Former Sen. Ray Holmberg (R-Grand Forks)
BISMARCK, N.D. – A North Dakota state senator who is resigning following a report about text messages he exchanged with an inmate ran up travel expenses the past decade that are more than 14 times what lawmakers bill state taxpayers on average, according to a review by The Associated Press.
Republican Ray Holmberg, the Legislature’s longest-serving senator, has made taxpayer-funded trips to four dozen U.S. cities, China, Canada and several countries in Europe, the AP’s review of travel records showed. He was reimbursed about $126,000 for nearly 70 trips — all out of state — from 2013 through mid-April of 2022.
The 229 lawmakers who served during that period accounted for more than $2 million in travel, or about $8,700 per lawmaker — putting Holmberg’s total many times above the average as he went everywhere from Norway to New Orleans and Portland, Oregon, to Puerto Rico.
Holmberg declined to talk to AP, referring questions to his attorney, Mark Friese.
“I’m his lawyer, not his travel agent,” said Friese, a prominent North Dakota defense attorney. “The propriety of his travel is a question” for the Legislature, Friese said.
Holmberg announced this month that he would end his 46-year-career in June following a report that he had traded scores of text messages with a man jailed on child pornography charges.
Police and federal agents seized video discs and other items from Holmberg’s Grand Forks home in November. A police report did not give a reason for the issuance of a search warrant. It came about three months after Holmberg exchanged 72 text messages with Nicholas James Morgan-Derosier as Morgan-Derosier was held in the Grand Forks County Jail.
There has been no indication that Holmberg’s travel is part of any investigation.
The 79-year-old was the Legislature’s top traveler in at least the past decade — a period when he held a post that allowed him to approve his own travel. Records for his state-reimbursed travel during the previous three decades of tenure are incomplete or no longer exist.
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