Port: Is it too much to ask that Doug Burgum do his job as governor?

MINOT — The most frustrating line from

the Bismarck Tribune report

about a group of North Dakota filmmakers upset about the troubling process around $700,000 in grants doled out by the state Commerce Department was this one: “[Gov. Doug] Burgum’s office previously declined comment to the Tribune.”

The filmmakers have been asking for answers from Burgum’s office since August, but neither the governor, nor anybody from his staff, could be bothered to oblige them?

As I reported back in August,

at issue are two grants given to Canticle Productions, a Bismarck-based filmmaker. One totaling $100,000 was issued to the company in 2021 but was apparently not advertised to other filmmakers. The other, for $600,000, was given to Canticle through a process that was seemingly designed to keep other filmmakers from applying.

On Friday, July 21, at almost 4:00 pm, the Commerce Department announced it

was taking applications for the grant money.

The due date for the applications was July 31, just 10 calendar days, or six business days, later.

If it seems like perhaps this competitive application process wasn’t intended to be all that competitive, you may be right. When the appropriation for the grant was discussed in the Legislature, it seemed lawmakers already knew where it was heading.

“There’s an added funding for a Motion Picture Production and Recruitment Grant to a production company for another motion picture that’s being made in North Dakota,” Sen. Brad Bekkedahl, a Republican from Williston, said earlier this year in his floor speech for

House Bill 1018,

the Commerce Department budget, which included the grant appropriation. “Many of the predictions…productions from this company have been North Dakota centrist productions, and this is another one they are bringing online.”

Why even bother with a competitive grant process if the money was always intended to go to Canticle?

One explanation may lay in

Article X, Section 18

of the North Dakota constitution, which states, “neither the state nor any political subdivision thereof shall otherwise loan or give its credit or make donations to or in aid of any individual, association or corporation except for reasonable support of the poor, nor subscribe to or become the owner of capital stock in any association or corporation.”

This, colloquially, is called the “gift clause,” a prohibition on the state making a direct appropriation to any specific person or company. Perhaps,exempli gratia, a $600,000 grant to a specific film production company.

A legislative appropriation to a competitive grant program for filmmakers passes constitutional muster. A legislative appropriation directly to a company would not.
It sure seems like the Commerce Department did an end-run around the state constitution to funnel money to a specific film company.

Other filmmakers are blowing the whistle on it, and they’re right to. It’s not a good situation. I have nothing bad to say about Canticle Productions. The films they’ve produced about North Dakota — I particularly enjoyed

“End of the Rope”

— are very good. It’s understandable why state officials would be enthusiastic about helping Canticle make more of those films.

But that’s not justification for putting a figurative finger on the scale of what was supposed to be an open, competitive process. Canticle Productions is not the problem. The process is.

Which brings us back to

Gov. Doug Burgum.

Why is he AWOL? Why can’t these filmmakers, who have a legitimate complaint to lodge, get the time of day from him? Or, at least, a member of his staff?

One answer is that Burgum is too busy with

his quixotic tilt at the White House

to attend to the picayune responsibilities of governing the State of North Dakota, even though that’s the duty of the office he currently holds.

The filmmakers are

now calling on Attorney General Drew Wrigley and Auditor Josh Gallion to get involved,

but they first went to Burgum in August.

They should have. The commerce commissioner, currently Josh Teigen, is a member of Burgum’s cabinet. The Commerce Department is a part of the executive branch he presides over. Burgum, or at least someone on his staff, owes these filmmakers and the public some explanations.

Maybe Burgum is too busy indulging the fantasy that a groundswell of

heretofore unidentified Republican primary voters

is going to emerge from the shadows to sweep him to victory in the GOP’s presidential primary.

Or maybe it’s time for him to come home and get back to work.