Video: Things Got a Little Weird at the End of North Dakota’s 2017 Session

The legislative session is serious business. Most of the time.

Towards the end of the 2017 session I guess things got a little…weird.

“We’ve been having some pranks going on throughout the session,” a House lawmaker told me yesterday evening. Things like turning a fellow lawmaker’s phone ringer on and then calling them during the floor session. I hear a Grand Forks lawmaker got his car wrapped in plastic. Rep. Steve Vetter, specifically.

I’ve also heard of mouse traps put in desk drawers.

But perhaps one of the funniest moments happened on Wednesday this week. As lawmakers were coming back in for a late, 7:00pm floor session Speaker Larry Bellew (R-Minot) had some problems getting his fellow lawmakers to order. And then he had some problems getting himself back in order because he was laughing so hard.

You can hear in the audio that someone is getting “Rickrolled.”

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“We all have this program called LAWS we use to open up the bills and everything,” a House lawmaker explained. Apparently Rep. Dick Anderson (R-Willow City) left his computer unlocked.

“So we conspired to get on his computer and changed the LAWS icon on his computer so that it links to the YouTube video,” my House source tells me.

When Bellew called everyone to order Anderson went to open his program and got the dulcet tones of Mr. Rick Astley instead.

The results? Well, I laughed.