Weekenders (Pretend It's Friday)

THE CAT’S ON THE ROOF

My old friend Buckshot Hoffner (I mean “old” both ways—we’ve been friends for more than 30 years, and he is old—closer to 90 than 80) came home from World War II with a big prize. Her name was Patricia, and she was an English beauty who left her home in England to marry a farmer from North Dakota. Buckshot is a great story-teller. He used to tell one that goes something like this: After he and Pat had settled in on the farm in Benson County, Pat made a long distance overseas call to her twin sister back in England—no small feat in the late 1940s. During the call, Pat asked about her cat, her favorite pet, which she had had to leave behind when she crossed the Atlantic with Buckshot. Her sister replied that the cat had died. Pat became very upset and had to hang up the phone. The next time the two spoke, Buckshot took the phone, and while Pat was out of the room, he told Pat’s sister that perhaps she could have been a little gentler with the bad news. Maybe, Buckshot suggested, she could have told Pat the cat was up on the roof, and while they were going to have to do some work to get him down, the cat would likely be okay. And then the next time they spoke, Buckshot suggested, she could have said the cat fell off the roof and got hurt, but would hopefully recover. And then finally, Buckshot said, when they spoke again, she could have told Pat that the cat did not recover from his injuries and was gone. That way, Buckshot said, Pat would get the bad news gradually instead of all at once, and she would not be so upset. The sister agreed that would have been a good strategy, and would remember that in the future. So Buckshot put Pat back on the phone, and Pat asked “How’s Mom?” “Well,” her sister replied “Mom’s up on the roof.”

Tracy Potter reminded me of that story last week as the corps of Engineers was revising its flood forecast for the fourth time in four days. “Sounds like the Corps of Engineers has heard Buckshot’s ‘cat on the roof’ story,” Tracy said. I agreed. First 55,000 cfs. Then 65,000 cfs. Then 80,000 cfs. Then 105,000 cfs. Then 120,000 cfs. As each day passed, we got a new number from the Corps, and a new date we could expect to see that number. I’m sure they reasoned that if they went from 55,000 to 120,000 all at once, we’d all freak out, so better to break it to us gently. Are they done now? I’m not sure. I’m afraid the cat might still be up on the roof. A lot of folks in Bismarck and Mandan are ready to climb up there and get it. Before it falls off and something really bad happens.

THE MOST UNDESIREABLE JOB IN NORTH DAKOTA

What is it with the Public Service Commission? Is it a really bad place to work? What is it that keeps the three members continually on the hunt for a new job? Commissioner Kevin Cramer never seems to let an election go by that he doesn’t try to do something else—except in the years when he has to get himself re-elected. He’s got a Facebook page up and running: Kevin Cramer for U.S. Senate. Problem with that is, his old nemesis Rick Berg, who beat him at the State Republican Convention just last year, wants that job now. Another problem: He and Commissioner Tony Clark signed a letter encouraging Berg to run for the Senate. That should rule out a rematch at the 2012 Convention? Commissioner Brian Kalk celebrated his two-year anniversary on the Commission by announcing he’s running for the U.S. Senate. And then speaking of Congress, Kalk changed his mind, and is running for the House seat Berg has announced he’s leaving after just five months in office. Kalk has said he would seek the Republican endorsement for the Senate no matter what office Berg decided to seek, according to a May 16 report in the Grand Forks Herald. In a Saturday (May 14) email to supporters and media contacts, Kalk said he’s “in to win” at the state convention next spring, the Herald story said. “Some have asked if I would drop out should certain candidates enter,” Kalk wrote. “My response then and my response now is that we are headed to the Bismarck convention and we will win.” That was then—May 16. Just four days later, on May 20, the Herald reported Kalk has changed his mind and is now running for the U.S. House seat. Like Berg, Kalk wants so badly to get elected to something that he’ll run for whatever is available. House, Senate, doesn’t matter. Put me in, coach, I’m ready to play. And then there’s Clark, who just finished serving as the North Dakota Republican Party’s State Chairman, then announced he’s just going to quit, but wait, there’s a long shot he might run for U.S. Congress. Sort it out among yourselves, boys, and let us know when you’ve finally all made up your mind.

GLASS HOUSES

Some things about the North Dakota Game and Fish Department’s study on the impacts of oil and gas development on wildlife just don’t add up. The report was completed in June of 2010. Game and Fish Director Terry Steinwand told the Bismarck Tribune he delivered the report to the Governor’s office sometime after that—the Tribune did not specify when that took place. The story by reporter Lauren Donavon in the Tribune on April 1, 2011 said, “Steinwand said he delivered the draft to Hoeven's legal counsel Ryan Bernstein, whose only comment was to continue working on the study.” In a letter to me on May 18, 2011, Steinwand said “My initial plans were to have the report to me final by mid-summer (2011) but that time frame has been moved to the end of May.” If Steinwand’s plan all along was that the report was not going to be final until the summer of 2011, why was it delivered to the Governor’s legal counsel way back last year? (Why would it go to the governor’s legal counsel at all, for that matter? I still haven’t figured that out.) Doesn’t make sense. Makes more sense that the Steinwand acquiesced to the Governor or his staff, who didn’t want it floating around during a U.S. Senate campaign, and only with some heat from the public almost a year later did Steinwand come up with a new story on its release date. By the way, do you ever look at the website fishingbuddy.com? I do once in a while. One of the things I found on it was an interview with the new North Dakota Game and Fish Director Terry Steinwand, posted February 15, 2006, shortly after Steinwand took office. The interview was conducted by Doug Leier, one of the information specialists at Game and Fish. Here’s a little bit of it.

