George Sinner Takes Credit For Legislation Passed While He Was On Vacation

You can’t make this stuff up.

Earlier this week Democrat state Senator, and US House candidate, attacked Rep. Kevin Cramer for missed votes in the US House. To be sure, asking an elected leader why they missed votes is a perfectly valid line of inquiry, but according to Cramer most of his missed votes were because he was in North Dakota attending to official business (meeting with constituents, federal officials, etc). Meanwhile, it turns out that Sinner missed some pretty key votes in the state Senate last year.

While his colleagues were working until 5:00am on the 80th and final day of the session to hammer out compromises on key legislation, Sinner was on vacation attending a family reunion.

Here are some of the bills Sinner missed on that final day:

• HB 1013 – A funding bill for K-12 education and the Department of Public Instruction which included the much-talked-about property tax reform

• HB 1015  – The budget for the Office of Management and Budget which contained considerable funding for infrastructure projects

• HB 1198 – Major reforms for oil royalties, including tax withholding, and a controversial close to the so-called “stripper well” exemption

• HB 1290 – A bill requiring notice to property owners for impending increases in assessments

• SB 2003 – The North Dakota University System budget which included major appropriations to building projects

• SB 2200 – Major reforms to the funding formula for North Dakota’s universities

Some pretty important stuff, but it gets better (or worse, depending on your perspective). Not only did Sinner miss those votes, in June of last year he sent out a letter to constituents on his legislative letterhead bragging about his work on issues like property tax relief, K-12 and higher education funding and infrastructure.

So Sinner was on vacation for key votes on those issues, but then bragged about his work on those issues to his constituents. And then had the cojones to attack his House race opponent for his missed votes.

To be fair, Sinner only missed two days of the 2013 Legislative session, but one of those days was probably the most important day of the entire session. And he was on vacation.

This is some high-octane hypocrisy, and I think Sinner owes North Dakota voters an explanation.

Here’s the letter, sent to me by a Fargo-area reader: