace activity by the endlessly-covered (and now fired) WSI whistleblowers isn’t.