Leier: Pet Peeve?

Steinwand: One of my biggest pet peeves is dishonesty. I think I’m a pretty easy going guy, but one thing that definitely gets my dander up is someone lying to me. A close second is failure to be accountable for your own actions.

A “FINAL” REPORT

Speaking of that report, it is now accessible to the general public on the department’s website, 11 months after it was written. A month after the Legislature has gone home. Too late for that body to write any of the new laws recommended by the department staff to address the impacts of oil and gas development on wildlife. It sat on the director’s desk for 11 months. After all that time, the director made two changes to the report.

• The word “Draft” that was overlaid on each page has been removed.
• The date on the cover has been changed from June 2010 to May 2011.

That’s it. I can’t find a single paragraph in the entire report that was changed from the draft I obtained from Deputy Director Paul Schadewald last month. Director Steinwand wrote in his letter to me on May 18, “My initial plans were to have the report to me final by mid-summer but that time frame has been moved to the end of May at the latest. Once the legislative session concluded I had a little more time to spend specifically on this effort. The review is essentially complete as I write this letter and anticipate that the end of May time frame will be easily reached once the edits are made, which are relatively minor.” I’ll say. Really, really minor. Like changing the date. I really dislike those darn pet peeves.

Cor Te Reducit

Two things of note happened in my life Tuesday. In the morning, I attended the funeral of a good friend and one of North Dakota’s great liberal thinkers, Karl Limvere. In the evening I helped another good friend and his wife move the belongings from their home south of Bismarck. Both things, some would say, were the result of acts of God. I’m not so sure.

Karl Limvere was a man of God, and God works in mysterious ways, so Karl’s death from what I suspect was his second heart attack–he survived one about ten years ago–was God’s work. After a long career with the North Dakota Farmers Union, Karl went off to Washington, D.C., to be an agriculture adviser to Senator Byron Dorgan. Karl didn’t do so well in that big urban environment, and so he answered a call to be a UCC minister at a small church in Medina, North Dakota, not far from Jamestown, where he had spent most of his adult life. And so he spent the last years of his life back home on the North Dakota prairie.

As funerals go, it was a pretty good one. The church was full (the weather was good, which is always a determining factor), standing room only, and the basement lunch (scalloped potatoes, coleslaw, buns and bars), was much like the many Karl attended as the minister in his church. He’d have loved it, and also loved the big-time liberal bent in the attendees, friends Karl had made from a lifetime of political and social involvement. We joked at lunch that Karl was the only friend we had who was actually taken up in the rapture. Certainly he would have been first among us to have earned it.

I was seated near the front of the church, and shortly before the service began, two young women took a seat in the pew directly in front of me. One of them, tall and pretty, was well-dressed in a black dress cut low enough for me to read the tattoo across the top of her back. It read “Cor Te Reducit.” It was done tastefully, with black inch-high letters in a flowery script. I’d seen the phrase before, but couldn’t remember enough Latin to translate it, so I wrote it down on the back of my program and looked it up when I left the church.

Cor Te Reducit: The Heart Will Lead You Back.

Apparently it is a popular phrase for young people’s tattoos these days. I liked it, and I thought Karl would too, because his heart had indeed led him back to the prairie he loved so dearly not so many years ago. I knew a lot of the people at the church. I didn’t know that young woman. But I bet Karl did. And I bet he was glad she was there.

And then, just a few hours later, back home in Bismarck, I called my friend Jeff to see how he was faring in his battle against a rapidly rising Missouri River. Jeff and his wife have lived in an un-ostentatious home on the Missouri River for 20 years. Jeff’s a fisherman. He ties his boat to the bank in the summer and gets up in the morning and goes fishing. He’s seen high water before. It rains and snows in western North Dakota and eastern Montana, where the Missouri gets its water. Sixty years ago, the United States government built a series of dams on the Missouri River to protect cities like Bismarck from flooding, which was a pretty frequent occurrence along the Missouri River. By regulating the flow of water through the dams, the United States Army Corps of Engineers was able to assure un-rich people like my friend Jeff, who was lucky enough 20 years ago to find this cozy little house beside the river, that he could live in a place where he could tie his boat to the bank and go fishing in the morning. Jeff’s last scare with high water was the ice jam of 2009, and we laughed together at the goofy scheme the Corps and others came up with to blast some dynamite holes in the ice to move the water. We’re not laughing at the Corps this year. The Corps is telling Jeff and others along the river, and many people who live inside the city limits on quiet residential streets in south Bismarck, to prepare for the highest water level since the Garrison Damn was closed in 1954.

