The North Dakota Ethics Commission is looking for a new Commission member.
The five member Commission was established in 2018 by initiated Constitutional measure.
Commission executive director Rebecca Binstock says the Commission has two directives – one is to adopt ethics rules for public officials, lobbyists and candidates for public office. And she says there are four – as she put it – “buckets” to fulfill.
"Those four buckets relate to transparency, corruption, elections and lobbying," Binstock said. She said the second directive is investigation.
"We investigate allegations of unethical conduct by public officials, lobbyists, candidate for office," Binstock said.
Binstock said the goal is to increase transparency, by increasing the amount of information that citizens of North Dakota have about their government.
"Or, just managing ethical issues or ethical dilemmas that come up," Binstock said. "The Commission the adopts rules to effectuate those things."
Binstock said the Commission has a staff to carry out the investigations.
The deadline to apply for the Ethics Commission is Aug. 9th, and the appointee’s four year term begins in September.
Complaint numbers up
Binstock said in 2022, 14 complaints were filed. She said 14 were filed in 2023. And she said so far this year, 25 complaints had been filed.
Request for more staff
Binstock said the Commission will ask the 2025 Legislature for more staff.
The Commission has three staff members at present – an executive director, a legal counsel and an operations administrator.
"We've learned from ethics commissions across the country, the number one way to prevent ethical issues and increase transparency and accountability is to be able to pre-empt the issues," Binstock said. "So when you provide education, or have great guidelines for how people can work through a problem ,or solve an issue, or just being present to help public officials through that. So we want to focus more on the prevention side than on the investigation side."
