Bill increasing financial reporting for public officials advances in North Dakota House
The House on Tuesday night voted 64-26 to require public officials to file statements of interest annually.
Current law only requires officials to submit one statement of interest form when they file for candidacy or when they're appointed to office. Statewide officials file their forms with the Secretary of State's Office, while local government officials file with their respective local offices.
The primary sponsor of House Bill 1469, Rep. Glenn Bosch, R-Bismarck, said the proposal will increase public transparency as well as make the submission process more straightforward for officials.
'Hopefully we can see that helps provide clarity for us, too, when we have to fill this out,' he said on the House floor.
More financial reporting proposed for North Dakota elected officials
The proposal is supported by the North Dakota Ethics Commission and the Secretary of State's Office. House Majority Leader Rep. Mike Lefor and Senate Majority Leader Sen. David Hogue are also sponsoring the bill.
The bill adds the following reporting requirements:
A list of any local governments or state agencies that the individual or their spouse have provided more than $5,000 worth of goods or services to.
A list of any employer, business or trust in which the individual or their spouse has more than a 10% stake in.
Currently, candidates or appointees must only report the following information:
The employer and principal source of income of that individual and their spouse.
The name of any businesses or trusts in which the individual and their spouse have a financial interest.
A list of associations with which the individual or spouse 'are closely associated' or of which either is an officer or director.
Business offices, directorships or fiduciary relationships held by the individual and their spouse within the past year.
The proposal would also require the Secretary of State's Office to publish the forms filed with its office online. The forms are not online now and there can be a fee to obtain them.
North Dakota's likely next governor would regulate his own industry, testing ethics guardrails
Rep. Dan Ruby, R-Minot, said the proposal would be tedious for him, since his business serves dozens of local governments across the state. Ruby's legislative bio says he owns a sanitation and landfill business.
'I'd probably have over 60 towns and counties,' Ruby, who voted against the bill, said on the floor. 'Do they really want a list of every customer that we have that might be a municipality? That just seems kind of unnecessary.'
Bosch acknowledged that the bill would require more work from people like Ruby, but that complying with the new requirements would be easy for most officials, especially after the first year.
'For me, I think those two measurements – if you own more than 10% of a business, if you do more than $5,000 worth of business with that political sub — are thresholds that we can all live with,' Bosch said.
The bill advances to the Senate for further consideration.
In 2017, lawmakers considered a bill that would have made statements of interest available online to the public for free. The bill got amended to a study and the proposed changes were not implemented.
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