So last night, friends and relatives and neighbors went to Jeff’s house and helped him begin loading up all his belongings. He’s moving out, lock, stock and barrel. Today we will decide whether to begin sandbagging to try to save the house. But if the water comes as high as they say it will, and stays as long as they say it will, there’s likely no saving the house. This isn’t just a 2-3 day high water problem–it’s a 2-3 month high water problem, and even if the house is sandbagged, there won’t be any getting to it for a long long time, and the damage to a house surrounded by all that water for all that time is unestimable. Jeff’s wife says this is it. She’s had it. She’s never coming back. She’s an angry woman, and there’s no consoling her. For now, she is shopping for temporary housing, an apartment, a place to live while they try to save their house and sort out their lives. Jeff is more measured. He’s a calm German man with a positive outlook, and he knows that there will be another day when he can take time to decide if this is an act of God, or a giant screwup by the Corps of Engineers. And he knows when not to argue with his wife. I know that he also knows that there will come a time to assess how bad the damage is, how accurate the Corps of Engineers’ estimate was, how hard the financial hit will be, how his life has gone in the time away from the river he loves, and where he will live next.

Meanwhile, today we finish moving all the belongings from their house. The plan is, by the end of the day, as the water rises over the bank of the Missouri River and creeps inland, the house will be empty. Perhaps for good. Perhaps not.

Perhaps . . . Cor Te Reducit.

A Letter From The Game And Fish Director

North Dakota Game and Fish Department Director Terry Steinwand will release a final draft of the report titled “POTENTIAL IMPACTS OF OIL AND GAS DEVELOPMENT ON SELECT NORTH DAKOTA NATURAL RESOURCES” by the end of May, nearly a year after it was written and two months after it was first revealed by blogger Chad Nodland on NorthDecoder.com that it had been suppressed by the North Dakota Governor’s office for ten months.

Director Steinwand told me in a letter dated May 18 that he had hoped to have the report, which was submitted to him by his staff in June of 2010, finalized by mid-summer 2011, “but that time frame has been moved to the end of May at the latest.”

“Once the legislative session concluded I had a little more time to spend specifically on this effort,” Steinwand said in his letter, written in response to a letter I sent him on April 27, and which I also posted here after I had not received a response in two weeks. “The review is essentially complete as I write this letter and anticipate that the end of May time frame will be easily reached once the edits are made, which are relatively minor. Once those tasks are accomplished we will place the document on our website.”

Let me again suggest that the report, which is 120 pages single spaced, be also printed and made available to the public in a published report as well as online, as I suggested in my first report on this issue. I suspect most people who will be interested in reading it (sportsmen, environmentalists, outdoor enthusiasts, other concerned North Dakotans) would, like me, have to burn up a couple of ink cartridges to print a document of that size on our little home printers, and it is not realistic that we should want to read it on our computer screen. To offer it only online continues the obfuscation of the issue.

The big question now, of course, is what action will the Game and Fish Department take in response to the recommendations contained in the report. Releasing the report is one thing. Taking action is another. Steinwand says much the same in his letter to me: “By itself it (the report) accomplishes nothing but the actions in the months and years to come will tell us if the strategy is effective.” I am not sure what strategy he is referring to. See if you can figure it out. I promised when I posted my letter to him that I would post his response to me. Here it is.

Dear Jim:

First, I apologize for not getting back to you sooner. I’m still catching up from a prolonged legislative session while dealing with the seemingly endless day to day issues that are larger this spring as they relate to water issues. Thank you for your recent letter regarding energy development in western North Dakota and wildlife. You asked a number of questions in your letter and I will try my best to answer most, if not all of them. I do want to emphasize one issue, however, that I thought was unstated but implied in your letter and that was that the department was “rolling over” for the energy industry. While it is an important part of North Dakota’s economy, I recognize what my job is in the state’s structure and that is to be an advocate for the fish and wildlife resource as well as those that enjoy and use it.

I will first explain the purpose of the energy report. I asked a group of experts within the department to gather information from other states in the upper Midwest that was scientifically defensible and compile a report to the Director, which would ultimately be used to work with energy officials to reduce or avoid any potential impacts and identify any data gaps that might exist so we can more accurately predict what might or might not occur as a result of oil and gas activity. Given the amount of information provided in the report, it takes time to adequately review and provide a well thought out and logical strategy on how to move forward and accomplish what I’ve set out to do. Even though the report has not been give the “final” stamp, it doesn’t mean nothing is being done. We’ve consistently worked with energy companies on our lands (wildlife management areas) in the northwest on roads, pads, etc. to reduce any potential impacts, as well as other state agencies to determine what can be done to address concerns.

