ND Department of Labor and Human Rights seeks funding for compliance investigator to reduce case backlog

Zachary Greenberg, interim commissioner of the North Dakota Department of Labor and Human Rights, told the House Appropriations Committee, Government Operations Division that the department is requesting $3,495,709 for the coming biennium and asked the committee to fully fund all 13 authorized FTEs, including a compliance investigator position that has been authorized but unfunded since 2017.

Greenberg said the department’s work covers three core areas—human rights enforcement, wage-and-hour enforcement and public education—and described a backlog of cases the agency is managing. “Currently it's at 415,” Greenberg said at one point when describing the backlog; later in his presentation he said the backlog had been reduced and noted it was “417 as of November and currently today it's at still at 417.”

Why it matters: The department enforces North Dakota’s human-rights and housing-discrimination laws and enforces wage-and-hour claims, including unpaid wages and misclassification. Greenberg told lawmakers the department has authority to conciliate complaints, hold administrative hearings where probable cause exists, and investigate cases on behalf of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

The request and budget details: Greenberg presented a biennial request of $3,495,709, and said the package includes federal fund authority. He described roughly $3,008,338 of the request as salary and wages and $387,371 for agency operations. He told the committee the department also has “the federal funding authority to receive $500,000, give or take,” but emphasized that the unfunded FTE would need legislative funding. “Yes, [the governor] did” include funding for the unfunded FTE in the executive budget, Greenberg told Chairman Munson when asked whether Governor Armstrong’s budget provided it.

Staffing and operations: Greenberg said the department currently is authorized for 13 FTEs, with one position unfunded since about 2017 and one recently vacant after a resignation. He described difficulties nationwide in recruiting investigators with sufficient investigative experience and noted North Dakota’s investigators generally require at least a bachelor’s degree and investigation experience. He said the department’s compliance investigators conduct witness interviews, review records and draft determinations—work that cannot be fully automated.

Types of cases and statutory limits: Greenberg described wage-claim work as the single largest category of cases and said wage-claim recoveries have a statutory ceiling: “We have a ceiling for that. It's up to $15,000 in missing wages,” he said. He also summarized employment-discrimination, housing-discrimination and retaliation claims the department handles under state whistleblower and public-employee-relations statutes.

Questions from lawmakers: Committee members pressed Greenberg on what “unfunded” means (he said the position was authorized but not funded after budget cuts), recruitment challenges, and whether federal contracts (HUD and EEOC) pay on a per-case-closed basis (Greenberg confirmed they do). Representative Bosch and others asked whether the federal funding authority could be used to pay the position; Greenberg said compensation for that FTE must come from the legislature.

Next steps: The committee paused the hearing after the presentation and indicated Greenberg and the department would return for more detailed questions at a later date.

Ending note: The department emphasized continued use of outreach and education programs—such as workplace training—and said full funding for the authorized FTEs would be the department’s top priority to reduce case duration and process more claims.