Six North Dakota lawmakers missed new financial disclosure deadline

North Dakota’s new ethics disclosure system was meant to give voters a current view of lawmakers’ financial interests. Instead, six legislators missed the Jan. 31 deadline for filing their first annual statement of interests, including Sen. Scott Meyer, who said he was hearing about the problem for the first time 79 days later.

The missed filings matter because House Bill 1469 required annual disclosures for the first time in North Dakota and put the statements online for public review. Before that law, lawmakers and some other officials filed disclosures when they ran for office or were appointed, which could leave the public relying on information that was years out of date. The Secretary of State’s Office said the new filing website went live Jan. 1 and already had more than 150 filings by mid-January.

As of April 20, the office said it still had not received statements from Meyer, R. Grand Forks; Rep. TJ Brown, R-Fargo; Rep. Gretchen Dobervich, D-Fargo; Rep. Lisa Finley-DeVille, D-Mandaree; Rep. Karen Grindberg, R-Fargo; and Rep. Nico Rios, R-Williston. After being contacted, Dobervich, Grindberg and Rios filed their forms. Meyer and Finley-DeVille said they planned to file. Brown said the lapse was an oversight. Grindberg and Rios said they did not realize they were required to file because they are not seeking reelection.

The episode exposes a gap between what the law promised and how enforcement works. The Secretary of State’s Office confirmed it had not received the missing disclosures, but the office is a filing agency, not a compliance agency, and does not monitor who fails to file. It also does not verify the accuracy of disclosures or keep a running list of officials who miss the requirement.

That leaves the public without current information on lawmakers’ outside business ties, investments and other interests while they are making decisions that can ripple into Jamestown and Stutsman County, from taxes and state spending to ethics and regulatory rules. For voters trying to judge whether a lawmaker has a conflict, a late filing is more than a paperwork delay. It means the record is incomplete when accountability is supposed to be most visible.

North Dakota’s push for annual online disclosure had already raised enforcement questions last year, when Secretary of State Michael Howe and the Ethics Commission discussed adding fines for noncompliance. The six missed filings show that without a real compliance check, the new transparency system still depends heavily on lawmakers filing on time.