My initial plans were to have the report to me final by mid-summer but that time frame has been moved to the end of May at the latest. Once the legislative session had concluded I had a little more time to spend specifically on this effort.The review is essentially complete as I write this letter and anticipate that the end of May time frame will easily be reached once the edits are made, which are relatively minor. Once those tasks are accomplished we will place the document on our website. This is a dynamic document and as we move forward and as more information is learned, the document will be periodically reviewed and updated. Again, while all of this is occurring, I have been in contact with the State Health Department since mid-winter and have met with Lynn Helms to discuss issues. These discussions are continuing and will continue well into the future. And as we progress, the list of participants will increase.

As you well know, this is a complicated issue and I’ve learned over the years it’s not always as simple as it seems. All of the tasks you’ve listed for ‘next steps,’ e.g., interagency meetings, meeting with industry officials, etc., are part of the strategy we have to adapt and the plan tends to change as we learn new items. The work on these activities began months ago and the report is only part of the process. By itself it accomplishes nothing but the actions in the months and years to come will tell us if the strategy is effective.

Jim, I take my job seriously and personally. I will work with whomever I need to so the issues can be balanced. Fish and wildlife as well as the oil and gas industry will be on the landscape of North Dakota well after I’m gone. I want to do all I can to insure that the heritage of North Dakota and the well being of fish and wildlife resource of our great state in general is there for all to enjoy.

Sincerely,

Terry Steinwand

Director

Well, that was polite (much more polite than my letter to him) and cautiously guarded, and answered some of my questions. But the development is happening really, really fast, and actions by the department to protect more than just Game and Fish Department-owned lands need to happen really, really fast as well.

Please set aside just an hour of your life to get the report and read it. Share your thoughts with the Director. Read the 19 action items recommended by the biologists in Appendix A and share your thoughts on them with the director, and with your local Legislators. There are a whole lot of critters out there depending on us. Let’s not let them down.

Ten Best Places in North Dakota

At Bismarck State College today, two men who love North Dakota are going to sit on the stage and share with us their ten best places in North Dakota as part of BSC’s Community Conversations program. Clay Jenkinson and Larry Skogen surely know a lot about our state. I am eager to hear what they have to say. Meanwhile, I have decided to compile my own list, and to ask anyone else interested to compile theirs, and I will put all of this on my blog. Here’s my list, with a note of explanation for each. They are in no particular order, except for Bullion Butte, which is far and away No. 1, and will be on their list as well. Send yours and I will share. (I’ll bet Clay and I have at least half our lists in common. I’ll report that later.)

JIM FUGLIE’S TEN BEST PLACES IN NORTH DAKOTA

1. The top of Bullion Butte in the extreme southwest corner of Billings County (with just a bit of its west face in Golden Valley County). North Dakota’s most spectacular view and least accessible place
2. Theodore Roosevelt’s Elkhorn Ranch site. North Dakota’s most peaceful place.
3. The North Unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park, particularly the view from the Little Missouri River in a canoe about a mile west of Juniper Campground, where you see the Little Missouri’s highest and widest sheer canyon wall.
4. County Road 55 west of Walhalla, through the Pembina Gorge and over the Red River Valley escarpment, west across the Little Pembina River to N.D. Highway 1, a 20 mile drive.
5. The North Dakota State Capitol and Grounds. North Dakota’s most prideful and overstated structure, yet truly a people’s place, especially when looking south toward the Huff Hills from the 18^th floor observation deck or celebrating on the lawn, with thousands of fellow North Dakotans, our nation’s independence, with symphonic music and fireworks on the 4^th of July.
6. Medicine Hole, and the hike up to it, in the Killdeer Mountains. Mystery, geography, geology and an aspen forest in the middle of the Great Plains.
7. The Pastime Bar and Steakhouse in Hettinger on the opening night of pheasant season. A sea of hunter orange and camouflage with sirloin steaks and Windsor cokes, replicated in dozens—but probably not hundreds—of similar small town bars across the state.
8. A personal and private place: a low-water crossing of Cedar Creek on a school section in what should have been a part of the Cedar River National Grasslands north of Lemmon, SD, just inside the North Dakota border. A wildlife haven meant to be experienced only on foot on the banks of my favorite creek (as opposed to my favorite river, which is the Little Missouri).
9. Broadway Avenue in downtown Fargo on a late summer or early fall evening. An urban delight of college students and other young adults strolling between pubs, shops and restaurants, while rollerbladers, skateboarders, hand-holding walkers and teen drivers maneuver through their mating rituals.
10. North Dakota’s three world-class architectural wonders, in Grand Forks and Medora: The Burning Hills Amphitheatre and Bully Pulpit Golf Course in Medora and the Ralph Engelstad Arena in Grand Forks. Many North Dakotans may voice disapproval of one or more of these, but the fact remains that the carving of a 2,800 seat ultra—modern outdoor theatre into a Bad Lands hillside, the environmentally-conscious design of a championship golf course along the banks of the Little Missouri River and up into the Bad Lands bluffs, and the $100 million hockey arena in Grand Forks are facilities that match any in the world.

