Mar 04, 2007 - 04:02:00 CST
You may not know it, but your tax dollars are in their hands.They have great influence over whether you get a tax cut, more funding for your child's school or more highway patrol officers on your roads.
And yet, as chairmen of the House and Senate appropriations committees, these two men remain mostly unknown outside the state Capitol.
They are state Sen. Ray Holmberg, a 62-year-old Grand Forks Republican, and state Rep. Ken Svedjan, a 64-year-old Grand Forks Republican.
As chairmen of the most powerful committees in the state Legislature, Holmberg and Svedjan lead the teams of lawmakers that study the state budget and make recommendations on what it should include.
They are sure to have a lot of sway over the next month as lawmakers compile the state budget and decide how to spend a $540 million surplus.
Even though they're both Republicans from Grand Forks, Holmberg and Svedjan and are a study in contrasts.
Holmberg, a former high school history teacher and guidance counselor, is soft spoken with a flair for colorful metaphors. He sports a thick mop of red hair, enjoys theater and places a top priority on making everybody feel welcome in his committee room.
Svedjan is efficiency personified. Balding and perfectly coifed, he has the self assurance of a man who has spent his life setting high goals and achieving them. Colleagues call him hardworking, trustworthy and detail oriented.
Ray Holmberg
Growing up on an eastern North Dakota farm in the 1950s, Holmberg spent his youth doing chores and working in the fields.
But from an early age, he knew his future lay elsewhere.
"It was, in the true sense of the word, a chore," Holmberg said. "I couldn't see myself working on top of a tractor for the rest of my life."
So when he graduated from high school, he left the farm and headed to the University of North Dakota. He hoped to translate a longtime interest in politics and government into work as a lawyer.
But just a year into college, Holmberg found that teaching was a better fit for him.
"It gave me the chance to both work with a lot of people and make a difference in young people's lives," he said.
Holmberg changed his major to education and embarked on a career as social studies teacher and guidance counselor at Grand Forks Central High School.
But even as he embarked on a teaching career, Holmberg's interest in politics was never far from the surface.
In 1975, when the U.S. Supreme Count ordered North Dakota to redraw its legislative districts to provide proportional representation, Holmberg saw his chance to pursue elective office.
The next year, at the age of 31, Holmberg ran and won a state Senate seat from a newly drawn district in southern Grand Forks. He has held the seat ever since.
"I enjoy it. It's a challenge, and the people keep re-electing me," Holmberg said.
In 1992, he won a seat on the appropriations committee.
But throughout the next decade, Holmberg's ambitions lay elsewhere. In the 1996 and 2000 elections, he unsuccessfully challenged State Superintendent Wayne Sanstead for the job of running North Dakota's Department of Public Instruction.
He claimed during his campaigns that the department under Sanstead was fraught with internal problems and lacked credibility among teachers.
Sanstead shot back that legislators, including Holmberg, caused the department's problems by cutting its funding and staff.
"I'm surprised, frankly, that someone would run for this office that's had such a hand in helping dismantle it," Sanstead said during the 2000 campaign.
After retiring from Grand Forks Central in 2002, Holmberg spends his free time working in his yard, visiting with his grandchildren and escaping the cold North Dakota winters with trips to Miami Beach.
In 2003, he was tapped to be appropriations chairman.
Holmberg said he takes a "people first" approach to budgeting, placing a priority on human services and education.
He said the current environment makes it hard to pass a balanced budget because the surplus has heightened everybody's spending expectations.
"There's a sense that we have a lot of money without the recognition that it's finite," Holmberg said.
Colleagues say Holmberg runs a relaxed committee where everybody feels free to voice their opinions and work together.
"He's very personable. He runs a very open committee and gives respect to both sides of issues," said Sen. Aaron Krauter, D-Regent, a committee member.
The committee's vice chairman, Sen. Bill Bowman, R-Bowman, said Holmberg is adept at putting colleagues and visitors at ease in the midst of serious budget discussions.
"He provides a certain amount of wit that relieves the pressure on a high pressure committee," Bowman said.
