Say Anything Blog

Our North Dakota State Treasurer, Kelly Schmidt, who has been revitalizing the Treasurer’s office ever since her election in 2004, is now on the cover of Inspire, a Bismarck women’s magazine. In the four page cover story, Schmidt discusses her commitment to her family and her love for the state of North Dakota. You can read the entire article here. Its nice to see Schmidt get some credit for all the hard work she has been doing over the past 2 years; she will likely run for re-election in 2008, but I think that the Governor’s office is calling her name after 2012. She has an amazing work ethic and I’m glad that she is getting some recognition. After 20 years of Democrats in the Treasurer’s office, Schmidt came in with new ideas and completely turned the office from an inefficient one into a highly productive and proactive one. Here’s one particularly impressive accomplishment of Schmidt’s:

She cites a project called BidND as a major accomplishment of her team. After discovering that millions of North Dakota dollars were being invested outside of the state, her staff brought those dollars home and invested them in small town banks on a bid process. “By investing millions of dollars in over 60 North Dakota communities, we’ve been able to garner additional interest income for the state,” explains Kelly. Through this initiative and effective cash management, interest income to the state’s general fund is in excess of 500 percent of the current legislative forecast.

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