Honorable Mention: A Dozen More Places That Are Hard To Leave Off Any “Best Places in” List (And All Places I Have Been to Enough Times to Be Familiar With them)

• Chase Lake National Wildlife Refuge. Home to, in most years, North America’s largest breeding pelican flock
• Cross Ranch State Park and Smith Grove in the Missouri River Valley north of Mandan. Riparian forest, centuries old trees, camping on the banks of Lewis and Clark’s water highway to the West.
• LaMoure County Memorial Park near Grand Rapids. Nine delightful golf holes, a campsite on the bank of the James River, and a summer theater that takes you back to your high school days with the quality of a big-city production.
• Dykshoorn Park in downtown Mandan on summer evenings when local musical groups entertain in the bandshell. And wandering among hundreds of arts and crafts displays over the 4^th of July holidays during Art In the Park.
• Menard’s in Bismarck (and probably other cities in the state) on a Saturday morning, when white-collar would-be handymen and gardeners wander the aisles looking for supplies for their weekend projects.
• Captain Jack’s in Bismarck and Happy Harry’s in Fargo and Grand Forks. Where North Dakotans go for a wine experience as good as they might expect anywhere in America.
• The Grandstand at the North Dakota State Fairground. For nine marvelous nights in July, big-name country and rock acts take the stage to entertain during North Dakota’s summer break.
• Any of North Dakota’s five Indian gaming casinos. Real, live Las Vegas-style gambling tucked into corners of our five reservations.
• Lake Sakakawea. Haven for fishing, jet-skiing, sailing, motorboating, or just relaxing with a beer or a gin and tonic on a pontoon, houseboat or gravelly beach on one of America’s largest lakes.
• The International Peace Garden and Lake Metigoshe State Park in the Turtle Mountains in August. In most years, 100,000 or more flowers in bloom at the Peace Garden and the state park offers a spectacular hike on a marked walking trail through the aspen and oak forest just before bedding down in a tent beside the lake.
• Lillian’s Most Secret Juneberry Patch in the Bad Lands in mid-July. I could not point you to it. She last took me there in 2009 where we picked gallons of the precious berries, all day and into the evening, entering on one road and exiting on another so that even I, her trusted husband, would not be able to find my way back without her—or tell anyone how to get there.
• A hole in the ice on Devils Lake (or, I guess, any number of small perch lakes in North Dakota) in January, over which I can stare down at my bobber while seated on a pickle pail with a little jigging rod in my hand and a pile of frozen perch at my feet.

More Game and Fish Notes

Whither the Muleys and Sage Hens?

Two wildlife stories of importance in the newspapers this week.

· North Dakota mule deer licenses will be cut by almost 40 per cent in 2011.

· There will be no sage grouse season in North Dakota this year.

Three successive harsh winters is the reason for the cutback in muley licenses.

Lack of reproduction by the sage grouse is the reason for the elimination of the sage grouse season.

At least those are the official reasons given by the North Dakota Game and Fish Department.

No mention by Game and Fish about the potential impact on wildlife in western North Dakota (the only part of the state in which muleys and sage grouse live) by the massive increase in oil development. Nope, lucky for our crack wildlife agency leaders, we had some bad weather to blame it on. Otherwise they might just have to admit that the quantum change in the landscape of western North Dakota brought on by oil development just might have some impact on wildlife—something their own wildlife biologists warned about in the 2010 report which has been squashed out of sight by the Governor’s office and the Game and Fish Director. There were long sections in the report on each of those species, and the threats they face from massive oil development.( Example: “At the current level of (oil and gas) development, impacts (on sage grouse) may be substantial.” But of course we are not supposed to read that. It’s in the secret report, which is not so secret any more

But no mention of that in this week’s news release, or in any of the stories the media carried, which were basically reprints of the news release. Nope, must have been the bad weather. I am reminded of the event coordinator who did a poor job getting his event organized and then, realizing that it was going to be a flop just before it was scheduled to take place, dashed off to church to pray for a blizzard, so he’d have an excuse for no one showing up at the event. Well, boys, the weather can’t stay bad forever. One of these days you’ll run out of excuses.

Meanwhile, here’s a memo to North Dakota hunters and outdoors enthusiasts: Get used to the stories, because they’re going to become an annual occurrence.

Unless, one day pretty darn soon now, we get some real leadership at Game and Fish.

Too late for the sage grouse. But there’s still time to save the muleys. If anybody cares any more.

Dear Director Steinwand

More than two weeks ago, I sent a letter to North Dakota Game and Fish Director Terry Steinwand, after urging the readers of my blog to do the same thing. Maybe you all did, and maybe he’s just been swamped trying to respond to you, because he sure hasn’t gotten around to responding to me. I know that when I managed a state agency a couple decades ago, I usually responded to my letter writers within a week or so—usually within a day or so. I guess times have changed. So today I thought I might share that letter with you. When—or if—I get a response, I’ll share that too.

