North Dakota Government and Veterans Affairs committee rejects ethics overhaul, advances several bills including procurement, pensions and organizational rules

The House Government and Veterans Affairs Committee on Tuesday recommended against passage of House Bill 1360, a contested rewrite of procedures for the North Dakota Ethics Commission, after more than an hour of testimony and questioning from committee members.

The committee’s decision came after Chris Joseph, general counsel for the Office of the Governor, told the panel that “as written, however, House Bill 1360 is overbroad and there are unintended consequences our office believes will occur if the bill passes.” Joseph said his office’s concern centers on language that he said would permit the Ethics Commission to define and enforce its own rules without statutory guardrails and administrative oversight.

Why it matters: The bill would restructure how complaints and “enforcement actions” are defined and handled by the Ethics Commission. Supporters say the rewrite modernizes terminology and procedure; opponents, including the governor’s legal team, said it would shift powers that the governor and attorney general believe should rest with the Legislature and courts.

Committee debate and the commission’s response

Joseph argued the bill’s definitions and the new enforcement process would have the effect of allowing a constitutionally established entity to “define, execute, and interpret its own rules,” and that the Legislature should preserve checks on how sanctions and criminal penalties are imposed. He described the issue as one of statutory interpretation of Article 14 of the North Dakota Constitution and warned the committee that broad delegation of enforcement could create opportunities for misuse in future compositions of the commission.

Rebecca Binstock, executive director of the North Dakota Ethics Commission, told members the commission reads Article 14 as giving it rulemaking authority and that giving the rules practical effect requires some procedure to implement and enforce those rules. “There are checks and balances on the commission,” Binstock said, noting judicial review and legislative appropriation as structural constraints. She said part of the commission’s concern is backlog and delay in the existing multi-step complaint process and…