As an immediate follow-up to the news earlier this afternoon
I appeared on KFYR Radio’s Kafe with Daryl Lies and called on the Burleigh County Commission to suspend the current process of converting the Burleigh County Auditor/Treasurer’s position to appointed and to immediately convene a new Home Rule Charter Commission and place this issue in front of the voters on a Special Election THIS YEAR to resolve this issue PRIOR to the window for candidates to collect signatures to run for Auditor/Treasurer in 2026.
Here is the AI Generated Transcript of the show (unedited and uncorrected so there are grammar issues in the transcript):
Daryl Lies 0:07
Welcome back to the K fire cafe, our number two on a fabulous Ring of Fire. Friday afternoon on K fire 550 99.7 FM in the free I Heart Radio appre never sounded so good. I'm Daryl east, happy to have all of you here with us today and just a little update. The you know, if you want to catch up with me this weekend, some places I'll be, I will be volunteering my auctioneering services tonight in Minot for the pheasants for the future banquet up there, I think the auctions at 745 you can buy tickets at the door. They put out a good spread of a meal there. You know, they got raffles and that going on. You can catch me there tonight, looking forward to see the people there. I've been doing that one for, my gosh, I don't know, 1520 years. I don't know, it's been a long time. So come out there tomorrow. You can catch me in turtle lake. I am the guest chef on steak night at jmbs Country Cafe there in Turkey Lake, it's in it's housed in the Legion there. So come out five to seven tomorrow night. Catch up with me there. You can order yourself a strip steak or a sirloin steak, and I will be the guest chef. I promise I won't spit in your you know, on your steak so well depends on who you are. But anyway, no, just kidding. I'll be there. And then Sunday, on Monday is the wrap up of the winter. CD competitions for the FFA Sunday, South prairie FFA and school hosts the final practice for those competitions, the agronomy competition, the egg sales competition and the livestock judging competition, I'll be taking up a class of pigs for them to evaluate and practice on, and then I'll be helping in the egg sales as a Judge in that practice session. So I've got a busy weekend coming up. I will not be on the air on Monday, uh, Brad Feldman will be sitting in I get to the luxury and joy of going back in for an additional eye surgery on Monday. And so on Monday I will not be on the air. So we will hopefully Talk Tuesday, and look forward to that then. But right now, we have a special edition of watchdog Wednesday. I think it's, it's the segments we are going to start calling, this is what I've named them, Dustin, how not to run a county segments.
Dustin Gawrylow 2:42
Yeah, that works.
Daryl Lies 2:44
And Burleigh County just happens to be the poster child that we get to put up. How are you doing today? Dustin gawrlow,
Dustin Gawrylow 2:50
pretty good. You know, I would have put the name of I knew I was not going crazy.
Daryl Lies 2:59
Well, you might be after all this. So we've it seems like you come across something every day, or at least every other day, and then, and then you come across things that are just right out in your face that a person forgets happened, right? And and as you're researching them, I mean, the amount of time you're putting research into this, it was right at a commission meeting Dustin that this next thing happened. The misleading, I'm gonna let you get into it.
Dustin Gawrylow 3:41
Yeah. So you know, one of the difficulties in doing what I do is that I I forget about what I've worked on in the past. I literally use my own email as my archive to remind myself of the work that I've done, because I work on so many different issues, state and local, and in the process of the last week since the Monday public input hearing our current city commissioner, Mike Connolly, who was still a private citizen in 2022 when he served on the Burleigh County home rule charter commission with me, testified on Monday and said that he believed that state's attorney Julie lawyer lied about the impact of the language in Article Three of the Home Rule charter that was passed by the voters in 2022 now I have not gone that far, but I am willing to say for sure that we were misled, and the public was misled. And James, if you got that clip, this is from october 17, 2022 and it is an interaction between early county commission chairman Brian Bitner and the. 10 elections director Erica White, who is now the elections director for the state of North Dakota. And as this is the same Erica white that Markowski sued first thing when he got elected and took office as auditor. So James, if you could run that audio?