April 27, 2011

Terry Steinwand, Director

North Dakota Game and Fish Department

100 N. Expressway

Bismarck, ND 58501-5095

Dear Terry,

I am very worried about the future of wildlife in western North Dakota in light of the massive oil development taking place there. I am writing to share that concern with you, as head of our state’s natural resources agency, and to ask what your agency is doing on behalf of those critters who cannot fend for themselves in this rapidly changing environment, and who must depend on us humans to act on their behalf.

I’m guessing you’re as concerned as I and tens of thousands of other sportsmen and women, and I’m guessing that is what led to the report by your agency last summer on the impacts of oil development on wildlife and habitat. Unlike me, though, you are in a position to direct resources to impacted areas which might lessen the impact of this development. In fact, your staff offered 14 suggestions for just such relief. When I read the report, I saw a number of things that could have been put forward as legislative proposals in the Legislative session just ending. Unfortunately, that did not happen. A number of other suggestions by your staff could lead to discussions both with the energy industry and with other agency heads who are in a position to take the steps suggested by your staff.

So, my first question is: Do you plan to finalize the plan and release it to the general public? If so, what would be the next steps? Draft Legislation? Interagency meetings? An interagency task force? Meetings with industry officials? Executive orders? Further study and additional recommendations at the end of that study? All of the above? Other steps I haven’t mentioned?

Terry, I should think at the very least you should be in continuous contact with the Oil and Gas Division and the State Health Department, sharing your concerns and suggesting actions. They are the two agencies who directly regulate the oil and gas industry. And that the State Parks Department, Agriculture Department, Tourism Department, State Historical Society, Indian Affairs Commission, State Land Board, and State Water Commission should all be gathered around a table on a regular basis with you and the regulatory agencies, talking about what is happening out west that is affecting the quality of life of all North Dakota citizens and visitors to our state. I think you could be the hero here for initiating these discussions and developing a plan of action for western North Dakota that includes more than just rolling over for this industry which, while it is bringing tremendous wealth to our state, is proving very costly to our landscape and our environment.

I don’t want to deal with the politics of all this, other than to say that you, as chief of our state’s natural resource agency, have a responsibility to step up and take the lead on this threat to our natural resources; mostly our wildlife and its habitat. To do less is to abdicate the bully pulpit that comes with the job of Game and Fish Director. North Dakotans are counting on you to lead us. We’ll help.

Lynn Helms said last week there will be 26,000 oil wells in western North Dakota before this is over. North Dakota’s land area is about 70,000 square miles. The oil patch is roughly one third of that area. Do the math, Terry. That would be at least ONE OIL WELL FOR EVERY SINGLE SECTION OF LAND in western North Dakota. Do you think our wildlife can survive that, without extraordinary measures being taken by your agency, which is charged with protecting our state’s wildlife? I don’t know what those measures are, but you have the experts on your staff, and based on the recommendations they made in your June 2010 report, they know what they are talking about. Put them back to work, Terry. We need them. Or else the North Dakota we know will disappear forever. On your watch.

Respectfully,

Jim Fuglie

RIP Frank Wald

We note the passing recently of two very conservative men: Frank Wald and Claire Blomquist. Most readers of this blog know of Frank Wald, a longtime legislator from Dickinson. Despite our political differences, Frank Wald was, I am pleased to say, a friend of mine. Our acquaintanceship goes back more than 40 years, when I first wrote a story about him in the Dickinson State College (now University) newspaper, The Western Concept, in the 1960′s. He had spoken to a campus group as an official representative of the John Birch Society. I was a student reporter. I asked him a hard question. He didn’t like it.

But we remembered each other, and when our paths crossed again in the political arena in the 1980′s, he as a Legislator and me as a political party hack, we both remembered the occasion, laughed about it, and became friends with a common interest: The good of my alma mater and his Legislative District’s university, Dickinson State.

Frank made the newspaper a couple times last month, first when fellow legislator Bob Skarpohl prematurely announced his death and subsequent funeral on the floor of the North Dakota Legislature about a week before Frank died, and then again when Skarpohl had to write a letter to the editor of the Bismarck Tribune apologizing and offering a half-assed explanation of what had happened. Frankly, Frank deserved better. He was a good man, with a hard edge, and a soft spot in his heart for his friends. Let me give you an example.

Some years ago I was a member of the International Peace Garden board of directors. We had plans for a grand new project, and needed a small sum from the North Dakota Legislature to hire an architect. I was dispatched to the North Dakota House Appropriations Committee to ask for $100,000. I did something really stupid. Because we had plans to raise the actual construction money for the project elsewhere, I told Subcommittee Chairman Frank Wald that if he got us the planning money, we would not come back to the Legislature for any more money for that project. Frank got us the money. We hired the architect. We drew up grand plans, and then our fundraising scheme went awry, and just as the NEXT legislative session was about to begin, our board voted to ask the Legislature for another million dollars. And guess who they dispatched to Bismarck, once again, to get the money. Yep, the guy who had said he would NEVER come back to the Legislature for money for this project. Long story short, Frank, of course remembered. He rubbed it in. And then he went ahead and helped get us the money. If you go to the Peace Garden this summer, take a look around the marvelous new interpretive center and say a little thanks to that cranky, gruff western North Dakota Legislator. Who, this time, really is dead.

