Port: Auditor Josh Gallion is using his office for political purposes
Minot, N.D. — One of the many, many complaints about Auditor Josh Gallion’s conduct in office which emerged during the legislative session this year is that his office used a leak to manipulate a local election.
Ann Hafner is the director of the Killdeer Area Ambulance Service, which covers nearly 1,000 square miles in Dunn, McKenzie and Billings counties in western North Dakota. Gallion’s office initiated an audit of her organization after a local citizen, who was in opposition to a proposed mill levy increase for the ambulance service, made a complaint.
During that audit, before the vote on the mill increase, a member of Gallion’s office leaked information to an opponent of the increase who is also married to the citizen whose complaint initiated the audit. That leaked information was used in the campaign against the mill levy increase.
Effectively, according to Hafner. “He’s letting one person with a bone to pick weaponize his office,” she told me in February.
Now Gallion seems to be jumping into local politics again.
