1. Jury finds Rep. Dockter guilty of voting on legislation he had financial interest in
From the North Dakota Monitor via Forum News Service
A jury found a state lawmaker guilty of violating an obscure conflict-of-interest law after a 10-hour trial Friday.
At issue in the case was Rep. Jason Dockter’s involvement in the lease of a Bismarck building to the Attorney General’s Office and the North Dakota Department of Health and his subsequent votes on agency budgets.
The jury took about 90 minutes to deliberate after hearing several hours of testimony from state officials.
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South Central Judicial District Judge Weiler deferred sentencing Dockter on the misdemeanor until a later date, noting it had been a long and emotional day for everyone and she wanted time to think.
The building deal originally came together during Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem’s tenure. The representative was friends with Stenehjem, and previously served as his campaign treasurer. Stenehjem died in office in 2022.
Dockter, a Bismarck Republican, later voted on budgets for the Attorney General’s Office and the North Dakota Department of Health in the 2021 and 2023 sessions, which spurred the criminal charge by prosecutor Ladd Erickson in December 2023. Erickson, the McLean County state’s attorney, brought the case as a special assistant AG to Burleigh County State’s Attorney Julie Lawyer.
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2. North Dakota senators join effort to block rules that would force more electric vehicles onto roads
U.S. senators from North Dakota have signed on to legislation that would block the Biden administration's efforts to put more electric vehicles on the road.
Sens. John Hoeven and Kevin Cramer, both Republicans, announced Wednesday, May 1, that they would cosponsor two Congressional Review Act resolutions that would oppose Environmental Protection Agency rules to require two-thirds of new cars and nearly 40% of trucks sold in the U.S. to be electric vehicles in eight years.
“The Biden administration’s commitment to heavy-handed, overreaching regulations leads to higher costs and less choice for American households,” Hoeven said in a statement. “These two rules will not only make inflation worse, but also likely push the cost of new vehicles out of reach for many families and small businesses, resulting older, less efficient vehicles staying on the road longer.”
One rule would phase-in emissions standards for light and medium duty vehicles, and the second rule would reduce greenhouse gas emissions for heavy duty vehicles beginning in 2027. That would impact school buses, delivery trucks, garbage trucks, public utility trucks, transit vehicles and commercial semi-trucks, the EPA said.
The Biden administration has made promises to make the U.S. a net-zero emissions economy by 2050 with carbon pollution-free electricity by 2035. The EPA said the rules to put more electric vehicles on the road will cut pollution.
“Under President Biden’s leadership, this Administration is pairing strong standards with historic investments to revitalize domestic manufacturing, strengthen domestic supply chains and create good-paying jobs,” EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan said in March.
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Read more from The Forum's April Baumgarten
3. Midwest governors among 48 who oppose Air National Guard move to Space Force
From the Iowa Capital Dispatch via Forum News Service
North Dakota, South Dakota and Minnesota governors signed on to a letter Monday alongside 45 other state governors, as well as five territories and commonwealths, opposing the Biden administration’s move to incorporate Air National Guard service members into the Space Force.
The letter from the National Governors’ Association, addressed to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, is written in opposition to a legislative proposal submitted by the Department of Defense to the Senate Armed Services Committee that would transfer some Air National Guard personnel and equipment currently being used on space missions to the Space Force.
The Defense Department proposal would require Congress to override existing law requiring that governors approve changes to National Guard units, through Title 10 and 32 of the U.S. Code, that outlines gubernatorial authority over their states’ National Guard.
The bipartisan group of governors signing the letter said the proposed measure would hurt governors’ abilities to use the National Guard in response to crises. Governors must retain full authority over these units “to protect operational readiness and America’s communities,” the letter states.
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North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz each signed the letter.
4. Hoeven announces $5.1M from feds to monitor CO2 storage; effort involves Dakota Gasification
From the Bismarck Tribune via Forum News Service
U.S. Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., on Friday, May 3, announced a $5.1 million federal grant for the University of North Dakota's Energy and Environmental Research Center to study the way carbon dioxide affects the areas where it is stored underground.
The money from the U.S. Department of Energy will be used to examine the carbon storage operations at the Great Plains Synfuels Plant owned by Dakota Gasification Co., a for-profit subsidiary of Basin Electric Power Cooperative.
The Beulah plant converts lignite coal to synthetic natural gas and other products. It is the only coal gasification plant in the country.
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This is the second round of funding going to Dakota Gasification's project, which aims to store 35% of its climate-warming CO2 emissions permanently underground. It also received $1.4 million from the Energy Department for an earlier phase of the project.
The plant is one of the earliest adopters of carbon capture technology. For the last two decades, it has captured 50% of its CO2 emissions and sent them through a pipeline to southern Canada for a process called enhanced oil recovery — or EOR — which helps loosen up hard-to-recover oil in older fields.
EERC also recently received $11.6 million from the federal Energy Department to study whether EOR would be an effective tool for both increasing oil production and storing CO2 in the aging Bakken oil fields.
EOR has been practiced for decades in older, vertically drilled conventional oil fields. It has recently been adopted in southwest North Dakota at conventional wells in Bowman County, but the horizontally drilled Bakken shale fields in northwest North Dakota have different characteristics than conventional ones, which is why the research is needed, according to the Energy Department.
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5. Minnesota Senate approves bill speeding up licensing process for recreational cannabis dispensaries
As signatures are being gathered to put legalizing recreational cannabis for adults on the ballot in North Dakota, Minnesota lawmakers are working today to iron out its arrival in the state, and speeding up the process.
A bill, HF 4757, passed by the Senate on Friday, May 3, would let the Office of Cannabis Management start pre-approving dispensaries for licenses as early as this summer.
Besides the faster timeline for dispensaries the bill also lets cultivators start growing commercial crops later this year and gives the Office of Cannabis Management control over enforcement for hemp-derived edible products and medical marijuana.
Much of the lengthy session was focused on many amendments that were proposed and debated, ranging from establishing a ban on public consumption to clarifying rules for cities.
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