On the other hand, I really didn’t know Claire Blomquist, the other conservative who left us last week, but I remember him for this: he once accused Governor George Sinner of treason and of being a pagan. In the middle 1980′s Blomquist ran for Commissioner of Agriculture as an independent candidate loosely affiliated with the Lyndon LaRouche movement, the National Democratic Policy Committee (Democratic in name only). During the 1985 North Dakota Legislative session, he and a couple other LaRouchies, Anna Belle Bourgois and Gerald Kopp, circulated a document to Legislators attempting to discredit Sinner, outlining several “treasonous” acts. No one paid much attention to them. That was the last I heard of Blomquist, until I read his obituary in the paper last week. Bourgois and Kopp ran as independent candidates for the U.S. Senate and House against Kent Conrad and Byron Dorgan in 1986. They lost. All three faded into political obscurity, although I believe Anna Belle and Kopp are still alive.

One Governor Too Many

In the next couple of weeks, former Governor George Sinner, my former boss, is going to release his memoir, a month or so later than originally planned because of an apparent printing error in the first run. I'm eager to see it. In it, he's going to tell his version of what happened in the first few days of 1985, when he and outgoing Governor Allen Olson both laid claim to the governorship for a period of a few days. I remember those days, because I was still the executive director of the North Dakota Democratic-NPL Party, and I was a bit involved in Sinner's transition from Candidate-For-Governor to Governor-Elect to Governor.

As the end of Olson''s term approached (at that time, the new Governor usually took office the same day as the North Dakota Legislature convened, the first Tuesday after January 3--in 1985, that would have been January 8 ) Olson had been lackadaisical about filling a couple of North Dakota Supreme Court vacancies, planning to fill them in his last week in office. Democrats were watching and waiting for those appointments to happen, and when they hadn't happened by December 31, they saw an opportunity to seize them, giving Sinner the opportunity to appoint a couple people more in tune with his political philosophy than with Olson's--although, truth be told, there wasn't much difference between their philosophies, other than the "D" or "R" behind their names. As it turned out, the major difference between them was their governing abilities. So instead of waiting until January 8, Sinner called in one of the remaining Justices and took the oath of office early on Tuesday, January 1, and then notified Olson later that morning that he, Sinner, was now governor and Olson was not. Olson took issue with that, seeing those Supreme Court appointments slip into Democrat hands, and so, for a few days, we had two governors. Sinner moved in to the Governor's residence (Olson, you'll recall, had chosen to live in his own Bismarck residence rather than moving across town to the official Governor's residence, and so it was available for use) and began to "govern" from there while Olson kept his office in the Capitol and refused to let Sinner move in. At the time, there was no real office in the Governor's residence, so Sinner called his first press conference seated in a recliner behind a little tea cart on wheels set up in front of him for the microphones.

Not present at that first press conference, but witnessing it on television, was one of my favorite editors at the time, a fellow from Fargo named Jerome Lamb. Jerome worked for the Fargo Public Library, but in his spare time, he wrote and edited a journal called "the small voice." Jerome was a wonderful writer, and had he lived longer he surely would have had a popular blog, but at the time he mailed his little journal to a few hundred friends--his mailing list was small enough that he hand-addressed each issue to each subscriber, saying that kept him more closely in touch with his readers and made it more personal for him--like he was writing to each one individually.

Well, there were hundreds, perhaps thousands of stories written about North Dakota having two governors in those first few days of 1985. It was a big national and international story. But the best of them came a couple weeks after the Supreme Court eventually decided Sinner was Governor, in Jerome's journal. Just as Jerome took great joy from hand-addressing his issues of "the small voice," I'm going to take great joy in typing his report on the incidents of early January 1985 into my computer, because it is surely one of the best things ever written about North Dakota.

OF GOVERNORS AND THINGS

By Jerome Lamb (1930-2005)

Once upon a time there were two popes, one in Avignon and the other in Rome. Since this was obviously one pope more than anybody needed, and since the papal perks--palaces, armies, heavy jewelry, fancy duds--were substantial enough to rule out the likelihood of either pope saying something gracious like "Oh, alright, if that's the way you're going to be about it, you can have the old triple tiara, and I hope you choke on it!", difficulties arose. Harsh words were exchanged, wars fought, villages sacked, countrysides pillaged, and witches and heretics aplenty were burned at stakes. In the end the Chambers of Commerce of the two cities worked out some sort of deal; Rome got the pope and Avignon got the discriminating tourist. Nobody knows who, if anyone, won; certainly not the witches and heretics.

