Mar 05, 2008 - 04:05:52 CST
Bismarck Tribune
By LAUREN DONOVBy LAUREN DONOVAN
The Stark County Commission acknowledges it broke North Dakota's open meeting law in December by not telling the public it was meeting with the company planning to build a gasification plant and coal mine near South Heart.
It will rehold that meeting, invite the public and then take up a zoning request by Great Northern Power Development.
On Monday, the Stark County Planning and Zoning Commission met and recommended the county commission approve Great Northern's zoning application for the new coal mine.
The county would normally have acted on that recommendation Tuesday, but put the matter on the table until it can get right with its open-meeting obligation to the public.
Stark County and other local officials, including Gov. John Hoeven, were invited by Great Northern Power Development to have lunch and hear about the company's project plans back in December.
Four of five Stark County Commissioners - three is a quorum - attended the lunch and didn't inform the public, according to a complaint filed by the Dakota Resource Council with the state attorney general's office.
Stark County Commissioner George Nodland said the county's legal counsel said the best way to resolve the matter is to go back to square one, meet publicly with Great Northern and then take up the zoning matter.
The county will do that at 9 a.m. April 1 at the Stark County Courthouse in Dickinson.
At the meeting in violation, Great Northern gave a basic overview of its project. It has since added more information to roughly the same power point presentation and held two public meetings attended by more than 500 people, Nodland said.
Although Hoeven was at the luncheon meeting and made a few welcoming, congratulatory remarks, Nodland said he doesn't expect the governor to come to the county courthouse when the meeting is restaged.
After the complaint was filed, a spokesman for the governor said the governor assumes every meeting he is at is open to the public.
Nodland said the county will go through the motions "to clear up that issue."
He said the commission should have followed normal procedure and posted on the county Web site and in the courthouse and made notice as requested that a quorum would be attending the lunch.
(Reach reporter Lauren Donovan at 888-303-5511, or lauren@;westriv.com.)
Edward wrote on Mar 5, 2008 8:05 AM:
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