Brian Bitner 5:18
Okay, I think the one of the main things that was brought up to me was that the citizens had voted on the question of making certain offices appointed, and there was a question about, does this bring that before the voters again or not? It doesn't appear that that's the case. No,
Erika White 5:36
the the language I believe, and Julie can correct me if I'm wrong, but we we kind of cleaned that up a little bit. It doesn't change the Elector, the electing of the auditor, treasurer or recorder. So if the commission would want to go through that process, I believe it still has to go back to a vote of the people in order to get that changed in our annual charter. So Well,
Brian Bitner 5:59
thank you for the clarification, that's exactly what we were at right night for the benefit of the public. Go ahead. Commissioner, yeah, Mr. Chairman, you know, we tried to stay laser focused on the one issue.
Dustin Gawrylow 6:10
So right there. Now I can't explain why. Erica White said, first said no and then reiterated that No. It does not change it. It it will go back to a vote of the people. I can't explain why there. That was her initial response to the question. But this once again, shows that the Home Rule charter commission and then follow the the public when it was disclosed and explained to the public what that home rule charter would do. People were told. I told people myself, that if this were to happen, it would definitely go back to a vote of the people, that this was not a short circuit of that process. And so to me, I think that I probably was not skeptical enough, and those who know me know that should be pretty funny, because I'm usually fairly skeptical. But we took the information that we had and we looked at the law and we thought that that was what was going to happen. And now it seems like the story has changed, and we need to know why the stories change. And we've got multiple audio, multiple video now of we were told at the time one thing, and now the process is going through a different approach. And we need to know why that changed,
Daryl Lies 7:37
well and didn't, I mean, right in there, just to make sure I'm not hearing things. Then she say, Well, Julie can correct me, but yep. And then gave the explanation, and Julie never corrected her. So what she said, what she said, was approved by the state's attorney, evidently.
Dustin Gawrylow 8:01
Mm, hmm, yep, that's my belief, and this is what I have believed. And those who subscribe to the my newsletter at watching nd.com have probably noticed that I haven't been sending out as much this week. I've been doing heavy duty research on this because I was getting a lot of pushback to what I was saying, and also to what Mike Connolly was saying, because he went a step further than I have. But I think that we need an explanation as to why we on the homeless charter commission, were told by the legal authority for the county, and why the commission, when asked the question directly, was told by the elections director the same answer. And now we are told that the process is not what we were told.
Daryl Lies 8:54
This is one and well, I've been more direct than both of you and Mike Connolly, have I called it flat out lie to begin with, but, and you can thank me later on, Dustin, for putting that out there early enough to give you guys cover to look for this. But the I'm not afraid. I'll take the slings and arrows, right? But this is why I also, and you remember this Dustin I've called for the commission to back off from this, because it's under false pretenses. It's under absolute misled pretenses. So back away from it. And I don't know that they have what it takes, the humility that it takes to say, Yeah, this is wrong. We were all duped. And by the way, the commissioner's voice you heard in that clip just played at that time, the chairman was also Bittner. He asked the question, and he should have, and he got the wrong answer. He. And so now you've been duped. County Commission, the people were duped. Do not continue down this path, because you are as guilty as the duping party if you do in my mind, Dustin,
Dustin Gawrylow 10:18
yes, and I believe that right now, the only, the only fair and equitable solution is that the current process on the resolution to convert the auditor to appointed needs to be derailed and put to an end. And if the county commission intends to continue down this road, they have to reconvene a new home rule charter commission and fix this problem and put it on the ballot, even if it means spending $50,000 on a special election in November this year, and that way, we can put to rest this issue in explicit language so the public knows what they're voting for, and so that it is in stone what Burleigh county is going to do before candidates for county auditor are allowed to start collecting signatures january 3 of 2026 if, if this is not put on the ballot, and that people are not allowed to vote on this, the whole situation, I believe, is going to be in question as to the validity of it. So we need to fix this. And the only way to fix this is another home rule charter commission that looks at this language and cleans it up again. Because, as you heard there, this was sold as cleanup. This was not sold as a change. And that's where this really is a problem, because when you sell legislative amendments as a cleanup or technical change, and it actually is a substantive change, those are two very different things. The public did not vote on a substantive change. They were told it was a cleanup.
Daryl Lies 12:08
I would, I would I, if I was a burly County resident right now, I would be gathering the group to file a lawsuit because the election, the vote taken on the Home Rule charter was taken under false pretenses, and I would be gathering a large group of people up and filing a lawsuit. I would be asking, probably even for a disbarment on a state's attorney in this case, it's my opinion, but if I was there, I would be championing that group, because this is absolutely wrong. Commissioners of Burleigh county put an end to the insanity, because it is insanity to keep pushing something that was changed under misleading, false pretenses.
