Rep. Jason Dockter (R-Bismarck)
BY: MARY STEURER
MANDAN, N.D. (North Dakota Monitor) – A trial of a state lawmaker boiled down to the representative’s interpretation of a House ethics rule.
Jurors began deliberating at 5 p.m. Friday on whether to find Rep. Jason Dockter, R-Bismarck, guilty of voting on legislation he had a financial interest in.
At issue in the case is Dockter’s involvement in the lease of a Bismarck building to the Attorney General’s Office and the North Dakota Department of Health.
The building deal originally came together during Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem’s tenure. The representative was friends with Stenehjem, and previously served as his campaign treasurer. Stenehjem died in office in 2022.
Dockter later voted on budgets for the Attorney General Office and the North Dakota Department of Health in the 2021 and 2023 sessions, which spurred the criminal charge by prosecutor Ladd Erickson in December 2023. Erickson, the McLean County state’s attorney, is bringing the case as a special assistant AG to Burleigh County State’s Attorney Julie Lawyer.
Dockter took the stand and defended his actions by pointing to House Rule 321, which holds that lawmakers must vote on legislation unless they have a conflict of interest that affects them “directly, individually, uniquely and substantially.”
Dockter said he did not feel his situation met that standard. He’s only ever attempted to recuse himself once during his 12-year tenure in the Legislature, he told jurors — and that was when someone involved in his payroll business testified on a bill. Dockter said his fellow lawmakers allowed him to vote on the legislation anyway.
In his closing statement, Erickson told the jury that Dockter willfully cast the votes despite accumulating a significant stake in the property — and that his circumstance was not as ordinary as the representative said it was.
“This is not some sort of tangential benefit, this is a specific benefit,” Erickson said.
In both opening and closing remarks, Dockter’s lawyer, Lloyd Suhr, warned that a conviction could set a dangerous precedent and bring North Dakota’s citizen legislature to a standstill if lawmakers become fearful of legal consequences for voting.
That led South Central Judicial District Judge Bobbi Weiler to scold Suhr after the jury left to deliberate.
“If you ever threaten my jury again, you yourself will have an ethics issue,” Weiler said.
Suhr said that his client was being unfairly targeted for doing his job and that Dockter’s situation is not unique among his fellow lawmakers.
“This case is about a legislator doing their job and being prosecuted for a crime,” Suhr said during opening remarks.
The story starts in 2019 during the legislative session, Erickson said Friday. Dockter bumped into Lonnie Grabowska, who leads the North Dakota Bureau of Criminal Investigation, which is under the AG’s office.
Grabowska told Dockter that the BCI was short on office space and looking to move to a bigger location, so Dockter referred him to the Bismarck building and helped coordinate the lease. The Department of Health was already renting space at the property.
According to Suhr, Grabowska and Dockter have known each other since middle school.
After the AG’s Office signed the lease, a company Dockter has partial ownership of bought the property. A construction company Dockter owns was also paid to renovate the property, according to Erickson.
Erickson characterized the development of the lease deal as Dockter using his status as a lawmaker for his own private gain.
Suhr, however, said Dockter was just helping Grabowska solve a problem, and that the business arrangement was fair and above-board.
In his closing statement, Suhr said Dockter was merely doing Grabowska “a favor.”
After developing a financial interest in the property, Dockter voted on budgets for state agencies that included rent for the property.
During the 2021 legislative session, Dockter voted on both the Attorney General’s Office budget and the Department of Health budget.
Dockter voted on the Department of Health budget again in 2023, but was absent for votes on the Attorney General’s Office budget. Dockter testified he believed he did not vote on the budget that year because he had COVID-19.
Rebecca Binstock, executive director of the North Dakota Ethics Commission, testified that she recommended that Dockter not vote on the AG’s Office bill that year. She said she was not aware that Dockter had also leased part of the building to the Department of Health, however.
Suhr stressed that Dockter is one of many lawmakers who vote on legislation that is tangentially related to their careers outside the Legislature, and that the criminal charge is unfairly singling the representative out.
After the attorneys’ opening statements, Erickson played an episode of Forum Communications columnist Rob Port’s podcast in which Dockter was interviewed about the building deal.
Port asked Dockter how, regardless of the representative’s intentions, he could defend the lease to a skeptical public.
“People know that we are citizens, we have other lives besides the Legislature,” Dockter told Port in the episode.
According to jury instructions read by Judge Weiler, the jury should vote to convict Dockter if Erickson proves beyond a reasonable doubt that Dockter willfully took an official action likely to benefit him as a result of acquiring a financial interest in a “property, transaction or enterprise,” or as a result of a “speculation or wager” which he made or caused someone else to make related to an official action.
Other witnesses who appeared during the trial include:
- Binstock, executive director of the North Dakota Ethics Commission
- Bjornson, director of Legislative Council
- John Boyle, director of the Facility Management Division for the Office of Management and Budget
- Josh Gallion, state auditor
- Grabowska, director of the North Dakota Bureau of Criminal Investigation
- Rep. Emily O’Brien, R-Grand Forks, chair of the Legislative Audit and Fiscal Review Committee
- The case was referred to Erickson for prosecution by the North Dakota Ethics Commission.
The misdemeanor charge against Dockter is based on a statute that states “if as a public servant he takes official action which is likely to benefit him as a result of an acquisition of a pecuniary interest in any property, transaction, or enterprise, or of a speculation or wager, which he made, or caused or aided another to make, in contemplation of such official action.”
The maximum sentence for someone convicted of a Class A misdemeanor in North Dakota is up to one year in jail and up to a $3,000 fine, or both.
This story was updated at 6:45 p.m. Friday. It is a developing story and will be updated again.
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