We are pleased to report that North Dakota emerged from its reign of two governors with much less carnage, which may demonstrate once again that politics is often a much less bloody business than religion. What happened here was that George "Bud" Sinner, the newly elected governor, decided to take office on New Year's Day, but Allen "Al" Olson, the newly de-elected governor, determined not to leave office until five or six days later. Thus, for a time, the citizens were not quite sure who was in and who was out. GovSinner was in the Governor's Mansion (sic) holding press conferences while seated behind a tea cart, and GovOlson was in the capitol building, dispatching gubernatorial bulletins to gleeful newspersons. The issue at stake was who would get to fill two vacancies on the five person Supreme Court, which august body was, according to the inscrutable wisdom of the Law, called upon to decide, by the end of the week, who was governor and when. Two of the three remaining justices, evidently perplexed by the baffling circumvolution of having the Supreme Court decide who the governor was so that the governor could could decide who the Supreme Court was going to be, entered conflict of interest pleas and excused themselves to go ice fishing or something. That necessitated bringing in less august judges from the outlying area, making the Court less supreme than usual, but no less decisive; it determined that George "Bud" Sinner had indeed been Governor since New Year's Day, and that was that.

Attorney General Nicholas "Nick" Spaeth, a well-scrubbed young man who, at 34, appears to be not only newly elected but also sort of new all over, proclaimed the affair to be a constitutional crisis. While we're not really into constitutionality we are keenly attuned to crises; we're not sure what the A.G. saw looming on the horizon, but we saw the possibility of a soft light dawning which could alter the whole structure of government. Would it not, we wondered, be likely that the electorate, noticing that the state functions much the same with two governors as it does with one--the roads get plowed, the schools open on time, the cold weather comes and goes--might conclude that it could function just as well with no governors? And then who would light the official State Christmas Tree? Earl Strinden?

Fortunately, that crisis appears also to have been nipped in, you should excuse the term, the bud, and things are back to normal; Governor Sinner is in his office governing,the Legislature is down the hall legislating, and newsfolk are in front of their keyboards and screens, filing news stories. Oh, well, it was swell while it lasted, and it left us with one memorable picture; the Chief Executive of the State of North Dakota seated at a tea cart, solemnly announcing that he was the governor. That impressed us with particular force because a while earlier, browsing through a business magazine, we had stumbled across one of those articles with a title like "Power Furnishings For The Executive Suite." You know, the sort of piece that makes much ado about the significance of the swordfish mounted on the waiting room wall, of the small but sturdy oak tree growing in the corner where you expected to see a potted palm, of the long sleek desk situated at the far end of the long sleek room. Yet here, right before the cameras that have become our very eyes, we had the leader of all six hundred and eighty thousand of us, the Commander-in-Chief of the National Guard, at the snap of whose fingers tanks would sweep across the border into South Dakota--well, if not tanks bulldozers and road graders anyway, and all sorts of two and a half ton green trucks; at the stroke of whose pen mighty universities and state schools of forestry would wither away from loss of funds; there he was, sitting behind the tea cart, one foot on either side of a large wooden wheel, smack dab in the middle of a possible constitutional crisis. No state seals in the background, no flanking flags, no broad shouldered, somber looking bystanders; just the tea cart and the microphones and the governor. Warmed the heart, it did,which is always nice in January, and made us kind of content to be home in North Dakota.

Wasn't that wonderful? Jerome continued to write his journal almost up until the time he died about six years ago. I saved a few of my favorites, including the one I excerpted from above. Jerome's son, John, got some of his dad's talent, and continues to write for the Forum of Fargo-Moorhead today.

Here's a footnote to this story: In the middle of this "crisis," Democratic-NPL Party leaders began getting a little nervous about public perception, fearing that this was not a good way for their newly-elected Governor to start out a term, and they asked me, in the absence, of course, of time to do any polling, to sniff around and see what folks were saying about this situation. I had, over my years working in politics, when I needed a little "focus group" to see how folks felt abut things, taken to stopping in at a little bar in Moffit, southeast of Bismarck, about 4:30 or 5:00 in the afternoon and listening to what the locals who frequented the place had to say. So I decided to make a Moffit run--I think the bar was called The Bucket, but I'm not sure--and see what the locals thought about having two governors. I settled on a bar stool and ordered a beer about 5:15. There were a few old timers and a few younger farmers scattered up and down the bar, and at 5:30, just before the national news came on, KFYR-TV's news anchor appeared on the TV screen to give us the highlights of what was coming up on the six o'clock news, saying something like "North Dakota still has two governors . . ." I leaned to my left and asked the guy down the bar from me, who had no idea who I was, what he thought of that situation. He replied, in a loud voice, "I'd like to get in my pickup right now and drive up to the Capitol and throw a rope around that Olson and drag him out of there." And everyone within earshot nodded in assent, and a short conversation ensued, with literally everyone in the bar agreeing. And I just kept my mouth shut, finished my beer, drove back to Bismarck and reported in that things were just fine.