You are party to it if you keep pushing this, and I don't care if you're mad at me or not for saying it, because it's the truth. We
Dustin Gawrylow 13:21
were speculating, you know, both Mike and myself were really going off of our own interpretation, until I found this video. And you know, this is a great illustration of how much stuff in the past the intent got lost because we didn't have audio and video before we didn't have the internet. How, how many of our laws are not in enforced the way that they were intended? Because we don't actually know what was discussed when they were made? You know, if this didn't get lost with people who pay Ultra close attention to it in the modern era, how much other how many other problems are there? And you know, this is separate from the situation with Mark swankowski in the auditor's office and whether he is living up to the standards and all all the things that the Commission claims those issues, many of them can still be valid, but this is a root issue of how do we if we want to fix this, if we want to change this, then we need to make sure that is done, right? This is a process issue now, and the process has been broken, and those of us in the process thought that there was something going wrong, we raise questions. We were assured there's no problems, and now it's very evident there were problems. I wasn't skeptical enough when I was in the room at the table, but the fact is, we now know where this is actually at and the Commission. Needs to fix this, and they need to appoint a new home rule charter commission to fix this, to make it explicit and put it on the ballot with a special election this year. By the end of this year, this needs to be resolved by the voters, one way or the other, if the commission wants to continue down this
Daryl Lies 15:18
road well. And here's the other thing, I don't know if there's people that want to hold you and Mike and the other ones on that commission or the committee, the Home Rule charter committee, responsible, I will say this, Dustin, I don't hold you guys responsible because you asked the question. Because when you look at committees or boards. And you look at, you know, the duty of care, the duty of loyalty, the fiduciary duty, your guys' duty in this, the duty of care, you have something to fall back on, of reliance. You You had reasonable reliance on professionals. And and you're supposed to be able to have that reasonable reliance on professionals to give you correct advice, you made decisions on reliance of professionals which you're supposed to be able to have to give you correct advice, and they didn't. They are the ones at fault, not this committee. I want to say that publicly here too, because that reasonable reliance is, is the absolute Okay, absolute thing you guys did Correct. You asked the question. You took the reasonable reliance on the professional, and the reliance on that professional misled you, and that's not your guys' fault.
Dustin Gawrylow 16:52
Yeah, I mean, we just like the commission, like just like any government body, and only if there's a legal question, we have to rely on the lawyer in the room who was either elected by the people, such as the state's attorney, or one that was hired by the elected body. And in this case, we listened to the the state's attorney, we listened to the elections director, who is now the state's elections director, and the great irony here is that Eric go white is who marks key sued when he took office. And
it just goes to show that what goes around comes around, right?
Daryl Lies 17:36
Well, so, so there's, here's the thing, Dustin this thing is getting so intertwined. That's why I've started labeling this how not to run a county. Because this, there are so many crossing barriers here. There are so many intersections here, there, there is there is more, if, if Mark sponzkowski is not doing his job the way he should, everyone else isn't also right. This is their system. Plenty of that to go around.
Dustin Gawrylow 18:12
Yeah, this is a total systemic failure. Every firewall that should be there to prevent problems fail. We're talking 345, different things and different people, plus the commission as a collective in this process has failed. And, you know, just imagine if, if there wasn't documented video evidence and audio evidence and internet to track these things out. And it's taken me months to track this down, and I was in the room listening to these things
Daryl Lies 18:46
right now. I mean, there's, there's evidence, I mean, and that's why, you know, that's why we tell people you have to show up, because we need as many people hearing these things as possible. And they happen. We just do Dustin, luckily, we've got recordings nowadays, and so I think that we have to show up participate. And Dustin, yeah, we could go even deeper in this, but we gotta have something to talk about next Wednesday. Not that there won't be 20 more things come up by then. But anyway, thanks for taking the time today. Dustin. Dustin gawlow from the watchdog network watching nd.com go check out, especially this latest article on this. Dustin, I guess we'll visit in about five or six days now,
Dustin Gawrylow 19:33
Yep, absolutely
Daryl Lies 19:36
alright. I'm dar Elise. When I come back, we'll visit with Mark sponskowski, Burleigh county auditor after this. This is how.
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