BISMARCK — While one North Dakota lawmaker’s vacation made recent headlines, a deeper look shows that more than half of the state’s legislators have missed time this session — absences for which taxpayers are footing the bill.

Rep. Lori VanWinkle, R-Minot, has been the subject of criticism this week for her

week-long absence to go on a family vacation

during session, but even after missing a week, she does not have the most absences in

the Legislature.

According to a report from North Dakota’s Legislative Council, 85 of 141 legislators have missed at least one day so far this session. There have been 195 total absences as of April 17, costing North Dakota taxpayers $41,535 in per-diem payments to absent legislators.

Those who have been absent most often this session say they were not on vacation. They had work, or medical and familial emergencies and obligations — with one exception.

VanWinkle missed seven of the 64 days of session bu April 17, making her the legislator with the third most absences this session.

Five of those days were taken to go on a family vacation

that House leadership said she did not inform them of beforehand. VanWinkle contested this, saying she did inform leadership.

VanWinkle said that she was singled out for her trip while other legislators did not receive the same level of scrutiny for their absences.

“I would suggest — if we’re really thinking that I have missed some sort of exorbitant number of days compared to everybody else — we should do an audit of absences, and that would probably be very appropriate to find out how atrocious my absences actually are in the greater realm of of everybody else’s,” she said Monday.

Rep. Landon Bahl, R-Grand Forks, has missed the most time of any lawmaker this session, with 10 absent days so far, according to the Legislative Council report on absences.

He said his absences are largely due to work. Bahl said he believes his district understands because it has a large number of business owners who want a “certain kind of representation.”

“I’m the vice president and COO of 322 Hospitality Group,” Bahl said. “So most of the time I will go back to Grand Forks to really touch base with leadership because we have eight different entities. … I’m constantly emailing and bouncing back and forth, because that’s my job. This is a part-time citizen Legislature.”

Bahl is the only representative besides VanWinkle to miss a full week of the session. He said he missed the week to travel to Washington, D.C., to lobby for the rights of fraternities and sororities in his capacity as a board member of the Delta Tau Delta International Fraternity.

“I wasn’t skiing, as much as I love skiing,” Bahl said. “That would have been fun to be skiing, but I was in D.C. However, I will admit, it did feel like kind of a vacation, to be honest.”

Bahl said “99%” of the time he has alerted the House majority leader and the speaker of the House when he will be absent so they can prepare for it, and while he would not retroactively forgo his pay for days he already missed, he “absolutely” would in the future.

He suggested the Legislature look at instituting a rule for next session that lawmakers would not receive pay if they missed a day and were not sick.

Rep. Jayme Davis, D-Rolette, missed the second most time so far this session, with nine days absent.

She said she missed nearly a week of the session because of her father’s death and had to miss some Fridays to drive back to Rollette to pick up her mother, who has Parkinson’s disease, and drive her back to Bismarck for medical appointments.

She said none of her absences were for a vacation and that she communicated with leadership in advance of her absences.

“As much as I want a vacation, no,” Davis said. “I’m here to do a job I was elected to do, and so, unless it’s literally life or death, that’s probably the only reason why I would miss.”

She said the legislators were “all adults” and should be able to make their own decisions but added that elected officials should not be paid to be on vacation.

“You have 80 days. We know that,” Davis said. “If you want to go on a vacation, it’s your choice. You’re going to have to answer to your constituents, right? But that’s also not something that our taxpayers should pay for, right?”

Rounding out the top five most absent legislators are Reps. Matthew Ruby, R-Minot, and Alisa Mitskog, D-Wahpeton, who both missed six days of the session to date. Both said they informed leadership ahead of their absences.

Ruby said he had a doctor’s appointment, National Guard duty and a son’s surgery to account for his days off.

Mitskog said she had never missed this many days of session before and felt bad about it. She missed days to attend some of her husband’s medical appointments in Fargo and Minneapolis. Mitskog said she wanted to be able to ask questions at his appointments. However, she said that her husband had just gotten out of an appointment Wednesday, which she had not joined him for because she felt she had missed too much session time already.

A respiratory infection earlier in the session and taking her mother to a medical appointment in Fargo account for her other absences.

Now deceased Rep. Josh Christy, R-Fargo, had 11 listed absences stemming from his hospitalization before his death on Feb. 18, 2025. His absences were not included in the number of total absences or the total amount of money due to absent legislators in this article.

There is a question on whether the legislative body can vote not to pay representatives for absences lawmakers feel are inexcusable.

There is a section of Century Code that says legislators are “entitled” to pay during legislative sessions regardless of their absence. However, there is a rule in both chambers going back before 1957 that states no legislator is entitled to “draw pay while absent more than one day without leave.”

This rule is likely why both chambers vote to excuse the absent members at the end of every day of session, Legislative Council Director John Bjornson said.

“Generally, the statute’s going to override a rule,” he said, but he noted Legislative Council would follow the direction of the presiding officers and majority leaders in each chamber if they asked Legislative Council to withhold pay for a representative.

He said Legislative Council received multiple inquiries Wednesday from legislators about forgoing pay for their absences, but no official requests had been submitted yet.