Holmberg has a term for what others call his wit. He refers to it as "crayon English" - a way of expressing complex things with simple, memorable language.
For example, supporting a bill that has no chance is "putting a saddle on a dead horse."
In criticizing Sanstead during the 2000 campaign, he said: "Just because a bird is sitting on a nest doesn't mean it is hatching anything. It just wants to sit there another four years."
Ken Svedjan
You'd never hear such things from Ken Svedjan. He isn't one for telling jokes or weaving clever phrases. He's one for getting things done and getting them done well.
Svedjan also grew up on a farm in eastern North Dakota during the 1950s. He talks fondly about a boyhood of milking cows, tending to hogs and helping his family with other random chores.
"I loved the farm," Svedjan said. "It was good, honest work. Your schedule was your own, and you had to make good use of the time you had when you had it."
During high school, Svedjan was a three-sport athlete, playing football, basketball and baseball. He earned an education degree from Valley City State University and taught school for a few years in McClusky and Larimore.
Then, the Army called. Svedjan was drafted in 1968 during the height of the Vietnam War. But instead of being sent to southeast Asia, he was assigned a desk job in Maryland organizing personnel files.
After being discharged, Svedjan decided he didn't want to go back to teaching. He enrolled at UND to earn a bachelor's degree in business and stayed on to earn a master's degree in counseling.
For the past 30 years, he has worked in various administrative and leadership positions with Altru Health Systems, a Grand Forks Hospital.
Svedjan said his political career began "almost by accident" in the early 1990s. After chairing boards and discussions with the Grand Forks Chamber of Commerce, he received a phone call one night from some local Republicans he knew. It was just days before the filing deadline and they were still searching for somebody to run for the state Legislature.
Svedjan took on the challenge and entered the Legislature in 1991.
"Coming in, I thought I was pretty well grounded, but the learning curve was straight up," Svedjan said.
He mastered it quickly, earning a seat on the appropriations committee in 1995 and the chairmanship of the human services appropriations subcommittee in 1997.
Majority Leader Rick Berg, R-Fargo, said that Svedjan was an obvious choice to become appropriations chairman by 2003. He said Svedjan worked harder than just about any other appropriations member and always had been honest and trustworthy.
"Ken has become one of my best friends here," Berg said.
But Svedjan has his critics as well.
While running for re-election last fall, he came under fire for costing the state $35,865.62 in reimbursed travel expenses between 2003 and 2005. His expenses paid for 203 days on the road and far surpassed those of any other legislator.
Much of the travel was to attend conferences related to his work on numerous standing committees for both the state and the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Calling the criticism "a smear," Svedjan said the conferences were part of his duties and that he brought back ideas that have saved the state more money than his travel cost.
But Rep. Louise Potter, a Grand Forks Democrat who raised the issue last fall, isn't satisfied.
"I still don't think it's right what he's doing," Potter said. "There are all sorts of people who are appointed to all sorts of things in this body and they're not traveling all over creation to do it."
The travel questions stem from Svedjan's natural tendency to take on as many tasks as he can. A self-described perfectionist, he has little free time and freely admits that causes himself more stress than necessary.
"I want things done, I want them done right and I want them done on time," he said. "That's just the way I am."
As a committee chairman, Svedjan likes to run things in an orderly and exacting manner. His style has earned him the praise of colleagues, who say he's a good administrator of the complex appropriations process.
"I've always found Ken to be very fair-minded and always open to making sure that everyone's concerns are heard," said Rep. Pam Gulleson, D-Rutland, a committee member. "I couldn't tell you what his personal philosophies are on the issues that come before the committee, and I think that speaks highly of how he runs it."
Svedjan believes this year may be one of the most challenging for appropriations. He said the budget surplus has encouraged so many spending proposals that balancing the budget will be difficult.
Over the next month, he expects to be making a lot of tough choices about which proposals to keep and which ones to abandon.
"It's not a matter of choosing between good and bad," he said. "It's a matter of choosing between good and good or good and better."
(Reach reporter Jonathan Rivoli at 223-8482 or jonathan.rivoli@;bismarcktribune.com.)
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